In article , "Jas" jason Dot smith AT @ ihatespam tpg dot com dot au wrote:
I have always wondered about the state of building codes in the US. Here in
Australia, if you build in the cyclone areas of the north, the codes are
pretty strict, and roofs are basically bolted down through the frame to the
concrete slab on the ground. My parents live in far north queensland, in a
fairly plain little house and have sat out three cyclones with no damage
whatsoever.
Surely there are similar codes over there, or are tornadoes and hurricanes
just so severe that nothing you build could stand up to them?

[Added sci.geo.meteorology to the distribution for obvious reasons.]

I think hurricanes are pretty well equivalent to our cyclones, though
the rating scale differs a bit between the Oz and US standards AFAIK.
Tornadoes are a different kettle of fish; usually *much* more intense,
though very local in effect.

I doubt that your parents' house has been assaulted by the eye of
three cyclones -- unless it has been there for a bloody long time!
(How old are they? ;-) Besides, there hasn't been a cat 5 landfall in
FNQ for decades.

Even Tracy was "only" a cat 4 when it wiped out Darwin 31 years ago:
http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/health/aemf/HDS/chapter_7.htm
While that event was the main stimulus to upgrade Australian building
codes in cyclone prone regions, even today I don't think the code
calls for survival of structures hit by a cat 5 cyclone. (There seems
to have been some recent upgrading of the Code w.r.t. cyclones but,
like so much government information here in Oz, it's well hidden
behind a wall of bureaucratic self-adulation on what should be the
relevant web sites. So I couldn't find out much with a quick squiz.)

On the subject of the OP, an underground house would be fine for a single
family, if an expensive option (the people of the opal fields basically just
dig there own into relatively soft, though stable, rock). The thing about
rock, though, is not that it is cool, but that it is an excellent insulator.
I would think that if you put a lot of people into any space, underground or
otherwise, the heat they would generate would need to be taken away somehow,
plus the ventilation would have to be good.

"neils" wrote in message
...
"Me" wrote in message
...
In article .com,
"Viator" wrote:

This past summer, the news carried stories of people
dying in the summer heat in Phoenix Arizona, especially
people without homes or access to air conditioning.

This seemed awefully tragic, and all throughout this
news coverage there was a lack of critical questioning
let alone "out of the box" thinking, as usual with
the US media. The most obvious question seemed to be,
if the Earth is about 50 degrees F underground, then why
do Phoenix residents not live underground to save energy
and keep cool during the summer, and why were the
poor not offered accommodations in subterranian places
e.g. the cellars of libraries? One news story mentioned
that the problem with helping the homeless was that
there were not enough air-conditioned large spaces.

Years ago I heard that in Australia, the opal miners
in the western part of that country all live underground,
because the mines are located in a desert where it's
terminally hot at the surface.

Could the situation for most Phoenix residents, who
are notoriously dependent on air conditioning not be
summarizable as simply "humans failing to adapt to
the environment as usual"?

I always wondered similar things about those folks that live in Tornado
Alley..... Why to they continue to build above ground after getting the
Govt, to replace their stickbuilt houses for the third or fourth time?

Someone else with the same question Ive always had. Im surprised that no-one
there seems to have thought of it, especially considering they hide from
Tornados in cellars...i would have thought it would be sensible for someone
to think "maybe I can live down here?"

Cheers, Phred.

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LID