Cheap storm shelter?

[MossRoad]

Watch this video from a couple days ago. About 45-50 seconds into it, it gets real scary. Watch it a few times. That's the wall of a house or barn coming into the road. That seems bad enough.... then watch how fast that wall leaves. Insane. I'm going underground.

 

[travlitt]

Why not buy a shipping container,,cheap ,steel ,secure

Not a good idea, it will cave in. Ask me how I know.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...m-concrete-floor-quonset-shop.html?highlight=

 

[EddieWalker]

Not in storm country here, and have always wondered why no one simply puts it in the master bedroom and sleeps in it?

No need to listen for storm warnings, or fight your way to the shelter, or go outside in dark and rain...

Obviously it would need to be big enough, but posts in this thread suggest they often are.

The window would have to have a more then just a heavy duty shutter on it. I know that the door for those rooms is on the interior of the house and swings in so that if the house falls down on the room, you can still open the door. Whatever went on the window would have to be substantial.

The closet that I mentioned is huge, but it's not wide. The span at it's widest is probably only 8 feet. The bigger the span for the ceiling, the more effort it is going to be to create it. While in this particular case, money isn't a concern, I don't think the average homeowner could afford to do build a bedroom that was safe from tornadoes big enough for a bedroom set.

 

[prichard]

I was working on a water plant less than 1/2 mile from this one when it went through. I never knew it. I was on the opposite side of the building watching the weather. The project engineer showed up with pictures, he was walking across the parking lot at the time.

Unknown to me everyone else took shelter in the bowels of the plant, lots of concrete in those areas. It just now occurred to me that had the tornado actually his the plant those people could have very easily drowned.

 

[dmccarty]

Not in storm country here, and have always wondered why no one simply puts it in the master bedroom and sleeps in it?

No need to listen for storm warnings, or fight your way to the shelter, or go outside in dark and rain...

Obviously it would need to be big enough, but posts in this thread suggest they often are.

The problem is the building code. Per the code, a bedroom needs to have a door to get in and out, duh, and at least one window of a given size so people can escape from the window. For a storm shelter the window and doors will have to be strong enough to survive a tornado. For a door, this is not impossible but I don't know how a window, even with storm shutters, will survive a decent sized tornado, say F3 and above.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

.... Also the builder quoted $10K extra to build a 10x10 room under the patio of reinforced concrete.
We got the steel storm shelter installed for $4000 and the state reimbursed us $1500 (program now discontinued) so it was much cheaper to mount it in the garage space in front of the mandoor. ...

Our problem with an indoor shelter is that we would have had to increase the foot print of the house by at least one square foot in both dimensions. That extra space was the real price increase. The price of just the structure was no big deal but adding the space FOR the structure was the cost killer.

We do not have a garage though we badly need one. The plan was to add on a garage but life has prevented that from happening. We have a garage plan with a storm shelter built in but alas it is a plan only.

The house is on a slope and there is a good five foot height difference between one side of the house and the other. We thought about berming into the hill, but in the end, decided that was not what we wanted to do. It had some big advantages for a storm shelter though...

Later,
dan

 

[davrow]

The problem is the building code. <snip>
Later,
Dan

Eddie and Dan, thanks for your responses. I wasn't picturing making the bedroom safe, simply including a saferoom inside the bedroom just large enough for a bed. No windows, and the bedroom itself would meet code. It would simply be a matter of choice to sleep inside or outside of the saferoom.

Would take up a lot of space, but most houses these days seem to have too large of master bedrooms anyway.

 

[RSKY]

There used to be a show on cable called Redneck Rocket Scientist or something like that. They actually build a tornado proof outhouse and used an air cannon to launch 8' two by fours at over 120mph at it to see if it would stand up. It did. It was made of steel reinforced concrete blocks with concrete poured in them.

 

[MossRoad]

Anyone else see this picture this week? That poor kid was home alone and as I recall from the story, he was on the phone with one of his parents, who told him to go to the center of the house to the bathroom with no windows. He lived. Holy cow! Ain't nothing left but two walls and the toilet. Man!

 

[Soundguy]

Not a good idea, it will cave in. Ask me how I know.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/...m-concrete-floor-quonset-shop.html?highlight=

That's easy, just case it, dont direct bury it.