Storm shelters?
 

In the thread about whether or not The Villages has become too big, there was some discussion about neighboring non-Villages neighborhoods. That morphed a bit into construction quality and specifically, block vs stick built.

That led me to thinking about hurricanes, tornadoes, invasions of the two-legged kind, etc. So, does anyone have or advise the installation of a storm shelter? Either a closet or a garage type? Link below for reference:

Storm Shelter Florida | Above Ground Or In Closet Tornado Safe Rooms

El Diablo Joe

The Villages is generally considered a 'shelter in place' location, knowing this we have chosen to use an indoor closet as a safe room for a tornado threat. When IRMA hit a few years ago, there were a couple of shelters opened for the people in the older historic area as these homes were not built to the current codes.

Hmmm, think I'd like a small garage one that will double as a semi-secure storage area.

our home inspector deemed the property as quality construction. we shelter in place here:popcorn:

I try not to worry about things I can do nothing about. I let my wife do that and employ selected hearing and or listening. A safe room? We've all seen those movies. I am not that big of a target to justify the expense. Tornado we have a newer home, if I recall the code is 150 mph winds. Should it go to 151 mph I will be looking for the stairs to my nonexistent basement.

Please explain what kind of the two- legged kind are going to invade us ??? Want to share ????

Please don't troll this into yet another politcal brouhaha. :ohdear:

Valid question for ambiguous post

A lot of people on here are either snarky or have selective memories. Just a few years back we had some tornadoes whipped through the villages and I believe they were 16 houses they were totally flattened. Not only that but a church that had just been built to the latest standards, was totally going. Now the odds of another tornado is pretty good actually as they tend to stay
In the same neighborhoods. Unless you have a shelter underground it's not going to help which closet you go into if there's a tornado bearing down on your house. I won't be worrying about tornadoes or floods or alien invasions too soon as I've had a great life and when you got to go you got to go, you got to go.

In February, 2007, a tornado whipped across Lady Lake. The Villages had just completed some new homes - - I think it was towards the Brownwood area but I could be wrong. Anyhow, most of them lost their roofs, along with other destruction. I am glad we listened to the advice to get a concrete block home. It is well worth the upgrade cost.

I understand your concern, though those who say you don’t need a safe room are right. You definitely don’t need a ready-to-use unit like those in the ad. If you have bought a lot but haven’t yet settled on the plans, you may be able to have a room “hardened” during construction for use during a hurricane or tornado, should one occur. If your house is going to be made with concrete block, choose a room with no window next to an outside block wall and have the entire room blocked in except for the door, which should have a heavy-duty steel frame bolted or pinned into the block. Unlike most of the block laid here, there should be plenty of rebar tied into the slab. (So this has to be planned for before the slab is poured.) Also, all the blocks with rebar have to be filled with concrete. A double 8” top plate would be installed at the top that is bolted into that concrete like the bolts used for attaching a stick-built wall to a slab. Doubled 2x6” lumber every 12” would be attached to the top plate with heavy-duty Simpson hurricane ties and structural screws. There’s a rim joist around these. 3/4” plywood is glued and screwed to these 2x6s using the recommended nail pattern, which I think is a long nail into the wood every 6” and 3” on the edges for this purpose. Another layer of plywood is attached to the doubled 2x6 beams from below. (This is a ceiling built under your regular truss roof and not attached to it.) The heavy steel door opens in. Chances are, if a tornado hit your house, if the rest of the house were gone, that room would remain. Drywall would be attached to the walls, and except for the heavy door and the flat, slightly lower ceiling, no one would know.

If this were in the house I live in, I would do this either to my walk in closet, which is 6x8’, or the guest bathroom, which has no window and is about 7x9’, I think. There’s a house down the street from my house that has a room like this next to the garage and laundry room, entirely inside the outside wall structure. They have air conditioning ductwork coming in at the side to keep it dry and use it as a pantry and for secure storage for valuables.

If I were trying to create a somewhat hardened room in my own house, which is twenty-three years old, I’d use my walk-in closet (I have two in my master bedroom but only use one). I would remove the drywall inside and outside the closet. Then I would epoxy bolts through the bottom plates into the slab. Then I would make a dropped ceiling of 2x8s bolted into the studs. Then I would glue and screw 3/4” plywood to the ceiling and to the walls, inside and out. I would also replace the sliding door with a heavy-duty steel door bolted into the studs. Then drywall and paint over the plywood. This might or might not withstand a Category 5 hurricane, but it would certainly be the most secure room in the house, and it could still be used as a closet.

This said, if you look at the statistics for all the hurricanes that have hit this part of Florida, all the way to Tampa, in the past sixty years, while houses like ours may sustain storm damage, fatalities occur almost entirely to people in mobile homes, vehicles, or outside. Houses that are properly secured to the foundation, with roof trusses properly attached to the top plates with hurricane ties, with roof sheathing properly nailed into the trusses as required now by the building code, and heavy-duty shingles, will probably not be harmed much by the level of storms we have had here in recorded history. If a hurricane is going over, stay in an inside room with no windows and you will almost certainly survive. Of course, you might be left without electricity for a week, or there may be trees that fall on your house, or you may need to boil your water, but that’s minor.

