Storm-proofing home is cheaper than rebuilding
BY FRED GRIMM
Builders squealed like stuck pigs in 1994 when county commissions in Miami-Dade and Broward, stunned by devastating structural failures caused by Hurricane Andrew two years before, toughened the South Florida Building Code.
A dozen years later, their warnings retain a certain comic value.
Costs, they warned, would rise by $2,000 or $3,000 or $4,000 a house if builders had to add hurricane straps and shutters and reinforce trusses and strengthen footings and install windows that won't pop out in a major storm.
You can add so many things to a house that you can make it impossible for anybody to afford it.
For something that happens once in 35 years, you are charging the public a lot of money.
The guy who is struggling to buy a house is going to struggle a hell of a lot more.
The Builders Association of South Florida warned that window manufacturers might not want to bother with the new code. We're wondering how many window people are going to say `Forget Dade and Broward counties.'
Builders warned reporters inquiring about the new code that they were essentially writing the obituaries of the South Florida building boom. We'll have to shut down.
Some 700,000 new residents later, South Florida's housing boom seems to have survived the new building code. By 2006, a few thousand bucks to storm-proof a house, in an era when South Florida's frenzied real estate market has pushed the average price of a new home to $600,000, has come to look like chump change.
We're all betting that our $600,000 homes will soon make us millionaires. Such heady numbers have changed the perspective on the relative price of storm-proofing. They made costs associated with the hurricane straps and stormproof windows and steel-reinforced walls and double-strength trusses and a windowless bunker to wait out a storm -- all on display Wednesday at the Disaster Survival House in Deerfield Beach -- seem less worrisome than the cost of the master bedroom Jacuzzi.
Hiram Frank, who had provided the survival house with a whole-house propane-powered generator -- one of those quiet automatic machines that automatically kicks on when FPL kicks off -- predicted that in the new hurricane-aware era, these babies would become as ubiquitous as central air conditioners. He shrugged off the $25,000 price. ``People pay that much for their Corian kitchen counters.''
Max Mayfield, who attended the ceremonious opening of the demonstration house, with its cutaway walls and ceilings and mini wind-tunnel and posters and exhibits and flashing lights and computers, thought that the utter number of storms that hit Florida these last two seasons had made the costs of storm prep suddenly seem like a bargain.
The director of the National Hurricane Center who has spent other seasons trying to shake us out of hurricane oblivion, talked Wednesday of fielding panicky calls from homeowners this season. The stuff on display at the survival house seem like a cheap way to get rid of the storm worry gnawing at our guts.
John Knezevich, an Fort Lauderdale engineer specializing in home fortification, talked Wednesday about how a few thousand dollars invested in a house can bring exponential strengthening to trusses and roofs and windows. But he cautioned that tough codes and superior building materials weren't much good without good contractors.
Knezevich walked across the storm-strengthened room in the survival house and pointed out the tear-away frame around a storm-proof window. The installer had taken a shortcut and pushed the edge of drywall between the frame and the wall, compromising the window's holding power.
In storm protection, money isn't everything.
INSIDE: SINCE 1999, SURVIVAL HOUSE HAS EDUCATED PUBLIC ABOUT STORMS, 3B