ruminations about architecture and design

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

vertical forces in buildings

This is to serve as a reminder to myself about the importance of securing structures to their foundations. It used to be common practice to let gravity take care of this, and gravity, despite its weakness relative to the other universal forces, has a good track record for reliability.
But, rare events like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods can overwhelm gravity. I doubt that foundation bolts would have saved this house, but they would have prevented it from overturning.

For the record, I live in a house that is not bolted to its foundation.

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