One word: mold.
You usually take the house down to the studs, disinfect, rinse, dry, and start over. It is not for the faint of heart.
All the best,
BG
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Tampa FL area forum members- thoughts and prayers
- Thread starter nyprepper
- Start date
One word: mold.
You usually take the house down to the studs, disinfect, rinse, dry, and start over. It is not for the faint of heart.
All the best,
BG
Thanks.
I just have a relative that came home to find their basement flooded from a pinhole leak in a pipe over a long weekend. The pictures I saw look a lot like the link you posted. Everything from the 3 feet down in their basement had water damage. Furniture, furnace, cabinets, carpet, workbenches, etc. This was from a few inches of water of fresh water. Can't image what feet of sea water would do.
The good thing was they were able to get someone out on a Friday night at 10 PM to get everything secured. I gathered this is not an uncommon occurrence in the Midwest where they are located. They said the people that came out were well organized. I hope the people impacted by this storm have similar support.
Sorry about your relative's leak. Small leaks can cause a lot of damage.
I am sure that there groups that can do it in Florida; this isn't their first hurricane. It is a question of scale, and who can afford to start now. If someone needs work, is strong, and is meticulous, they will be employed for years.
After Katrina, homes were sitting for months to years, and the longer things sit wet or damp, the worse the damage is.
This is the downside to living in hurricane areas, and low lying areas that can be flooded from storm surge. If the climate is getting more variable, there will be more extreme events, causing flooding in new areas. At some point, the cost effective and reasonable thing is to relocate people. Practically, you can't build storm levees to cover everything. I understand that people want to stay where they have lived/own land, but at the same time, if there are barrier islands, brush and forests above the hide tide line, it greatly slows the advance of storm surges, and limits the damage. Same idea along rivers; humans have moved on to flood plains, which are probably best left for crop lands, forest and open space, rather than homes.
All the best,
BG
Need more communities to plan more like this. Easier in new areas/rebuilds/new homes/communities. Using streets to channel/funnel water sounds like a pretty good idea assuming they can funnel it to a drop off location:
www.cnn.com
This 100% solar community endured Hurricane Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage | CNN
Climate resiliency was built into the fabric of Babcock Ranch with stronger storms in mind, and Hurricane Ian was a major test.
www.cnn.com
wow, it can be doneNeed more communities to plan more like this. Easier in new areas/rebuilds/new homes/communities. Using streets to channel/funnel water sounds like a pretty good idea assuming they can funnel it to a drop off location:
This 100% solar community endured Hurricane Ian with no loss of power and minimal damage | CNN
Climate resiliency was built into the fabric of Babcock Ranch with stronger storms in mind, and Hurricane Ian was a major test.
If by "it", you refer to the solar production, then you already knew it could be done--your house produces annually more electricity than you use.
Babcock Ranch Fact Sheet
According to the fact sheet, the development has 74MW of solar capacity, and 10MW/40MWh of battery. Night time and or cloudy day usage is covered by conventional fossil fuel production.
The CNN story glosses over what we Californians already know: powering the grid with renewables in addition to hydro, nuclear, etc without using significant fossil fuel production will require a very large investment in some kind of storage. To cover the continental USA, we'll need significant improvement to transmission lines.
I think the key blurb from the article to me was this quote:
"The streets in this meticulously planned neighborhood were designed to flood so houses don’t. Native landscaping along roads helps control storm water. Power and internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage."
It's not just solar/storage, but the "other" stuff that's not obvious (at least not to a casual reader). Burying lines is sorta obvious (why we don't get much power outages in my area, all underground). Doing the other stuff is much much harder. It's almost like we know there will be wildfires in California, but how can we make it so stuff doesn't burn or, doesn't burn specifically where we don't want it to burn?
It'd be cool if someone who lived there or has more info go over how one routes water down major roads, but stuff like that sounds awesome to me. We know there will be another massive storm within the next 3 years I think. Maybe in a few months.
