Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Titusville - Go with the flow and let's build this right!

 

Go with the flow!

At the end of our dock is a palm tree that's been there as long as I've been coming to Titusville Marina. It has suffered through many hurricanes and it's still standing. If you've ever seen a palm tree toppled, you would be amazed at the small size of the root area, wondering how it even stands up to a mild breeze, much less a hurricane. Well, today we only had winds of 20 kts with gusts a little higher, not so much, but you can see the survival tactic of a palm tree. It just goes with the flow, bend but don't break is its motto. We can learn from the lowly palm tree. 

Here comes the cement slurry

On the other hand, at the opposite end of the spectrum is the new brick clubhouse Titusville Marina is building. First of all, it is all concrete blocks in structure but that was not enough. A cement truck pulled up alongside this afternoon with a surry of new concrete it fed into a hopper. The tubing led to a guy on top of the concrete walls of the building that fed the surry into the cavities of the cement blocks. The walls will wind up being solid cement! Perhaps it's a Florida building code for hurricanes?

There is goes into the cement block cavities







So with the two approaches, which one is best? Palms trees which have been around for millions of years or a johnny come lately cement block building designed by bipeds around a few thousand years? Time will tell.

1 comments:

Fred Brillo said...

That's the South Florida Building code! They probably dropped lengths of rebar into the cavaties as well! After Hurricane Andrew destroyed tens of thousands of homes homes built in the 1970s, Miami-Dade country strengthened the building code which eventually became standard for most of the state!

My new roof meets that standard and is garaunteed to withstand 180 mph wind. Safety doesn't come cheap!

Dennis