Matt Whiting wrote in
:

Don wrote:

"Matt Whiting" wrote

Warm Worm wrote:

"RicodJour"


You may have seen the TV show Holmes on Homes. The lead joker
knows enough about construction to be dangerous. He purports to be
some sort of super contractor with extensive knowledge of
construction, yet makes plenty of mistakes of his own, confuses
terminology (hallmark of someone who read a book without
understanding it) and makes comments that are inane.

"We don't want to build to the minimum code. We want to build to
the medium code or even the maximum code." WTF? There is only one
code. It is the minimum acceptable construction. Referencing
different codes is at best misleading. Having a supposed expert
spouting this stuff is inexcusable.


Maybe he meant "over-engineer" although I'm unsure how
over-engineering a house would affect a house's design, cost or
resale value. I've watched his show only a few times, but noticed
that, at the end of it, when the owners would come back and see the
change, there'd be the same "cheesy, lame and eerily soothing"
background music.

No such thing as over-engineered. If a structure is stronger than it
needs to be, then it wasn't engineered ... by definition.


Explain that term *needs to be*.

The building codes define pretty thoroughly what loads a structure of
a given type, for a given purpose, in a given part of the country need
to bear. A properly engineered structure will meet all of these
conditions, but not much more. As someone said long ago, engineering
is making something strong enough, but no stronger. Anything beyond
that is a waste of material. Obviously, things like serviceability
are considerations in addition to raw strength, but you get the
picture, right?

Anyone can build something 10X stronger than it needs to be. An
engineer's job is to balance strength against economics.


I keep thinking of the program I saw on the Discovery Channel about
tornadoes - they showed one neighborhood (no basements of course) where
every house had been flattened and the population was decimated - except
for one guy and his family; he'd had a reinforced shelter installed in
the center of the house, and that shelter was the only thing left
standing, and he and his family were the only people left without some
sort of injury.

So, if something is "overengineered", but is left unscathed, or at least
with only minimal damage, when that supposedly 100-year storm hits, is
it actually over-engineered, or is it correctly engineered?

It seems to me that the "minimum code" is just that. Minimum.
Unfortunately, nature doesn't pay much attention to statistics, and
storms are tending to get stronger, not weaker. So personally, I'd
prefer to pay more for something that is "over-engineered", and did pay
extra for things like Tech-Shield and Tyvek.

Most people - well, most people just hink about what's cheap today, not
about what will cost less over a few years or even what will be safer if
a severe storm hits.

What it all comes down to is how much someone wants to pay up-front
versus what they might save over the long term. Most poeple can't see
past next week, when it comes to money. So, most houses (since most are
development houses) are intended to give people "what they want".

Every year, without fail, we see news reports about "sufficiently
engineered" homes destroyed by natural events that are *known* to have
occured in their given areas, hence are a known risk. On average, those
non-average conditions are called "statistically insignificant", and
engineers are called upon to do their calcualtions and plans accordingly
- they're given a certain set of parameters and a certain budget, and
told to stay within those, regardless of whether or not they might think
it unwise to stay only withing the minimum/code. So, IMO, much of what
gets called "overengineering" is actually "engineered to withstand a
wider range of conditions than those which occur on average".