"Vaughn" wrote in message
...

And I am not talking about reinforced concrete dome houses. I am
talking
about the real-life code-compliant housing that fills up neighborhoods
here in
south Florida. In fact, my post above was not even in response to you,
and
certainly not to some weird structure that lives in your imagination or on
a on
a web page somewhere.

You don't know what you're talking about. Those weird structures have been
built for the last 25 years throughout the world as homes, gyms,
auditoriums, churches, bunkers, storage silos, airplane hangers. They can
and have withstood most natural disasters including hurricanes, fire,
earthquakes and tornadoes. And they're 50%-70% more energy efficient. Given
similar costs why anyone would choose to build a flimsy stick and tar
stylish deathtrap is beyond me.

Last time I checked; here in south Florida, a code-compliant wooden
house
will get the same insurance rate for storm coverage as a comparable
concrete
home. Proper storm shutters and/or Dade approved window and door systems
are a
major item and insurance companies may someday force 100% retrofit in
storm
counties. After window protection, the next most important item for storm
resistance is roof design, not the building material of the walls.

Ten years ago, I toured hurricane Andrew's devastation and saw many
failed
structures, wood, concrete block, and yes; even reinforced concrete.

And I'm sure many of them were code-compliant. That's a false sense of
security. When a cat-5 hits a code compliant house it'll be in splinters.
Code-compliant doesn't mean that's the best that's possible it represents
somebody's idea of what can reasonably be done for the least cost given
commonly used building techniques without upsetting too many people while
making contractors happy.

All those planes (not to mention people) that were damaged or destroyed
would have been untouched in a monolithic dome. It's that simple.


Vaughn (a guy who lives in a concrete house)

What kind of concrete house?