Beach Front Homes

Building a beach front home offers a few extra challenges — such as wind, water, erosion, flying debris and corrosion. A Monolithic Dome home successfully meets each of these challenges.

Wind

A category five hurricane, like hurricane Andrew, is as bad as a hurricane gets. Fortunately, only a few ever reach a category 5 intensity with sustained wind speeds up to 150 miles per hour. Such a wind pushes with a force of 100 pounds per square foot (psf). That’s a lot of pressure! Most homes are designed for 50 psf — about equal to the force of a 100 mph wind, but not 150 mph.

View From Outside

A Monolithic Dome home easily withstands winds of 150 mph: 1. The shape of the Dome passes the wind around the home, thus eliminating any serious pressure build up. 2. The strength of the Dome exceeds that of the wind. So, the hurricane wind by itself means nothing to a Monolithic Dome. Unfortunately, hurricanes often have twisters or tornadoes within or around them.

A tornado is much more destructive and can have wind speeds up to 300 mph, exerting a force up to 400 psf. Most conventional buildings cannot withstand a force of 400 psf.

Fortunately, if you can call it fortunate, tornadoes usually do not cover a broad front. Compared to hurricanes, tornadoes generally cover a small area. However, if that small area includes your home, the much greater pressure can cause far greater damage.

Under the Home

When a tornado hits a home, several things can happen: The wind can exert a pressure up to 400 psf. That’s twice the pressure a loaded semi-truck and trailer exert sitting on the ground. That much pressure can push a building side ways and even topple it!

As a tornado travels over a structure, a depressurization occurs. That depressurization often “sucks the roof off the house.”

Monolithic Dome homes can withstand 400 psf pressure and severe depressurization. How do we know this?

We often build Monolithic Domes for use underground — some at depths of 30 feet. There can be over 2,000 psf of force pushing against a buried dome. And unlike a tornado where the shape of the dome reduces the overall stress of the wind pressure, the buried dome is always under full load. So if a dome can withstand a constant 2,000 psf force, it can easily withstand 400 psf.

Front Porch

Erosion, Moving Water and Debris

A home located where massive erosion occurs probably can be protected only with a substantial seawall, built to contain the erosion.

Even when massive erosion is not a problem, the destructive force of moving water can threaten a beach front home. Water has more mass than wind; therefore, water pushes with more force than wind. If storm surge is a possibility, the home must be able to resist the combined push of wind and water and flying debris — which could include everything from shingles to automobiles.

The very process used in constructing a Monolithic Dome beach front home makes it a moving-water survivor:

The process begins with pilings driven in a circle under the perimeter of a Monolithic Dome. These pilings are connected with a circular concrete pile cap which becomes the foundation ring beam.

This means that a circle of concrete is built attached to the top of each of the pilings. The pilings act as teeth in the ground and keep the building from sliding. The pile cap attaches the dome to the teeth.

From the pile cap, we run rebar into the floor; this prevents moving water from lifting or moving the floor. We then build the dome on top of this pile cap/foundation, adding hundreds of tons of weight to hold the pile cap / foundation down. Thus, the weight of the dome setting on the pile cap / foundation, and the pile cap attached to the teeth keep the entire structure from traveling. So the real key is the weight of the Monolithic Dome, plus its strength and ability to stay in one piece during high winds and storm surge.

The lower section of a Monolithic Dome beach front home has very large openings. Storm surge flows through these openings and under the main part of the house, leaving it undamaged. These openings can be closed with screens or break-a-way walls; the walls will breakaway from the building during heavy storm surge. Obviously, it’s better to lose a relatively inexpensive breakaway wall or replaceable screen than to lose the structure.

In normal weather conditions, this ground floor of a Monolithic Dome provides excellent automobile parking and storage space. However, during times of storm surge these vehicles should be moved to higher ground or they might get flooded.

The beach front Monolithic Dome is built with its main floor suspended from the dome. We recommend the level of the floor be above the highest expected water level. This has huge advantages: It eliminates posts that can be knocked out by storm surge from underneath the floor. It also adds more weight to the Dome perimeter, hence pile cap, which helps hold it in place.

For beach front housing, it’s generally better to build a single Dome and concentrate the weight to resist any movement from storm surge. This is particularly true in areas where storm surge can hit the building. In other areas, it absolutely doesn’t matter and you can build whatever you want.

Windows and doors of a beach front property should have shutters. Roll-down shutters generally are adequate. Monolithic Dome designs include those. Obviously, major debris can destroy shutters and windows — but never the Monolithic Dome.

Corrosion

Monolithic Dome uses an Airform and urethane foam immune to corrosion. The rebar (reinforcement steel) properly placed is protected from corrosion by the concrete. Properly mixed concrete is very resilient against corrosion, and proper coatings to the exposed concrete can also add protection.

The Monolithic Dome is ideal for beach front property. It cannot be burned or blown away and its life expectancy is measured in centuries.

Wind

Erosion, Moving Water and Debris

Corrosion

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