On 8 Oct 2004 08:07:20 -0700, (Raymond
Yeung) wrote:

There's a misconception the very few houses cost half to one
million. But the property might. As I used to tell people in Palo
Alto, no, youdidn't pay $600,000 for this house; you paid about
$120,000 for the house and about $480,000 for the ground it's
sitting on. That's why people are so willing to buy a really cute
house and lot for $500,000 and then tear the house down and build
a new one.


Okay, I suppose that's the good news. If the house is totaled, it'd
cost about $120,000 to rebuild? And I suppose such a devastating
event would have little impact to subsequent resale value of the
property? I'd suppose people might be hesitant in buying a land upon
which a house had previously been shaken down.

After the flood in palo Alto I saw no sign of a drop in property
values.

You can't really post-tension a wooden structure. post-tenisionig
is usually done by embedding reinforcing bars in concrete and
then tightenign giant nuts at the ends after the concrete sets.


So is there any new benefit the P/T method to the consumers like us? Or
is it just marketing hype (they think P/T is a cute term that grabs
attention)?

If you are buying a masonry structure it might be helpful.
Basically, masonry is very strong in compression but very weak in
tension, so you find a way to put the masonry under enough
compression that a typical shaking event won't be sufficint to
overcome the pre-tensioning and allow the masonry to go in to
tensile mode.



************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *