The 2004 hurricane season challenges
coastal building codes
Hurricane Ivan devastated older homes in Pensacola built before
enactment of the Florida Building Code. The hurricanes of 2004
— Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne — tore across
Florida, resulting in more than $22 billion in projected losses,
making it the most expensive storm season in U.S.
history.
As a hurricane wind engineer, Tim Reinhold picked through 200 homes
damaged by Charley, Frances, or Ivan. Among the newer ones, he
discovered missing soffits and blown-off roof tiles but few total
losses.
"You can definitely see a difference between the performance of
newer and older buildings," noted Reinhold, vice president for
engineering at the insurance-industry-backed Institute for Business
& Home Safety (IBHS) in Tampa.
In early October, Floridians were still mopping up from the four
hurricanes of the season — the last of which, Jeanne,
barreled ashore north of West Palm Beach on September 26th. But
insurers and home builders, traditionally on opposite ends of the
building code debate, agreed Florida's 2002 building code
requirements largely succeeded in helping new homes survive the
season's back-to-back storms.
Consensus ended there, however. Insurers hoped to leverage the
Insurance Information Institute's projected $22 billion in losses
to push through measures intended in part to strengthen the Florida
Building Code's protections against damage to homes' interiors and
contents. Builders' groups argued insurers were overreaching, and
stressed a more cautious approach.
"There is not a whole lot of evidence right now that additional
code strengthening is needed," said Jack Glenn, director of
technical services for the Tallahassee-based Florida Home Builders
Association.
CODE REPORT CARD
This is the most historic hurricane year since Hurricane Andrew hit
in 1992. That storm's inflation-adjusted $20 billion path of
devastation prompted Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in 1994 to
adopt what remain the nation's most stringent hurricane codes. A
year later, Hurricane Opal's $3 billion slam to the Florida
Panhandle convinced many lawmakers that another Andrew could strike
anywhere, sparking discussions that culminated in the Florida
Building Code, which went into effect on March 1, 2002. The
key provision requires contractors to reinforce walls, roofs, and
openings to withstand wind speeds and flying debris based on
predicted hurricane intensity where the home is located. New homes
in Daytona Beach must hold up to 120-mph winds, while Key West
requires 150-mph-proof homes.
Officials at the IBHS and the Tallahassee-based Federal
Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH) praise the structural performance
of Florida Building Code-built homes. "It's clear to us that,
post-Hurricane Andrew, we've gotten much better at keeping the roof
on," said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, the alliance's president. But
IBHS officials noted that the homes often suffered serious internal
damage, and observed frequents failures involving:
Soffits. The alliance's investigations
near Punta Gorda after Hurricane Charley found repeated instances
of wind blowing out soffits and pushing rain into attics, where
soaked insulation collapsed ceilings, ruining interiors.
Ceramic roof tiles. Investigators said
that while hurricane-resistant shingles were an improvement, other
ceramic tiles often broke off, damaging not only homes but whole
neighborhoods. "You end up with a debris storm that is not just air
— it's air laced with tiles," said Scott Schiff, a professor
of civil engineering at Clemson University and director of the
university's Wind Load Test Facility. Chapman-Henderson noted that
screwed-down tiles performed better than those attached with
mortar.
Pool cages and lanais — those aluminum
structures protecting pools or shading verandas and patios —
were frequently toppled over or blown away.
CODE CHANGES TO COME?
Glenn acknowledged reports of failures of soffits and tiles, saying
they may indicate a need for code upgrades. But, he said, officials
also need to scrutinize enforcement. "A lot of people have
forgotten that over 40% of the damage in Andrew was attributed to
lack of code compliance, not lack of code," he said. As for
aluminum structures, he said the Florida Building Commission, which
maintains the Florida Building Code, had adopted rules
strengthening the structures just prior to the storms that will go
into effect with the code's next revision.
Perhaps more significant than any tweak, insurers said damage
reports back up their longtime advocacy for several overarching
changes. Chief among these: eliminating a provision that allows
contractors to meet wind requirements through "internal
pressurization," or building the structure strong enough to survive
window blowout. Insurers contend that without shutters or
impact-resistant glass, wind and rain ruin a home's interior and
contents, which one engineer estimated comprise two-thirds of a
home's value. Glenn countered that homes built under the state's
internal pressurization guidelines are 30% stronger than those with
shutters or impact-resistant glass, and such homes are also
cheaper. "Our position has always been that it ought to be the
consumer's choice," he said.
