Sunnyflorida wrote:
“Winds were gusting to 120 mph, measured, right about where residential construction begins to fail
substantially.”
This is a bizarre statement and completely weird. Some residential construction fails at 40 MPH and
some, mine, survived near 200MPH. It is nutty to generalize like this.
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I built them for twenty years, after studying civil long enough to finish my core classes. 30 and 40 pounds per square foot wind loading is a very common building code standard. If you look at one house, anything can happen. If you look at a whole city built to the 40 pounds per foot standard, you can draw conclusions. If it’s good enough for actuarial tables for insurance companies, it’s good enough for me.
Proof’s in the pudding, let’s see what the actual damage surveys give us for ground truth.
I wondered about how prepared Houston buildings are for hurricanes? I knwo here in S. FL we have strict codes for anything built after Andrew, and after Wilma many have shutters.
susie