About 10 miles from where we were working today, a cold front came through early afternoon with some crazy wind gusts, our siding was blowing all over the place for a little while.
Here's some better pictures, can't tell if they had all the walls sheeted or not. I'll probably find out more tomorrow, the GC we're framing for is a building inspector for a nearby town, he'll probably know more about it.
When you get a building sheeted with some significant openings, a wind gust can blow in through the openings, and if it has nowhere to go, it can lift the roof system. On a simple rectangular building, once the top plate becomes detached (gable ends have the greatest shear force on the plate), those walls blow out, and the building blows over.
It's a big risk on some designs once walls are mostly sheeted.
I bet this is what happened, the gc we're working for now, said he drove by there a few days ago, and it looked like they had everything sheeted, but one whole side was full of overhead door openings.
Needless to say, he's really preaching bracing to us this morning. Which is just fine with me, I hope I never have one go down like that...
There were 5 workers on site, just the 2 that were injured.
The owner of the company was one of the injured, apparently he's in guarded condition as of this morning.
I don't think it is either, it's not a fly by night company, I think they've been around for 30 some years.
I'll be interested to hear what they determine failed.
We had a school(?) under construction collapse at that stage of construction under similar circumstances. I don't think you see this happen in hurricane country due to the required ties.
Engineering wise, one usually figures that the partial building during construction should survive the greatest average wind in a 6 month period.... usually in the 70-85 mph range here in the MidWest, Longer jobs get a 5 or 10 mph added to temporary design wind loads... high value and high priority jobs might get special attention....
A failure at ~45mph is not going to please any underwriters.
WAG: the roof formed an air foil and achieved "take off velocity..."
No one can build profitably and eliminate all weather risks... This one I guess is on the Engineers or lack there of.... The wind gusts were un-usual, but not freakish....
One small benefit of the Wind Mill silliness is there is much better REAL TIME wind data across the USA....
And the InterNet weather had wind gust warnings..... Up to 70 Mph?
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum
3.5M posts
151.6K members
Since 2003
A forum community dedicated to professional construction and remodeling contractors. Come join the discussion about the industry, trades, safety, projects, finishing, tools, machinery, styles, scales, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more!