Hurricane Harvey

[pocaracas]

[Wyrd of Gawd]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Just build the house over the garage.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Just build the house over the garage.

It could collapse in a flood.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Just build the house over the garage.

It could collapse in a flood.

Not if you're thinking "I need this part of the house to stand up to a flood." Concrete with rebar instead of blocks. You could have a two car enclosed garage and still have room for a glassed-in/screen-in area that opened directly onto the lawn by using pillars instead of a continuous wall.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It could collapse in a flood.

Not if you're thinking "I need this part of the house to stand up to a flood." Concrete with rebar instead of blocks. You could have a two car enclosed garage and still have room for a glassed-in/screen-in area that opened directly onto the lawn by using pillars instead of a continuous wall.

Wouldn't there be waterproofing issues with the garage door?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not if you're thinking "I need this part of the house to stand up to a flood." Concrete with rebar instead of blocks. You could have a two car enclosed garage and still have room for a glassed-in/screen-in area that opened directly onto the lawn by using pillars instead of a continuous wall.

Wouldn't there be waterproofing issues with the garage door?

The point is to get the house above the water. Think of stilts with a more ambitious plan. I know of a two story house built this way just outside St. Louis County. He has boats hung from the ceiling of the garage, they can be dropped by one person. The cars would be moved out if there's time, but he's read to write them off if the house comes through okay. (He survived a "hundred year flood" in '08, but the water got to the tops of his doors. That inspired the rebuild.)

[Thumpalumpacus]

Gotcha.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some folks went cheap, they put their houses on pilings and did the brick walls. The pilings and house should survive, the bricks, maybe. The area I'm talking about wasn't in a current location, it was overflow. (2008 Meramec River flood.)

[Joods]

Wouldn't there be waterproofing issues with the garage door?

The point is to get the house above the water. Think of stilts with a more ambitious plan. I know of a two story house built this way just outside St. Louis County. He has boats hung from the ceiling of the garage, they can be dropped by one person. The cars would be moved out if there's time, but he's read to write them off if the house comes through okay. (He survived a "hundred year flood" in '08, but the water got to the tops of his doors. That inspired the rebuild.)

If you've ever been to the Outer Banks in NC, homes are intentionally built this way, so you aren't far off the mark. 

We vacationed there back in 2009, just after the whole place had gotten flooded out a week before. One road in and out and it was covered with sand that they were still trying to remove. The house we rented had four stories, not including the ground level. The house was securely built on stilts. You parked your car under the house and walked up a series of stairs to get to the first level of the home which was about ten to fifteen feet off the ground. If you had groceries, you put them in the dumbwaiter then once you got upstairs to the kitchen, you used a pulley system to bring the bags up. 

Because the Outer Banks is situated on an island/jetty or whatever you wanna call it, it is prone to flooding, hence the reason why these homes are on stilts.