Harder Homes & Gardens – Hurricanes Destroy Beachside Homes, But Not This One

Mexico Beach, which sits halfway between the two, saw three-quarters of its homes, municipal buildings, and businesses damaged. But one structure withstood the storm, despite its front step sitting only 150 yards from the wet and windy Gulf of Mexico. Christened the “Sand Palace” by its owners, the blocky beach home survived not by luck or magic, but good design, says Lance Watson, vice president of Southeastern Consulting Engineers and lead engineer on the project. Here’s how—with money and expertise—the crew outmaneuvered Michael, and made this home a model of resilient architecture.

If you build a home on a beach where everyone and the .gov knows there’s gonna be strong hurricanes, it seems that when your house blows away like something out of The Wizard of Oz you really have no one to blame but yourself. However, if you’ve got the resources, and the inclination, you can apparently throw in some engineering to make sure you have the last house standing.

I’ve covered my fascination with concrete dwellings in other posts (search for the HHG tag). But sheer strength isn’t all you need…you gotta have solidly engineered ideas, quality materials, and competent construction. In the example shown in the article, these folks were willing to make some tradeoffs and lose a battle (sacrificing the ground floor storage area) to win the war (keep the house standing).

It’s hard to find old construction that has all the features we wacky survivalists would like to have, and retrofitting an older place can be almost as expensive as building new. I’m inclined to go for a purpose-built place. When it’s time to break ground on Commander Zero’s Post-Nuclear Bunker O’ Love and Lingerie Proving Ground (also known as the Fortress of Derpitude) ypu can bet everything is going to be done with an eye towards surviving forest fire, gun fire, economic meltdown, and as many other forseeable events as possible. Won’t be cheap, I’m sure, but I’ll bet I’ll sleep real good when its all done.

9 thoughts on “Harder Homes & Gardens – Hurricanes Destroy Beachside Homes, But Not This One

  1. My ideal approach is to use the older house as window dressing and build everything that matters Hidden. Such as a monolithic dome covered by a few feet of earth.
    Not sure how to get around killing the construction crew after all is done so they dont talk tho.

    • Also, this article implies that the owners/builders live in the house. This is not the case, or at least wasnt at the time of the hurricane. He is a doctor in TN and this Mexico Beach house is their vacation home. iirc, the house cost about 2x to build over a standard beach house.
      Good moral to the story for sure. Kinda reminds me of the 3 Little Pigs tale.

  2. In the aftermath of Michael, there was a raw drone map up about three days after. A few blocks away from this “Sand Palace” is another three story home, admittedly not RIGHT on the beach yet three blocks back, that was just as unmarred. Two homes next to it… not so much. Same non-essentials on the first floor… just parking.

    I always imagined a husband driving by and pointing at that house, “THAT! THAT is why the extra 20% in construction Linda!”

  3. I live in Florida and have vacationed in this part of the state multiple times. I also work in construction so this article hits several of my key interests. What this article doesn’t mention, that makes this house’s survival even more incredible, is the storm surge that Mexico Beach saw.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/hurricane-michael-is-looking-even-more-violent-on-closer-scrutiny/2018/11/11/313bce34-d85a-11e8-a10f-b51546b10756_story.html

    “Using data from that instrument and another sensor that had been nailed to a pier piling, the USGS on Oct. 25 concluded the storm surge at Mexico Beach had reached 15.55 feet, half a foot higher than the previous estimate. If you add the waves on top of the surge, the water level here reached 20.6 feet, or close to the height of a two-story building.”

    Designing a building to survive high winds is impressive all by itself. Surviving the storm surge really demonstrates how well it was designed and built. I’m really shocked that you can build anything to survive that. There’s a lot of energy in those waves.

  4. I attended the monolithic dome building course many years ago. If you want a survival home, a monolithic dome is the way to go. In the long run, it’s turns out to be less expensive than a stick built house. Check it out.

  5. In addition to considerations for ballistic protection, a structure designed for long term off grid habitation also needs to perform well for livability with minimal energy inputs, as well as any required structural considerations.
    I don’t recommend concrete structures for this.
    Check into “earth ship” design. Thermal mass performs best when it’s made out of good old soil. The only thing I’d add to the traditional rammed earth method of earth ship construction is to consider the use of compressed earth blocks instead. CEBs are inexpensive, are made on site with mostly local materials, have very good thermal mass properties, are dimensional for easy construction, and offer excellent ballistic protection assuming walls are designed thick enough.

  6. Yep, driven right by that sucker many a time (before and after). You get what ya pay for.

    Regards

  7. I built a small geodesic dome out of 3/4 inch conduit. Dug a 4 foot deep hole and assembled the dome in the hole. Then covered in metal lathe and then used a mortar sprayer to shoot on hand mixed cement. Troweled by hand 2nd coat and covered with some plastic and 18 inches of dirt. Used a scrap yard manhole cover for the entrance. It has grown over now with weeds and bushes and is hard to find.

  8. “Hurricanes Destroy Beachside Homes, But Not This One”
    You know what they say about having the nicest house on the block.
    🙂

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