because it’s rare that tornado’s kill 10 million people?
How about some type of above ground poured concrete catacomb structure, very basic parallel running tunnels, and then dump/bulldoze a mound of dirt over it? From the outside it would look like one of those manmade sledding hills parks build.
The monolithic dome company does make them sound like God’s personal answer to everything. FEMA school construction grants of 75% and 60 to 75% savings in energy costs. It would be criminal not to build one to replace a tornado flattened school.
We have a few earthen houses and commercial buildings around Ohio. That could be built in OK. They’re cement box structures open on each end with earth mounded up and over them.
Tornadoes are that bad in Korea?
apparently if they tear up a nuclear missile site in North Korea they are.
Actually, 300 mph is 50% more than 200 mph, not 33%.
The dome company probably says that because they are selling them. The product my company makes sounds like god’s gift to the industry too… in our sales literature.
Can you cite the FEMA grant of 75%? I’m genuinely curious.
I’m also curious about the energy savings, but I’m going to need a third party study to find it believable. I have a feeling there’s a lot of wasted space in a dome, where the ceiling is too low to do anything with.
It’s intriguing if even a fraction of it is true. We know FEMA put’s money into shelters so if a school can build a structure that doubles as a community shelter then it’s pretty safe to assume they will get FEMA funds.
the 75% was from the companies web cite. Here is a cite that alludes to 75% of something disaster related. quote: In a typical disaster the federal share is 75% of the eligible amount noted on the [Project Worksheet.] For an Alternate Project, the amount will be capped at 67.5% of the eligible amount (75% of 90%).
I am of course an old fogey who is skeptical of new technology until it’s been time tested. but hey, we can’t keep a school building in my area that’s over 50 years old without some fool tearing it down so WTH. If there’s FEMA money and it’s tornado proof then any energy savings would be triple icing on the cake and cougar58 gets a gold star.
Thanks for the cite - not exactly a fun read but it had exactly what I was asking for.
While it sounds nice (hey, FEMA is paying for most it!), I wonder how practical it will be even ignoring the cost. If you can replace the cafeteria, lunchroom, gym, library, and auditorium with these, you’d have 5 spots - which, at 300 people a pop, is still not enough to house the students only in Moore high school. And that’s assuming they don’t take up 5 times the area of the normal, rectangular structures (ie, the part where the ceiling is 0 to 6 feet from the ground isn’t usable for anything but storage).
I’m not saying it’s impossible or not worth looking into, but I have a feeling it’s not actually as practical as it sounds, even with the tornado protection and FEMA paying for it.
I don’t know if the whole school needs to be a dome campus but a gymnasium seems like a good candidate as a community shelter. Should be able to house a few thousand people.
The dome cited earlier in the thread (for $400k), only held 300 people. That’s what I was basing my 5 domes = 1500 people, i.e. not enough for the local high school.
And I was assuming all those alternate uses I mentioned would work in that kind of space. Not to mention integrating those buildings with the rest of the school buildings would be an engineering nightmare.
OK, I think the little domes are not financially viable but the gymnasiums seem like the perfect use of open area domes.
I might have misread the costs for the personal domes but they seemed expensive for what I could contract out. But in all honesty I haven’t looked at bunker construction. I also haven’t purchased cement in bulk in years.
It would make a nice competition for universities to see who could make the lowest budget backyard bunker.