Storm Shelters are in the News

[gfretwell]

These are above grade

[krw]

Mohave desert? Middle of Lake Superior?

I've never seen areas with no drainage, no. ...even in the middle of OK, they have drainage ditches. You're just showing your cluelessness.

You clearly haven't understood anything I've said. If you're not illiterate, try actually reading before posting. Moron.

[gfretwell]

OK you win, you are smarter than everyone in Oklahoma. They should all dig a basement because you say it is OK.

Rock on dude.,

[clare]

stainless-steel sheating is used.

stainless-steel sheating would be okay.

both bolted-together designs should hold together in high wind

The shipping containers I've seen would stop the 2X4 dead in it's tracks. They are far from "sheet metal". Might need more than 4 ft of posts, depends how much concrete is on the bottom.

[clare]

I've seen them after going through a tornado - dented but not punctured. Ontario tornado - not Oki. Tipped but not thrown.

2mm Corten steel is pretty tough stuff

[gfretwell]

We are talking about F-4s and the F-5 the other day, not those dust devils they call a tornado up north. These things are monsters that scare the hell out of me and I am a 3 time hurricane survivor.

A 200 MPH 2x4 will punch through 14 gauge mild steel but I think containers are 16 gauge. I have seen fork lift operators poke a hole in one by accident. They are telling us when you get up around 160-170 MPH the 2x4 will poke a hole in an un reinforced block wall.

I like the idea of the FEMA reinforced block bunker that is covered with a dirt berm that another poster mentioned. That is pretty much the way they built forts in the old days. If you had an "L" shaped entry way to stop the door from getting a direct hit, I would go there for anything but a nuclear blast.

Maybe if you piled dirt up against the sides of your container, you would have something. I would pour the floor about 6-8" deep in concrete to anchor it along with a poured footing around the perimeter that had J bolts in it..

[clare]

They are 2mm Corten. That's 0.078 inches, which is 14 guage. Corten is a fine grain high strength (relatively) steel.

Un re-enforced concrete is brittle and will not deform, so it punctures. As for "dustdevil" tornados, I've seen wheat straw embedded in white cedar hydro poles and pink fiberglass insulation forced into concrete brick and angelstone to a depth of over half an inch. Break the grey brick and it is pink all along the edge - closer to an inch than half an inch. On the house I was cleaning up around that day the garage (brick over 2X6 frame) had totally dissapeared, the pickup beside it was found rolled up in a ball on a rockpile almost a mile away, and the car basically didn't have a scratch on it. Only part of one wall (brick fireplace) was left standing.

In another local one, a concrete slab silo half full of silage was shifted about 18 inches off it's base.

Some of the containers are double wall - 2mm Corten outer and 1.6mm corten inside. That's 14Ga outside and 16ga inside.

On a concrete slab with steel bars bolting the corner tie-down holes to the slab would work pretty well, as long as the slab was thick enough - perimeter footings a few feet down - and possibly a few 4 foot deep sonotube pilings tied in with rebar.

I've seen 20 footers bolted to 4 12" sonotube piles. Those "twist in" foundation stabilizer piles would do the job in Oki clay.

[krw]

Smarter than you, obviously. At least I can read.

You really are an idiot.