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Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I would assume "free RV" is even less free than "free car" and your descriptions seem to be validating such an assumption.

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Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I believe that may be a volcano, sir.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Right on. I figured you were doing your usual level of due diligence, lol!

I am not a geologist, but I studied geology in university, almost took a minor but decided I didn't want to bother with the math. So I have just enough understanding to get through a technical paper without being too confused.

I edited in another bit to that post you quoted, in the other thread - it was a quote from a seattle times article from 1997, quoting a geologist who said the Vashon Till is very hard and compacted and a lot of Seattle is built on it. That's encouraging, although obviously not definitive.

Part of the deal with the Big One is that even if your structure survives, the infrastructure of the state won't, so you'll still probably have to evacuate since your job, your utilities, and the transportation networks, will all be hosed for at least six months. Plus the horrific death toll on the coasts, etc. etc. I'm not sure how hyperbolic that is, it makes a lot of assumptions, but my gut feeling is that whatever, my interest in a house is in surviving first and foremost, and then keeping my investment intact as a distant second. Building for occupant safety and then having insurance is the least expensive approach: building for building survival is potentially ruinously expensive depending on a lot of factors, so while I just got done saying "do always overbuild", I'd also caution you to beware of pouring vast sums into trying to make a cube of steel reinforced concrete that can survive the apocalypse.

Anyway I'm looking forward to the build log.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Infrastructure includes things like "can any gas station within 100 miles pump gas" and "is there any prospect of a grocery store being open in the next month" but yeah a lot of that stuff sounds pretty mitigating.

Re: hardness, how deep have you gone? The top foot or so has been disturbed for several thousand years by weathering and vegetation etc. so you might find you don't hit hardpan till you go deeper. Or it might not be hard at all, that's definitely also possible.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I don't know about rollers necessarily, but the broader category is "base isolation" or sometimes "seismic isolation" and yeah as far as I know it's not available for SFHs, yet, but I see a fair amount of recent articles and promotional stuff promising it any day now.

e.g.,
https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/125734835/prototype-base-isolation-system-for-houses-can-stop-earthquake-damage
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KazUH9xpi-0
These are both in New Zealand and they're using much cheaper but still very effective base isolation techniques (not rollers).

IMO it's awesome, but also not really necessary. Foundation-up design principles exist (e.g. https://cdn.ez-pdh.com/course-material/CV502-Homebuilders-Guide-to-Earthquake-Resistant-Design.pdf ) that get you all the way to "survivable" for the occupants" for even very severe earthquakes, and then insurance is probably a lot cheaper than the cost of trying to make a one-story one or two thousand square foot timber built residential house survive an 8.0+ (or really a 7.0+) without major damage.

Check out page three for an illustrative photo:
https://peer.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/peer2019-05_ssc19-01.pdf
That house is obviously condemned, but nobody inside would have been crushed to death, at least not by the structure failure (a bookcase can still kill you, strap your bookcases people)

But I'll repeat I'm just some rear end in a top hat who read some textbooks in the late 1990s, so don't take my word for it.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Dec 18, 2021

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Yeah. It's rare, though, and also more or less unenforceable, and nobody's going to care unless you're doing it at a huge scale.

Building a structure that can withstand a wildfire means all-masonry construction, though, and that's a bad idea in earthquake country unless it's steel frame, and that in turn is hideously expensive, and we're back to mitigation (defensible space, keep your land maintained), appropriate roof material choices (mandated by code out here for decades), make sure you have more than one way out (see: Paradise fire), and be properly insured. Maybe also make friends with your local volunteer fire fighters in your rural area. Hell, maybe volunteer.

Another thing you can do if you have a bigger chunk of land is actually conduct your own controlled burns. My wife and I know a guy who has around 20 acres in California, he made friends with his local firefighters, studied forestry controlled burn practices, and does small burns in the winter after it rains a lot. You have to schedule them, so the fire dept. knows when and what and how, and inform all your neighbors, and have a crew, etc. but it's not impossible to do and it could lead to your patch of land not having an intense burn even if an otherwise-intense wildfire intersects with it.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Controlling how you can use the.water on your land is not fundamentally different from all the other ways the government restricts property rights. I'm sorry for all the people who were misled into thinking that a land title or deed confers absolute ownership, but it doesn't, and never has. Restricting water catchment is no different than restricting number and type of structures, setbacks, mineral rights, animal husbandry, maximum building height, and a thousand other things.

Also as kastein already said, it's fine, he can legally catch his roof runoff etc.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I just hope the shed will be secure. Can it be seen from the road, if there's a road?

Also I'm excited for updates! Did the east coast house sell yet?

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I would assume wildlife will set off tripwires?

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Ah, I can see why you're preinstalling the sheathing: it's a purely rectangular build, no angle bracing, so without the sheathing those walls would each want to rack really badly. Putting the sheathing on before you stand them means no need to add angled bits.

Are the open spaces on the left wall for windows?

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

That polycarbonate cell plastic stuff lasts like 10-20 years, it's UV-resistant and pretty good.
This sort of thing: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Palram-Sunlite-24-in-x-48-in-x-5-16-in-Polycarbonate-Clear-Twinwall-Sheet-174040/305560353

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Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Oh, I thought you were just gonna do the open vertical bit above the wall in clear polycarb. Doing the whole roof will let in tons of light, but now I'm worried you're inadvertently building a greenhouse. If so, at least it'll be nice and warm in the winter! Anyway it looks like a really solid shed.

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