THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 14, 1996 TAG: 9609130487
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 31 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: ABOUT THE OUTER BANKS
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: 118 lines
As Hurricane Fran took aim at the Carolina coast last week, John Conner and his builder, Jim Barley, hammered nails into a house they hope would be Fran's match.
Conner, a Hatteras Island grocer, and his wife, Rhonda, are building a new home on high ground less than a half-mile from their current home in the heart of Buxton village.
They're moving for ``sentimental'' reasons, says Rhonda; the land with views of both sound and ocean belonged to her grandparents. That this land is 20 feet higher is a definite plus, say the Conners.
They had six feet of water in their house during Hurricane Emily in 1993. The experience left them convinced that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Prevention is the operating principle in the design and construction of their new house. From their new hilltop, the Conners hope they can ride out all but the most catastrophic of storms.
``Never say hurricane proof,'' says Barley, ``but I don't know what else we could have done to build it better.''
Until the early 1990s, little attention was paid to building hurricane-resistant houses. The cost to study and change storm-vulnerable details in single-family home construction was cost-prohibitive for even the largest residential builder.
The federal government refused to fund most mitigation proposals, preferring to put their money into cleaning up and rebuilding after storms hit.
Then came Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew and the summer of Midwestern floods. They took their toll on federal disaster assistance funds and the private insurance industry. Washington bureaucrats got a bright idea: Why don't we learn to build smarter?
Blue Sky, developed on the Outer Banks by the Town of Southern Shores, was one of the first programs to address hazard-resistant construction for single-family homes.
Still in the developmental stages, Blue Sky is using a multi-disciplinary approach that draws on resources from the private and public sectors to identify the causes of storm damage and engineer solutions to correct the defects.
A model construction center is under way in Southern Shores. The building demonstrates many different methods and materials that can make new and existing homes resistant to hurricane damage.
Blue Sky, now a national program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, several state agencies and private corporations, will eventually make its information available to builders and interested homeowners.
But much of what Blue Sky's academics and engineers have learned is old news to builders like Jim Barley and his brother Bill who have been building as Salty Construction on Hatteras Island for over 20 years. Experienced island builders who care about their work have figured out how to build for high winds on their own, says Jim.
Hurricane resistance comes from the bones of the house: exterior walls are 2-by-6 and 5/8-inch plywood sheathing is glued and nailed to the frame. A 5/8-inch subfloor is topped with 5/8-inch underlayment and nailed with ring shank nails.
More than double the number of nails required by the state building code are used to attach the sheathing and flooring.
John Conner and his father-in-law are doing much of the nailing themselves. They're chalking the nail lines and hand-driving the nails to insure attachment to the studs.
Many experts blame nailing problems on air-powered nail guns because the guns often overdrive the nail heads or make it impossible for the operator to feel if a nail has penetrated wood beneath the sheathing. In Florida, after Hurricane Andrew, experts identified faulty nailing as a significant factor leading to wind damage.
Building inspectors say they've stood inside framed-out houses, looked up, and seen the inside of the roof sheathing sparkle from all the nails hanging in thin air that should have been driven into nearby rafters.
You won't find silver inside a Salty Construction roof, says Jim. He makes his crew hand nail crucial attachments; every missed nail is pulled and redriven.
Another key to building a hurricane-resistant house is dealing with wind uplift. Construction methods are generally concerned with holding a building up rather than down. Coastal building codes require certain precautions against uplift but they don't go far enough, says Jim.
The Conners wanted a traditional Hatteras Island home styled after the Little Kinnakeet Life Saving Station. Porches surround the house shaded by a wide roof overhang.
The low roof pitch combined with an open porch is an invitation for wind damage, but the Barleys make plywood gussets to tie every porch ceiling rafter to its support joist along the exterior perimeter of the porch.
A Simpson H-10 hurricane strap rated for 1,100 pounds attaches every rafter to the wall system rather than the more commonly used TECO ``junior'' strap rated for under 500 pounds. The smaller capacity clips are used at every interior roof joint.
The Barleys used galvanized steel strapping to give added strength to gable-end roof walls (another weak point in houses facing hurricane-force winds) and the hip roof.
Steel strapping was also in the 12-by-12-foot tower room. Two six-inch wide straps literally tie the tower frame to the structure below. The lookout was added to the house plan after construction was under way when the builders saw the panoramic views from the roof.
The 2,580 square-foot house has plenty of windows but the Barleys didn't sacrifice structural strength for light. Instead of installing large windows where mullions dividing the glass panels are more decorative than structural, they paired and tripled single-window units.
``You only lose about an inch of glass,'' says Jim. And buying the smaller individual windows is cheaper.
The Conner house incorporates every possible precaution. ``Anything we could do to make it stronger is what we want done,'' says John.
``We're doing it right,'' says Rhonda. ``This is our last house, Lord willing.''
``One gentleman looked at the house and said it was overkill,'' says John with a smile. ``I said That's just fine. That's what I want to hear.''' MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags
Head, N.C. 27959. Or e-mail her at realkidd(AT)aol.com ILLUSTRATION: Photo by DREW C. WILSON
The Conners' cottage storm preparations were ``overkill'' but that
is what they wanted. by CNB