Weather Radar

   / Weather Radar #1  

Xfaxman

Super Star Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2013
Messages
12,895
Location
Guthrie, OK
Tractor
Toolcat 5610 G - Bobcat V417 - TORO+Loader
The forecast was for a 100% chance of rain for central Oklahoma.
They got it right: NextGen Live Radar

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   / Weather Radar #3  
Were getting your left overs tomorrow afternoon.
 
   / Weather Radar #4  
The local WX radar says a second storm will hit our area on Sat. Supposedly not quite as much snow. Looks like it will be covering from Canada to southern CA.
 
   / Weather Radar #6  
   / Weather Radar #7  
Man to think of living where it's comforting to have a bunker in your basement. I kinda get it but still. Hmm wonder if that would work if a wild fire came through......
 
   / Weather Radar #8  
Man to think of living where it's comforting to have a bunker in your basement. I kinda get it but still. Hmm wonder if that would work if a wild fire came through......
I would want viewing windows from my bunker....
 
   / Weather Radar #9  
Man to think of living where it's comforting to have a bunker in your basement. I kinda get it but still. Hmm wonder if that would work if a wild fire came through......
Around here, houses built on slabs are considered sub-par, undesirable, and inferior. Crawl spaces are just a tad less undesirable. A well-built basement does a few things for you. First, it doubles your usable floor space with minimal cost. The frontline is about 4', so you have to dig down 4' for footers and concrete foundation walls. You might as well dig 8-10' at that point and pay for the additional 4-6' of concrete wall. That's the only additional cost.

You can finish it off. You can make storage areas. You can put all of your mechanicals down there. If you put in large enough beams, you can make full-span and have no posts in the middle. They make great home theaters and recreation rooms. Very quiet. Cool in the summer. Easy to heat in the winter if you have insulation on the exterior walls to keep the concrete walls isolated from the dirt. Very easy to wall off a corner and make a cold cellar. Or a wine cellar! Also very easy to wall off a corner with concrete and put reinforced concrete roof on it for a storm shelter.

My father built the house I grew up in. It had TWO basements. One had 2 bedrooms and a study with window egress in case of fire. The other was a WWII era bomb shelter. Reinforced concrete ceiling. Provisions for water well and air filter. Spent many a stormy night in that bunker. You could not hear what was going on outside. Come up after the storm to see the carnage.

Walkout basements are also very popular.

A lot of people have bad experiences with damp, dank basements, mold, mildew, etc. So I can't blame them for that. Many areas are not conducive to having a basement. I understand that as well. However, I would never live in a house without a basement. ;)
 
   / Weather Radar #10  
As for a wildfire...

Most basement roofs are the wooden floor of the main level above it. If you're in the basement and the house goes, you go too. No escaping that.

I've seen plenty of video and photo evidence of the fire destruction out west (similar to bad house fire here). The entire house burns and everything falls into the basement/crawl space.

It's a death trap in a fire. That's why you can't have legal living space in a basement without external egress windows or stairs other than the one staircase coming down from the main level. You can't advertise a house with 4 bedrooms if one or more of the bedrooms is in a basement without egress.

Fortunately, egress windows/stairs are very easy to install in new construction, and also very easy to retrofit in old construction basements. They make pre-cast units or you can form and pour your own.

But my main concern with trying to ride out a wildfire in a basement, even a solid concrete bunker, would be lack of air. You'd probably get asphyxiated by the smoke, and, depending on the length of the fire, maybe the heat?

The WWII bunkers had plans for external air vents and a hand crank unit that pulled the air through a series of dry oil filters. That would trap any radioactive particles in the oil filter medium so you wouldn't breath them in. I'd imagine you could do something similar for fire smoke.

However, if there's a wildfire, and you have advanced notice, I'd just get the heck out. Not worth risking it in an untried system.
 
 
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