Staying safe in strong winds, Part 2

Q. We’re thinking about how to make our house safer from high winds. It’s old, and creaks when we get wind gusts. I looked online at safe rooms, and they’re a lot of work and cost. Is there a cheaper way to make a room — at least one room — safe to go to if we have a tornado, and can we make our house less creaky when windstorms blow?

A. Depending on which way the wind blows, literally, you need to assess the types of storms and the typical direction that storms come from in your area. In the Midwest, storms generally come from the Southwest. In the Northeast, there are nor’easters and southwest storms. Nearer to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, storms head from offshore toward land. Florida can get hit from three directions.
What you’re mainly interested in is wind resistance, but keep in mind that you may need to plan to be higher off the ground if you’re in a floodplain. The higher above ground you need to be, the greater the wind speeds will be. It’s best to develop a centrally located room with indirect air ventilation, made of either steel-reinforced poured concrete, steel-reinforced concrete panels or steel-reinforced concrete block. Plain steel can also be used, but the cost may be greater to connect everything. Brick isn’t a structural material, and individual bricks can easily be stripped and hurled like very large bullets by high winds.
The more aerodynamic the surfaces of the safe room structure are, the more it will deflect missile-like materials. A round safe room is safer. Just don’t get frustrated if someone tells you to go stand in the corner. The indirect ventilation shaft can be a steel or cast iron pipe turned downward. The point is that you want a durable, indestructible pipe located away from water, gas or electric lines that, if ruptured, could kill occupants who thought they were protected. The vent should also not be pointed directly into the wind.
It’s advisable to have an engineer or architect who has training in such safety issues work with you on the specifics. Building code boards have avoided setting standards, even though groups such as the American Society of Civil Engineers have been asking for standards to be addressed. It may eventually come to that, but for now there are no specific standards, mainly because different building associations lobby against them, since standards and required safe rooms would add significantly to the expense of renovations and new homes.
When you consider that structural metal connectors and hurricane-resistant windows are already in the code, plus the latest increases in shipping and manufacturing costs, home construction is getting further and further out of reach of the average prospective consumer. Just adding more surface material to your floors, walls and ceilings isn’t going to help you in severe storms. Good luck. 

© 2022 Monte Leeper. Readers are encouraged to send questions to yourhousedr@aol.com, with “Herald question” in the subject line, or to Herald Homes, 2 Endo Blvd., Garden City, NY 11530, Attn: Monte Leeper, architect.