Tornado Smashhh

[Prox]

I was down in southern Utah for the last couple of days, enjoying the 100+ temperatures with every sweat pore I have. Anyways, a friend of mine was building a house a while ago, a few miles away from the place where I was staying. The only problem is, once he had finished building it, a tornado destroyed it. So, I decided to take some pictars of the former residence. ENJOY.


The front of the house.




Inside the front room of the house. Note the lack of roof.




The staircase and the back doorway.




What would have been the second floor.




On the side of the house. To my right is part of the roof.




Behind the house, looking up.




In hindsight, I should've taken a picture looking off the top of the house to the south, because you could've seen pieces of the roof strewn around all over the place. But I didn't.

[FyberOptic]

Looks like it sucked some of the stones clear off the chimney.

[MDude]

Clearly, the house must be rebuilt entirely out of stones. Stones that are at least half a ton each. Or maybe you could just make it underground, and use stones as lining to keep the dirt from caving in. I think I'll do that!

* MDude goes out and makes a hole in the ground, never comes out.

[FyberOptic]

More like an underground lab am I right.

[Bluejay]

No mortar may be used to keep stones from falling. that was the first problem with this house.

[Prox]

Probably the only problem with the house is that the stones and the woodwork weren't connected together very well, a fault which led to the roof's demise. I can guess that the only reason the stones are missing at all is because people have stolen or broken them, for whatever reason. The stonework on the house was actually pretty well done, except for on the tall stairwell, which you can see has partly collapsed at the top.

[MDude]

So of course, the solution is to make everything stone. And/or metal, but I'd go with stone, so I could avoid having to protect it from rust. Bronze would be good, since it just gets a patina. That is, unless you have some kind of really strong wood and really strong wood glue.

[Prox]

Personally, I would go with double-layered steel-reinforced concrete, maybe with a sandstone overlay, but I would make it so that the stones didn't jut out at all so there would be little to no possibility of damage. I might insulate the gap between the concrete walls, or i might just stabilize it with wood. For the roof, i would totally use unplaned 2x4s to create some really nice bracing which would allow a little room underneath the roof for storage purposes. I would insulate the roof with fine paper pulp or the like, because it's a higher altitude and a colder clime in that part of Utah. Over the paper, i would put sheets of waferboard or some other kind of cheap wood, so that I could utilize the aforementioned storage area. On the outside of the roof, I would have wood sheets or something, with tin nailed over it for that rustic look. Of course, this house would only have 2 rooms, because houses down there are never really big. To be safe, I'll say a bedroom and some kind of living/eating room with a fireplace. For access to the attic, I wouldn't use a bulky stairwell, but instead a cheap retractable ladder which would drop down at the touch of a small lever on the wall. I would have an outhouse behind the house proper, for indoor plumbing would be hella expensive out there in the middle of nowhere. However, I would have electric lights. My electricity-powered items would receive their energy from a large battery, which would in turn receive energy from a heliotropic solar panel on the roof and a recumbent bike, which I could exercise on every morning and power up my battery at the same time. Just in case something bad happens, I would have a gas-powered generator handy to charge the battery. If I was feeling especially spendy, I might have a greenhouse or something where I could tend all manner of extrinsic plants and succulents. I would need a much larger solar panel and maybe an underground well to power the humidifier in such a greenhouse, but it's okay, because I'll probably never build this house and I don't want to live in Utah anymore anyways but I still felt the need to type all this out because I'm bored or something.

[Bluejay]

That is, unless you have some kind of really strong wood and really strong wood glue.

*Bluejay uses popsicle-sticks and Elmers School Glue*