cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Hurricane is Coming There is a hurricane headed towards us. It is supposed to make landfall sometime tomorrow night. I expect that this weekend will be a write-off in terms of doing anything outdoors. Fortunately, my house is situated in such a way that serious flooding is unlikely. There's a long downward slope behind my house. The crest of the slope is the spot where I like to sit behind tall grass to hunt deer and sometimes pass-shoot geese. That crest is perhaps 18 inches of elevation higher than the ground under my house, representing the maximum conceivable level of flooding. I *think* that is high enough that the water can not get into the actual living area but I'm not 100% sure. Even if the water did get high enough to enter the house, we'd be fine in the workshop in an emergency. This is where I'm very glad that I built the thing essentially up on 4 foot stilts. Plus I mostly finished the ladder/stairs last weekend and it's easy enough to climb up into the attic. In fact, Ida and I spent Sunday night up there and we were quite comfortable. The pier foundation has not been enclosed yet, so water could rush right through there without knocking the house down or carrying it away. I think that perhaps I won't ever enclose it after all. It's a good safety feature. High winds shouldn't be a big problem for us. We are about 100 miles from the coast, meaning that even if the hurricane comes ashore as a Cat. 2 or 3 and makes a beeline for us, it will have weakened to a tropical storm. I did a good job of framing the gable ends of the roof on the workshop. Some would say that it is overbuilt. Aside from having to use lighter plywood than I'd prefer. I used probably 30% more nails than most people would. I also put an extra 10d nail at the outside wall part of the 'birdsmouth' on every rafter, fastening the end of the rafter to the side of the top plate of the wall, through the wall's sheathing. Usually builders don't put any sort of fastener there. I think it could make the difference between whether the roof gets pulled off by a hurricane force wind or not. The thing that scares the shit out of me is tornados. We have no place to go. No basement. No room without windows. The actual winds from the hurricane will only be around 60 mph at the most once the storm gets here. But tornados could be spawned off of the storm. I have work to do when I get home today. I need to set up the workshop as emergency shelter with at least 10 gallons of drinking water, water purification tablet, hand-cranked radio, sleeping bags, food, canisters of propane (for the camp stove), etc. Would lifejackets be crazy? Tarps and roofing materials are ready to go to patch any breaches in the roof. Some books and toys for the kids. Dog food. Rifle and ammunition for emergency signalling (6 shots in an even succession means 'help'). This is mostly stuff that we already have. I just need to dig it all out and put it in one place. 11:03 a.m. - 2008-09-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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