RB wrote:
Went though Ivan and now Dennis without significant house damage.
However, other hurricanes will most likely be along. And, they seem
to like where I am on the Gulf Coast.

Got a concern I'd like your opinion on. I believe losing your house
roof during the storm peak would be a major casualty. This
possiblity bothers me a lot. So, I started trying to think of
simple and practical ways to minimize the likeliehood of this
happening. You've got a miserable time ahead of you if your roof
goes. This and a big, heavy tree falling on the house are the two
big structural casualties I see associated with these hurricanes.

One idea is to throw ropes up and across the roof at several points,
and cinch them down to opposing auger ground anchors like mobile
homes use. These anchors are not too intrusive or obvious, and the
ropes can be stowed except for use during storm times. Three or four
ropes would literally tie your roof down, except for where the ropes
aren't. However, I think the roof is interlocked enough the three or
four ropes across it might fairly well hold the whole thing on, if it
was attempting to rip off from wind blast.

The question being: is this approach likely to give your roof the
edge in staying down when it might otherwise blow off? In other
words, even though the rope approach might be a marginal thing, could
it be that the marginal downward holding force might just be enough
to make the difference between keeping and loosing the roof in some
situations?

We know that under certain conditions, the roof can blow off no
matter what we do. But, I'm just wondering if there's enough of an
edge to this idea to make it worthwhile doing? Probably $100 for a
coil of manila rope and some ground anchors would be the project cost.

I guess my concern is that we might get a stronger storm than Ivan
was, and/or a very slow moving one which would have lots of time to
progressively weaken the roof attachments.

Get a trusted local contractor to take a look at your current
construction and make recommendations to bring it up to current code.
Following the standard practice (I believe that means adding metal brackets
inside that help hold each rafter to the side walls) is by far the best
solution.


--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit