Are you in an earthquake resistant building? Find out.

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Criss Colon

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If you live in a "Building" in the DR,you are NOT in an earthquake resistant building!
When I helped build the "Plaza de la Salud" in Santo Domingo 15 years ago,we used hurracane "Resistant" windows.
Problem was,they installed them with 1 inch aluminum screws!
The windows blew out like the candles on a cake!
I can tell you "Horror Stories" about EVERY phase of the construction.
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CaptnGlenn

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Mar 29, 2010
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I think I'd rather stick my head into the sand like an ostrich. If the "Big One" strikes, I'll hope for the best.
 
Castellamonte

Castellamonte

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I was lucky enough to have Eric Urbahn as my architect. He was so picky he designed the house to Miami-Dade standards for hurricanes and Los Angeles earthquake standards. Donald Bergeron built the house to those specs for me. This place needs a cannon ball to hurt it!

Moral of the story: Get a damn good architect and builder!
 
bob saunders

bob saunders

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Chip said:
I wouldn't recommend anybody reading a manual like this and then trying to design a house when the DR is full of competent structural engineers who learn standard Western practices - this advice is dangerous and naive to say the least, sorry.

Rather than take a chance and have something catastrophic happen better to hire a structural engineer and architect to develop the plans and get the permits. After that get a contractor or maestro to build it so there are no conflicts, ie to prevent the engineer from cutting back on materials to save a buck.

Finally, for those who are not sure, :) the DR actually has universities where they teach standard methodologies and at least in my experience, use American textbooks translated into Spanish.
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Most poor people can not afford an engineer or architect. This manual was designed for those poor people. I work everyday with aeronautical and structural engineers. I wouldn't let some of them design or build a doghouse.
 
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belgiank

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To be honest, we inquired here with a Dominican female architect/engineer, but not sure where she got her training.

I was impressed to say the least. Plans made out to the utmost detail and calculations done to perfection. Do not shoot me if I remember wrong, but I think there were 7 different plans in total (structural, electric and grounding, water, sewage, etc...)

The builder she worked with was Haitian, very well educated, perfect English and French, and I think Spanish as well (as mine is not perfect I cannot vouch for that... lol), and he was not hesitant to show us references, and just talking to him you knew he was a true pro...

The price she asked for all of this was extremely reasonable. The only down-side for me was that it is apparently the custom here for the architect to make all the plans and calculations, but they do not do the follow-up. This is apparently up to the maestro.

But yes, there are some good professionals here in the DR
 
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Ezequiel

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Castellamonte said:
I was lucky enough to have Eric Urbahn as my architect. He was so picky he designed the house to Miami-Dade standards for hurricanes and Los Angeles earthquake standards. Donald Bergeron built the house to those specs for me. This place needs a cannon ball to hurt it!

Moral of the story: Get a damn good architect and builder!
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That means your house won't be standing when the next hurricane or earthquake hits. Every time a hurricane hits Florida
it destroys all houses there or caused the roofs to blow off, that's why home insurance is so expensive there. The same thing with Los Angeles every time they have a earthquake every thing is a mess there.

Dominican middles class homes don't suffer damage during hurricane (and they are not built with the Miami-Dade standards) because that will mean building woods, cartons homes. During earthquake house only suffer minus cracks, nothing major.
 
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PeterInBrat

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May 29, 2006
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Chip said:
I wouldn't recommend anybody reading a manual like this and then trying to design a house when the DR is full of competent structural engineers who learn standard Western practices - this advice is dangerous and naive to say the least, sorry.
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And the Straw Man arguments begin. Repeating to myself, "Don't wrestle with pigs, don't wrestle with pigs."

"Now lookee here Mr Smarty Pants, we don't need yer fancy Arkitekshur schools an' such. I got this 15 page handout on how to build a DR house online fer free! My building ain't a gonna fall over. I used twice as much mortar as it even calls fer!"
 
bob saunders

bob saunders

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Chip said:
I have a few problems with this manual smartypants:

1. The author is a "PE" in the US (so am I btw) and apparently thinks the DR has none or very professional engineers - which is wrong.

2. Very little is spoken about the soils and their load bearing capacities nor compaction techniques. This is very important for multi story structures.

3. While some design techniques are discussed it is not detailed enough to build a safe earthquake resistant building - which is the supposed purpose of the book.

What I think actually happened is the author went to Haiti on a mission trip and decided to create this manual and just assumed the Dominican Republic was part of Haiti or something along those lines - typical.
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Actually Chip since the manual is in English or Creole, it wasn't intended for the DR, but for Haiti. I think the idea was for those doing construction to learn how to tie the re-bar together and how important the placement of wall and window openings are. People have built houses since history began without having on-site engineers and architects. There is actually quite of bit of advice on footing and subsoil...etc. Look, people are going to rebuild in Haiti using whatever they have available, including knowledge. If this manual can introduce people in to thinking about building the proper way it will have been successful. Stop being a glass half empty person and start thinking like a glass half full person.
 