Oh Darn. There goes my dream of owning a double wide with a carport

I was in that tornado
 

the tornado came right down my street I had about $60,000 damage no one was hurt though these houses held up well

Here are photos of the 02/02/2007 tornado, this is on Golden Ridge which runs along the Cane Garden golf course. The photo with the burgundy colored car is of frame constructed patio villas, most of the others were blcok/stucco, the home with the car lying on it's side actually had a tree go through the roof and land inside of the home, the diameter of the truck was at least 20 inches. We were in the home with the small motorhome parked in front, minimal damage to ours but just 2 doors down massive destruction. The worst injury in our area was someone with a cut face or neck from broken glass.

It was on my street in golden grove and right over the other side of wall in Virginia
 

most of the frame homes held up better then the concrete block on other side of wall , I lost my roof and some windows and the floor was ruined but I could live in it the block homes sustained more damages . The insurance guy told me that block homes are better in hurricane but frame hold up better in tornado he said the block homes are so tight that the pressure builds up into an explosion ,or something like that

Just the opposite on our street in 07, the stucco homes had mostly roof damage and the frame homes were collapsing on the sides or their garages were gone, etc, I guess a few yards one direction or another makes a big difference with tornado damage.

Thank you for the phenomenal contributions to this thread, especially MandoMan and VintageOGauge. While the "hardened" construction described by MM is through, it seems like an awful lot of work and effort to ensure it is done correctly. I'd just as soon buy a pre-built and tested / certified storm shelter and set it up somewhere to double as my gun safe. Might need a very big storm shelter, lol.

Those photos, VOG, Wow!!!!

Oh, as for the vagueness of my two-legged reference, it means criminals. Shady-folk. Thieves. Burglars. Drug-fueled zombies. A member of the class of people who are pushing people in front of subway trains in NYC - mentally disabled and aggressive. I did not mean E.T. or any off-planet being.

I know of two homes in The Villages that have a built in shelters. One was built when home was built and the second was added after the tornado hit the Mallory area at a cost of $1,000.00

Actually It appears the OP was trying to do just that...Tornadoes, Hurricanes equate to "storm shelters". Then the OP tries to slip in the what I call the "drive by comment"

The weather in Florida can be turbulent with many tornadoes and a few hurricanes added to the mix. So, I upgraded the one and only window in our smaller bedroom with a hurricane rated window. That will be our shelter room in the holly if tornadoes and or hurricanes are expected. In our master bedroom, I upgraded the two larger windows to hurricane windows in case I sleep through the first alert of a tornado. I now sleep better knowing that the windows may last through the storms. :icon_wink:

My other thoughts at the beginning on my stay (2015) in The Villages -> https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...helter+skelter

There's a saying in Georgia and probably elsewhere, "God hates Trailers". Georgia gets a lot of Tornados coming out of Alabama, and I've seen a couple in person and the aftermath of many more. I've seen nothing left of a house but the poured foundation, the only safe place to be for those is underground or a VERY fortified room as discussed previously.

When we visited a Del Webb in Ponte Vedra they had an option to build the master bedroom closet as a storm shelter. I think it cost $10K at the time in 2012.

It was just a few miles from the Ocean.

I told the salesperson I could not imagine why they weren’t building block homes only frame given their location.

I think a “ safe room” is a great idea.

Right after the 2007 tornado, our friend who lived in the village of Santo Domingo was concerned about the lack of a basement shelter. He had a tornado pit installed in the floor of his garage . The pit looks like an oil change pit and was roughly 4' wide x 8' long x approx 5' deep with stairs to walk down (don't recall the actual size). The top had a rolling steel cover that could be closed and locked. He then put chairs where they could sit and electric lanterns for light. He then used that spot in his garage to park his golf cart there, but could easily move it in the event that the shelter was needed. He has since sold that house, but at least one person in The Village has a tornado shelter. Now, all you have to do is to be good friends with him in order to get an initiation to come to his house during a tornado emergency. :pray:

With about 75,000 homes, I think chances of a criminal picking your house are very slim. There have been tornadoes here definitely. Hurricanes strictly or another matter if you look up the statistics while there are hurricanes that supposedly pass through by the time they get to Central Florida they are actually tropical storms that have been downgraded by that I mean their winds are down to 90 mph roughly versus 140 to 150 mph that define hurricanes. Although according to insurance companies they won't pay off because it's been declared a hurricane already by national weather centers. So in reality most people take everything in from outside and those that are in what I call trailers leave their trailers and go to the schools etc around here

By the way I've seen several TV shows with the guys from the home building series and they've shown how easy a 2x4 can penetrate a cinder block wall in a tornado or hurricane. So the guy above talking about reinforcing your walls is absolutely correct and some people recommend several layers of plywood on an inside wall as a make do solution. We have been told several times as a few people also suggest to use the interior master bedroom closet. We also keep several bottles of water and additional pantry supplies inside there just in case of a few days of not having electrical or good water . It can't hurt and we have things like canned vegetables and tuna as well that we rotate during the year

Gonna be HOT 🔥 in a tiny room in the garage unless you condition it

There is no need for a storm shelter here.

Wow, you seem to seek things from which to take offense. Since you are always expecting a "drive by comment" you may see them when none were actually made.

A 2-legged critter was a nice way of saying thief / robber. Nothing political there. Then someone inquired what I meant, so I elaborated.

Having spent decades working the streets, I am quite familiar with the drug-addicted zombies roaming America's streets and their capacity for violence when desperate.

Still, nothing political there. Perhaps some introspection on one's hyper-sensitivity and/or need to be constantly offended is due here?