Storm Ready blurb
I can't recall seeing a planned development on substantially level ground that has streets higher than the houses. I think streets generally carry excess water. As the linked PDF states, they avoided the storm surge problem by building on the highest available ground, which is clearly a win.
I can't recall seeing a planned development on substantially level ground that has streets higher than the houses. I think streets generally carry excess water. As the linked PDF states, they avoided the storm surge problem by building on the highest available ground, which is clearly a win.
I have seen them. Usually caused by the developer just putting road base on top of the grade, rather than cutting down and re,o ing the existing soils. To me, it is a red flag for poor construction work.
The whole Babcock ranch development seems quite well thought out and to have survived a direct hit from a nearly category five storm is truly impressive.
Thanks for sharing it!
All the best,
BG
Yep. I also think you need more than just keeping the streets lower than the houses. You need the streets, gutter, canals, etc. designed to rapidly drain large volumes of water to areas where it can disperse without causing damage to homes and other structures. I noticed that even a desert area like Scottsdale and some other nearby areas have large canals and barriers to do this because of their monsoon season.
Other cities have done it. Milwaukee bored/excavated a some deep water storage structures to get rainfall off the streets and out of the sewage system to not overload the sewage system in times of heavy rain.
I think that it is about being proactive, and planning for resiliency.
All the best,
BG
I think that it is about being proactive, and planning for resiliency.
All the best,
BG
Pdubs
Ingesting large quantities of LSD
No need for internet or cell service to charge.
We lost power for 3 days from the grid and never would have known it if we didn't have a pool. (it's not connected to the PW's) The switch was so fast, we never lost internet and didn't notice the lights even blink. The walls would get down to between 10-30% by morning and be 100% by 3arly afternoon.
We have 2 PW's and 44 panels. Best decision I've ever made.
charlesj
Active Member
How did you get such bright green lights on your batteries.
I want more panels but can't have it.
Pdubs
Ingesting large quantities of LSD
Funny. I didn’t know they glowed like a space alien. They’re right outside the guest bath and the first night they were installed, I went into that bathroom. As I was standing at the toilet, there was a bright green glow coming from outside. Freaked me out.How did you get such bright green lights on your batteries.
I want more panels but can't have it.
Finished, washed and went outside to see wtf was going on.
And there they were, in all their glory.
Personally, I would love to be able to turn down the brightness or turn them off.
I have plans for black electrical tape.
I have plans for black electrical tape.
Yeah, I think the author of the article was making an over-simplified statement, or misinterpreted. The streets in the development don't look substantively lower than the homes than in most flat neighborhoods. As you say, the streets just funnel water to storm drains or canals (I think I see a manhole cover in one photo, so there are probably storm gutters to drain and carry off excess surface water from the street. But by "streets designed to flood", there are things above and beyond, like having plants and softscape to help soak up runoff, respecting and maintaining the natural topography in addition to building on high group, additional retention areas to store the collected rainwater, etc.
I will say though, having had the fortune or misfortune to experience two different flash floods in two different suburban neighborhoods - in both cases it wasn't the lack of storm drains/canals/creeks per se, but rather excess debris flows (tree branches, rocks, etc) from the heavy storm getting piled up at bridges crossing over canal or creek, that ultimately caused overflow onto the surface streets. Hence some localized flash flooding in both cases as the water found other paths to low ground, where some streets were flooded, and a few blocks away were totally dry. In one, the water actually came UP to the streets through the storm drains, since the nearby creek (natural creek was part of the storm mitigation) was backed up. In the other, the backed-up canal caused the water to divert down the center of the street, 3' below house level but eventually got above the doorsteps. I was never near fast-moving water to worry about life and limb, but the backed-up floodwaters caused significant property damage in both cases.
Pdubs
Ingesting large quantities of LSD
I find them oddly soothing. Like my alien friends have come back to take me home soothing.
Similar threads
