Hurricane Mathew Strikes the House

In the last blog I indicated that there was a cat 5 hurricane down in the Caribbean coming our way and I had hoped that it would not hit here.   Well the eye actually passed by my city only 30 miles away.  Luckily it had down graded itself to a cat 3.   However we did get subjected to 110 Mph winds, rain, power outages and the storm surge.  The question is, how did my construction hold up?  From a previous blog where I discussed the shingles I installed on the roof I said the following:

"the code requires that the shingles be wind rated for 150 Mph on my street.  One street over its 160 Mph....go figure.  The shingles I chose are CetainTeed silver birch shingles which will easily handle these wind speeds according to the manufacturer ratings  ASTM3161 D F......(I'll believe it when I see it and right now I'm skeptical as they are asphalt shingles and this material is pretty weak)" 

And then there is the cedar porch which I talked about in the blog in this link.  I think I mentioned in one of the cedar porch blogs that we had a little argument with the designer.  He felt that the porch needed diagonal bracing and would not stand up to a hurricane if it didn't have it.  Dad on the other hand said based on his experience as a structural engineer that it did not need it.  I chose to ignore the designer and listen to my dad.  Was this the right decision?

This is a picture of the porch before the storm.

 

Don't forget the boat house which I had deviated from what the professional engineer signed off on in the plans.  I had put on a gable roof I designed myself instead of a hip roof in the plans as discussed in this link.  Furthermore,  I had decided to leave the 2 to 3 thousand pound boat in the lift and let it ride out the storm there.   Were these good decisions worthy of withstanding the hurricane force winds?  

See picture below of how the boat was left in the boat house before the storm.  Basically I lifted it higher than I thought the storm surge would be and I tied it off at the four corners to cleats on the pilings.   I also used chain links with nuts on them instead of hooks so that there was no way the boat could get loose from the cables on the lift.

There is also the expanded garage addition, where I had mistakenly left off two major Simpson brackets responsible for holding the roof on.  Luckily, the inspector caught it and it was corrected.  Had I screwed anything else up or did the inspector miss anything else?

Before I show the damage that was incurred by the hurricane to my construction, I will show you the damage in the neighborhood.

Below is a picture of the shingles missing from a neighbors house:

 

As can be seen from the photo many shingles are missing.  The house to the left was newly built a year ago and fared better.  However, it had many shingles missing as well.

Below is a picture of a neighbors dock.  The piling is broken in two.  Probably rotten but the forces were so great that the dock was lifted up.

 

Below is picture of a neighbors tree that fell over.

 

Below the picture shows the huge screened in porch taken down by the hurricane.

 

Fence knocked down in neighborhood.

 

A power line down in the neighborhood.

A community center had this damage,

 

At a  Friendly's restaurant a light pole had been knocked down and the bricks on the corner of the building had fallen.

So the above pictures are some of the worse damage in my local area that I could find.  

And now for the damage that occurred to my construction.  I didn't have any except a little erosion on the dirt that I placed in the back yard.  The dirt placement is discussed in this link.   The grass had not grown yet so there was nothing to hold the dirt in place.  All the additions that I had constructed were still standing and looked as if they took the pounding easily.   What was completely surprising to me though was that not a single shingle came off my roof.  Those are some good shingles! 

The damage I had was the AC got fried due to the power surges.  (I should have flipped the main breaker before I left) and the freon leaked out of the AC.

The erosion is shown below.  In the picture you can see the water had risen above the wall and the floating dock landed itself on top of the fixed dock.

 

I did have damage to the boat.  A cleat ripped off but the wood holding the cleat was rotten.  The boat must have really rocked and rolled in the wind.  I'm glad I removed the hooks from the lift and used 1/2 " links instead so that the boat did not get loose.

 

I would say that although the neighborhood did have damage we fared pretty well and it could of been a lot worse.  We are so lucky.  Other countries in the path of the hurricane did not do as well.  In Haiti the destruction is devastating and the death toll has reached 900  link .  

Let us pray for them.

In the coming weeks I hope to put the shingles on the boat house.  It should not take long.  But then again I thought this whole project would only take 3 months.

Happy Building,

The Dr.