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PeterInBrat

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It's also a matter of what is realistic for what is going up now in Haiti and to some extent what to look out for in existing small scale construction in Haiti OR the DR. Sure, having onsite engineers would be great for every new building, but much of what is in the pamphlet are basics, like not making walls without columns and simple things like tying everything together better. And while there may be plenty of qualified engineers in the DR, you can't say that there is a well- enforced building code for what has been built to date.

I stayed for a month or so in a casita where the owner had build the original house with slab wood, then got a couple pallets of cinder blocks. But they couldn't afford to replace all the slab walls at once, so they first had the front facade done, then the side walls and finally the back wall with day laborers. Nothing was tied together at the corners at all aside from a bit of mortar. A shake from an earthquake in the wrong direction would have brought the side walls down easily leaving the front and back walls intact, but someone would have had a full wall of cinderblocks fall on them. Even with a 20'x20' casita, people can be at risk.

I got the idea from reading the pamphlet that schools with large classrooms are often particularly prone to quakes. In the TED talk, he mentions how a nursing school was wiped out(with large classrooms) while a nearby hospital(with smaller rooms and more supporting buttress walls) was relatively undamaged. Supermarkets and other buildings with large open spaces and long exterior walls were also prone to complete failure. If schools and markets are particularly prone, then some effort should be made to retrofit any surviving buildings and codes should be enforced in a top/down priority.

What I would like to see in Haiti is some Levitt-town concept that is affordable to Haitians. Standardizing any one building plan has several advantages including that crews can be specialized into each phase of construction and crank them out in a cookie cutter fashion and forms can be moved from site to site instead of having to be custom-built for each building. There is also a simple economy of scale in building the same floor plan over and over again.

If Haiti had been using even part of the standards used in the pamphlet, 10s of 1000's of people would still be alive today. In the TED talk, he mentioned how smooth rebar was one of the causes of catastrophic failure. Much of Haiti's buildings were simply cobbled together without any planning other than if it stayed up after the mortar cured, it was all good. Meanwhile Chile suffered a far greater earthquake with tiny fraction of casualties that Haiti had with building techniques that simply required better engineering, not more expense in materials or labor.
 
bob saunders

bob saunders

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Chip said:
While this book may be ok for Haiti here in the DR it is substandard, sorry my friend.

The advice the OP gives promoting this as a manual for building here in the DR is poor at the very best, unnecessary and could ultimately have very tragic consequences.
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OK, back your criticism with facts. What information in the manual is incorrect and considered dangerous practise ( by most construction engineers)? Facts please. There is no reason to move it tro the Haiti forum either. A house built to the specifications in the manual would be better than half the houses built in the DR.
 
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PeterInBrat

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No it's not just for Haiti. The reality is that there are plenty of existing buildings in the DR that have defects that the pamphlet can point out. Not all of the potential defects and it's not an engineering manual to account for every possible building defect.

You're chasing ghosts that don't exist. Yes, if you are building in the DR, hire an engineer if you can afford one and are building anything other than a basic structure. You may want to hire one to inspect a building if you are looking to buy as well. I never presented the PDF as a substitute for hiring an engineer in new construction esp if you are spending real money. But I bet there are plenty of properties out there that are for sale that have little if any structural integrity that have red flags that it would point out. Glass half full, or half empty???
 
bob saunders

bob saunders

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Chip said:
See post #13.

I also doubt that any layperson using this manual with no building experience could build a better multi level structure than most built here in the DR.

I also don't see why this advice should be considered helpful any way as most here on DR1 could afford to pay the RD300 per square meter that it would cost to design a house the correct way.
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Post #13 presents no facts. As Peter says it is not intended to replace professional engineers. Pages 5-7 and 23 all mention soil conditions and the need to compact...etc. Stop trying to get the last word in.
 
bob saunders

bob saunders

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Chip said:
Mentioning soil compaction and showing standard methodologies are two different things all together.

I don't know what your field of experience is Bob but I have been working with soils as an engineer for for over 17 years and just stating that they need to be compacted is not enough.
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Chippy, it's an aid, not a text book. I worked construction for 4 years before joining the Military. I worked for a company that did new construction - block and brick construction and raised houses to put basements and new foundations under them. Lots of jacking and soil compacting. I have an older brother that has been in construction- mainly concrete work for the past 40 years, and my oldest son, although going to NAIT (Edmonton) for steamfitter, is a qualified steelworker and framer, with lots of foundation experience. So you can see I have some experience and family to discuss construction with. My younger brother is both a plumber and an electrician, now on his way to Costa Rica to learn Spanish for the next six months ( NAFTA job)
 
bob saunders

bob saunders

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Chip said:
Since you know something about soil compaction and apparently soil types it confuses me why you would take it so lightly.

From what I've seen, the multi story buildings that have failed here in the DR were because of poor foundation due to more than likely inadequate compaction or use of inadequate structural soils.
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I'm not taking it lightly, you are just making too big a deal out of a small manual intented to educate poor Haitian contructors about how to make a building more eathquake proof. Engineers tend to over-engineer things. You know, build a set of stairs to support ten tons when two tons is adequate with safety factors taken in to consideration. There was problems with poor construction in Haiti but much of the damage was caused due to soil liquification.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...-vS-Ag&usg=AFQjCNFUcO1In_GPSBMEnK0Y2Mu5Ugjhzw
 
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