As the chief operating officer of Mercedes Homes, Florida resident Scott Buescher helped the company win two National Housing Quality awards. Living in Florida has sensitized Scott Buescher to the need for construction techniques that can better withstand hurricanes. Typically, increasing hurricane resistance can be accomplished in three ways:
- Stricter building codes. These are the main line of defense against storm damage. Florida’s strongest-in-America codes call for impact-resistant glass, better connections between walls and roofs, and shingles that are nailed rather than stapled.
- Strengthening wood-frame houses. Tying together the roof, walls, and foundation of a building is crucial to increasing wind and flood resistance. Costing only a few dollars each, metal connecting brackets are simple to install during new home construction, while putting them in later can be very expensive.
- New types of glass and concrete. So-called “bendable” glass uses microscopic fissures to make it 200 times stronger than conventional glass. Walls that support the glass can also benefit from ultra-high performance concrete, which incorporates fine-grained aggregate and specialized fibers. This new technique forms walls that bend more than ordinary concrete and stay upright even if cracked. Concrete products such as engineered cementitious composite maintain their integrity even when powerful stressors threaten to tear them apart.
