http://www.pensacolabeachliving.com/pages/3C6W2519.htm
http://www.pensacolabeachliving.com/pages/3C6W2521.htm

The house in the far left of those frames is my family's. Looks to still be there. It's crazy how some houses are just gone, even some that were up on pilings. Man i wish they'd have used a higher res camera.

Can you even get house insurance in an exposed place like that ?

Yeap. But from what little i know of what happened with Andrew, the insurance didn't cover anywhere near the total cost of rebuilding. It's also amazing that that little slice of property is worth close to $2 Million, if not more.

People in the UK who get a small flood every few years are starting to have trouble getting insurance. I can't imagine what a UK insurance company would say if you presented them with a wooden house, on stilts, on sand in a huricane prone area

One last update. Finally found a clear shot of the house:

http://www.pensacolabeachliving.com/pages/3C6W2923.htm

Its on the bottom left. Looks like those storm shutters did the job well! Roof is in tact too. Phew.

Check out the slabs under the houses... there's quite a few feet of sand undermined beneath them.

I was just looking at that... probably missing shingles. It's not a skylight. I wonder if the Pelican weather vane is still up there... hard to tell! heh. The bottom floor where the storage area and Fridge were washed out as designed, which is pretty cool I guess. I was sort of hoping it'd all be gone so we could build a Dome Home! That one is about a quarter mile down the beach from our house ... you can see it in this shot. The owners actually rode out the hurricane in it. Crazy.

[edit] oh, and i should correct what i said before. The house is on Pensacola Beach on Santa Rosa Island, it's not in Gulf Breeze, which is across the bay. [/edit]

Shadow?

Quote:
Yeap. But from what little i know of what happened with Andrew, the insurance didn't cover anywhere near the total cost of rebuilding. It's also amazing that that little slice of property is worth close to $2 Million, if not more.

People in the UK who get a small flood every few years are starting to have trouble getting insurance. I can't imagine what a UK insurance company would say if you presented them with a wooden house, on stilts, on sand in a huricane prone area

When It comes to insurance, just remember, it's only the improvements that are being insured. I'd guess that 2/3 to 3/4 of the $2M value, is for the sand.

The dome home. Is that built sort of like a Planet of the Apes house? Concrete shell?

Hehe, not my car, I drive a mustang (It's the wife with the Expedition). But that's a LOT of sand to get moved around. As far as living on the water being crazy, it's very very rare that a hurricane that powerful passes over your home. As to a house being on pilings, those typically fare better than those built flat on the ground. When the sand under them is eroded, a piling house is fine, whereas a flat house crumbles. Not to mention much of the damage seen is from storm surge. Being on stilts makes it less likely that a storm surge is high enough to cause serious damage. As far as insurance goes, every area of our country has it's problems. In the SE, we get hurricanes, in the midwest, tornadoes. On the west coast, earthquakes, mudslides and forest fires, The NE is just too F'ing cold.

Keep in mind that some of the buildings in Pensacola that got destroyed were 150+ years old. To be around that long they must have been pretty good odds.

The Dome Home is pretty nifty (if a bit ugly). It's designed to withstand winds of up to 200 MPH. Wow. Some of it is made from steel reinforced concrete built in curves rather than straight walls. Some of it is built with the intention of breaking away in the event of a hurricane. Kindof the same idea as japanese homes being made of paper. If it get's destroyed every couple of years, make it out of something cheap and easily replaced.

All that being said, most of the homes built to the relatively new code were mostly unscathed. It was the older buildings that weren't so lucky. Also, I live in New Orleans, 10 feet below sea level. Between a large lake and the mouth of the mississippi river. When I lived uptown I was 2 blocks from the river. You literally had to look UP to see the ships passing. Guess what my flood insurance cost? ~$250 per year. Perhaps I shouldn't be so worried. The insurance companies aren't.

You may remember that one of the San Joaquin Delta Islands flooded recently. One bit of fallout is that a lot of farmers living on the islands have started building, new, really big houses. On top of man made hills.

A natural sandblasting.

I remember watching them build that dome home for the week i was at the beach last. They inflate a large dome "air bag" and blow concrete on it (or was it IN it... can't recall). Then they cut out the shapes you see afterward... pretty fascinating building process. I think it looks pretty amazing myself though the general consensus seems to dislike it.

It's one of those "so ugly it's cool) things. Looks like an alien from Batteries Not Included to me.

But this is snow!


The weather here hasn't been anything like elsewhere, but it was great yesterday to look up at the mountains and see the first snow of the year. Did the snow make it over to you Drakino? The ski resort just up the canyon from me got 8" The only downer is now my favorite bike trail is under snow