Hurricanes Shmurricanes

The extra hardware going into the house is amazing. Someone made a comment to make sure we get hurricane clips on the roof. Well, we've got you beat. We have 1" diameter threaded rods that are anchored in the foundation, that are connected to wood beams via ginormous plates, that are connected all the way up to those hurricane clips with metal strapping.

These brackets (~2' long) screw into the 1" diameter threaded rods in the cement wall and connect to the vertical beams with a 'large' number of nails.

And this is after we removed a window from the back wall so we wouldn't have to put structural steel in.

Speaking of nails, they are going through nails like crazy. The new Mass building codes require nails (a certain kind of funky ring and spiral shank nail) every 3" on all sheathing edges as well as additional nails every 6" (I think) on the interior of the pieces.

A view of the exterior wall at the junction of two pieces of plywood. Got nails...?

Thus, there are corners of the house where multiple lines of silver dot-like 'coins' (the nail heads have a coin-like pattern on the head so the inspectors can see, from the outside, what nail was used) all come together.

...We do. Lines of nails mark the corners of the house where plywood pieces meet. I'm not going to dare a hurricane to show up... but I don't expect the walls to fly apart all 'Florida-style' either.

And our mortgage appraiser didn't think a new house was worth anything more than a 50 year old one...at least we have more metal.

-A