Each year, builders add only about 2% worth of new homes to
Florida's 7.6 million housing units — meaning more than 90%
of the state's homes were built before the 2002 code. That said,
with projected losses topping Andrew's damages, increased premiums
or canceled policies may force more and more homeowners to become
involved. Says engineer John Pistorino, whose Miami-based firm
helped shape Miami-Dade's code, "The public will demand better
construction because they can't rely on insurance companies to be
there anymore." — Aaron Hoover
Au Naturale
Today's coastal landscapers lean toward
native species
A century ago, wealthy vacationers who built resort homes on
Maine's Mount Desert Island favored formal terraced gardens cared
for by paid help. Today, second homeowners want yards that "look
like Maine," sending landscape architect Jennifer Booher picking
through blueberry fields in search of weathered granite boulders
and scouring nurseries for native paper birch and striped maple. Of
one native landscape for a house on a picturesque point denuded by
a careless builder, she boasts, "If you didn't know we had been
there, you couldn't tell anyone had been there."
Landscape architect, Jennifer Booher's goal for this Mount
Desert Island, Maine, home: "If you didn't know we had been there,
you couldn't tell anyone had been there.
Spurred by practical, regulatory, and aesthetic concerns, builders
and homeowners crowding the East Coast's last ocean views are also
bringing back its native coastal plants. Three climate zones south
of Maine, in Charleston, S.C., "a lot of people just want to have
nature up near their houses," says Mary Palmer Dargan, an
Atlanta-based landscape architect with frequent jobs there. Farther
south, Florida's 1,200 miles of coastline bloom with native plants.
Rules at WaterColor, a 499-acre resort and residential community in
the state's panhandle, forbid lawns and restrict plant choices to
yaupon holly, scrub oak, beach rosemary, and other natives.
Meanwhile, the phone rings daily at the 141-member Association of
Florida Native Nurseries (AFNN) as builders and homeowners from Key
West to Pensacola seek such natives as sea oats and seashore
paspalum. "We used to be mostly wholesale, but now we're 50-50,"
notes Sharon Dolan, co-owner of Maple Street Natives in Melbourne
on Florida's Space Coast. "A lot of homeowners are coming
around."
THE CALL OF THE NATIVES
Native plants require less care and grow better in sun-drenched,
sea-spray-soaked environments. They also use less water. That's
increasingly important to many coastal counties and state agencies.
Collier County, for example, home to fast-growing Naples on
Florida's west coast, insists that waterfront owners plant natives
exclusively.
The maturing environmental restoration industry also is spurring
large-scale native plantings. Florida-based EarthBalance, for
instance, specializes in restoring wetlands and environmentally
abused areas, such as old phosphate mines. Last year, in a nearly
$1 million contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, workers
completed a three-year project to "revegetate" 21 miles of newly
built sand dunes at North Carolina's North Myrtle Beach, planting
over one million sea oats, panic grass, and American beach grass
seedlings. EarthBalance, which grew 700,000 of the project's plants
in its native nursery and catalog business, also serves the private
sector. Three years ago the company turned to a palette of native
plants to landscape a golf course around a tidal creek. The golf
course's construction permit required some of the work "but it was
mostly driven by the desire to make the golf course look like it
had been there a long time," says Don Ross, president of
EarthBalance.
In sun-drenched, sea-spray-soaked Melbourne, Fla., native
species such as verbena, firebush, and Florida gamagrass (right)
require less care and grow better than conventional lawn grass
(left).
Indeed, enthusiasts maintain that changing aesthetics may be the
biggest force behind the interest in natives. Randy Harelson owns
the Gourd Garden and Curiosity Shop, a native plant nursery in
Seagrove Beach adjacent to the WaterColor resort and near the
environmentally themed St. Joe Corp.'s other large holdings. He
says one reason soaring demand has grown his business from a
one-man shop a decade ago to today's 10-employee operation and
two-acre nursery is that the region remains relatively pristine.
Newcomers, he says, "see the big old live oak trees and the beauty
of the native woods and even the scrub at the beach and they say,
‘That's what I want.' " — Aaron Hoover
Currents: ACQ Takes Its Toll
Builders continue to struggle with the corrosive effects of treated
woods, particularly in extreme exposure conditions. Having been
told by his local Simpson Strong-Tie rep that the company is no
longer recommending its ZMAX framing hardware for use in direct
contact with ACQ (Alkaline Copper Quat) lumber in Florida, builder
Cameron Bradford of Orlando-based Bradford Building Corp. has
resorted to using a bituminous membrane between the treated lumber
and framing connectors.
"I was looking at the about 44 post pads that we installed two
weeks ago, and they are already showing signs of corrosion,"
reported Bradford. "I'm going to pull the posts and wrap them with
that Vycor product that Grace makes."
Both Grace Construction Products and Simpson Strong-Tie offer
brochures addressing the issue, and Simpson Strong-Tie's latest
technical bulletin (www.strongtie.com/ftp/bulletins/T-PTBARRIER05.pdf)
outlines the practice of using barrier membranes such as Vycor Deck
Protector underneath framing hardware as a layer of protection from
the new treated woods.