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The floods in the South are pretty terrifying and homeowners are going to whatever lengths they can to protect their homes.
It’s great to see such amazing ingenuity and resilience in the face of destruction.
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Is it just me or does it look as if that levee might have cost more than the house? Maybe they should build houses on pontoons?
if they didnt build it themselves then yeah i guess. darn thing looks huge. if they happened to have / rented a bulldozer i guess they could have made it themselves, but who knows!
Dude they just built it themselves the only cost was diesel we do our own s**t around here
My only question is: wouldn’t have it been easier to put half the amount of earth needed for the levee UNDER the house, when it was built in the first time?
When you get enough money to build your own house, you do it that way.
There are so many things to consider when building a house, and when you start tallying up the costs to build, you make shortcuts on things that may or may not be necessary.
I’m a mechanical engineer licensed by the California BPE. I know exactly what it takes to build a house. It would, in fact be cheaper to built the house on a mound if you know you’re on a flood plain than to use three or four times the amount of earth to build a levee. And that particular house, I would venture, wouldn’t be that difficult to elevate and it would require much less earthmoving. Here’s a better idea, build the house on piling in the manner of those in Holland. That’s cheaper, still.
That’s what I was thinking when I learned that the towns were in flood sacrifice plains: pontoons. A closed foundation, moorings that would allow them to rise without being dragged downstream, and extensible utility connections … the whole flood could come and go and life could continue in the house pretty much as normal.
The have houses like that in Holland. Sealed concrete “basements,” a set of steel anchor poles that the house can raise or lower around, and flex lines for all the utilities.
I know someone that built a house in/on an old river barge for the same reason.
Damn. I was just going to write “House: $58,000. Berm to protect house: $122,000.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. Here are a few examples of when it works, and one sad one where it didn’t.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388660/Mississippi-River-flooding-Residents-build-homemade-dams-saves-houses.html
The one with the moat and the tractor pump will last longer, because it deals with the seepage under the levee. I don’t think the other two will hold for very long without lots of underground pumping.
ARKANSAS THE NEW VENICE……..
ALSO… um theys alotta clay down there in the soil… so really it dont matter much… ALSO after the water recedes the ppl in the top pic hav a gocart super-speedway allllll done
I’ve seen some sandbag battles against floods, and the folks in the movie know the drill. Drop new sandbags at the weak points, and keep the pumps going. It’s a constant day and night battle, and with luck the river quits first and eventually recedes.
You lost credibility after “movie”.
Moo… the second link up there… is a movie. A video. Not a still picture. Bob-H retains his credibility, yours suffers, though.
If I were living there, as soon as the water goes away, I’d make that thing permanent. Concrete levee all the way around my house!
um, shouldn’t these be under not-a-kludge? they aren’t exactly thrown together.
And Bob-H, it’s possible the Levee is to hold back the majority of water and they are using the time to move their possessions upstairs. Certainly it will likely vastly reduce the possible damage
i c wat u did thar
Either way, the damage will be less as long as the levee doesn’t break or the flood rises above it.
Looks like the Red River flood of 1997…oh and every other year after that!
If you’re going to go to that much trouble, wouldn’t it be easier to jack up the house and put some dirt underneath it? It would be a much more permanent solution…
OMGAH YER A GENIUS except you’d literally need to build a box around the underground supports then a bottom to do that and i dont think thats a fast solution, plus if you actually had time to do such a thing (and the money, JEEEBS) you could just cut the house into pieces and move it to higher ground like when they move historical buildings.
Needgod.com
Kudos to them for taking some personal responsibility.
“Personal responsibility”??? You sound like the kind of douche who thinks people whose plane crash should flap their arms instead of whining and dying and all…
Nah, he seems like the kind of person that doesn’t rely on the government to take care of him.
Yeah because the gov’t totally took the “personal responsibility” out of the equation with Katrina with all the help they sent right away.
^You took the thought right out of my mind.
RWW that is, not Steve Austin.
I’d be more inclined to use a jet ski to get around. I’d be afraid I’d chew into a fence or something with a regular boat motor.
Come to think of it…I still don’t get why the companies that make jet skis don;t send out water rescue teams (or at least jet skis) at times like this as a way to give back and get some free publicity.
I think they were going around by the paths/roads that they knew from when it wasn’t flooded, hence the clearings in the trees etc.
Jet skis wouldn’t last long in muddy, debris-strewn floodwaters and wouldn’t give the kind of cargo capacity that the jon boats in the video have. You’d end up with a guy on a jet ski a mile from nowhere, with an engine clogged with who-knows-what and no way to get back. An outboard might choke out, but it’ll start back up if you clear the prop. Clearing the intakes on a jetski could take a lift and a mechanic.
If I lived in an area like thisand had a damn good reason to stay there, I think I’d make the levee and seepage ditch a permanent addition. I’d also jack up the house to keep the lower levels dry. (depending on water table levels, they might not have a basement)
It is very much likely that they don’t have a basement.
There are houses that typically sit on the edge of a river or lake and rise in a flood on mooring posts.
No reason this wouldn’t work on dry land. And, your flood insurance should be much, much lower if you had one.
In fact, in known flood zones, they should be required via home building regulations.
My link to a blog showing the floating house concept is still awaiting moderation.
Just Google “fivenonblondes floating houses” and its the top link.
i c wut u did thar
Why does everyone thing that the government needs to regulate everything? These people bought their property knowing full well it was in the flood plain, it was their investment their money their homes. All of these armchair builders want more parasitic bureaucrats to make more rules that drive up the cost of already expensive housing, and then they are going to want to come on the property inspect, then who knows!
(oops – forgot the link) http://fivenonblondes.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/floating-houses/
you know, in asia, they make houses on stilts. The ‘ground’ floor tend to be at least half a floor higher than the ground…
They do that along beaches here in the South too, mostly because of coastal erosion.
And most houses in the southeast US (if they don’t have a basement) sit on a “crawlspace” with about 2 feet or more of clearance,, so yes, effectively, stilts.
I love it.
Stop building homes in the floodplain!
That’s not an option–there’s too many people on this planet.
Psst.
The USA is far, far less populated per acre than Europe. Also, we haven’t been building up or down to any great extent.
Come back and tell me about not enough land when someone seriously proposes underwater housing.
There really are too many people on the planet and the amount we can cover it along the surface is not an issue.
And as I always respond whenever anyone says “There are too many people on this planet . . . “: “Are you volunteering to lower the number by one? If not, why not?”
The USA is also less polluted in urban areas because of the less dense population. And, of course, stricter regulations.
Industrious and resourceful sure, but ingenious?
Enough of this overpopulation crap! It is the “Malthusian Catastrophe” proven wrong so many times! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe
Humans are not like animals, world population growth is slowing tremendously! With industrialization people have fewer children and put more money into those children. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3560433.stm
There is really not a lot of land on the planet which is save from all kinds of natural disasters – earth quakes, vulcanos, tornados, hurricanes, forest fires, draught, sand storms… Add to that, the fact that resources (coal, metals, arable land, fish, rivers …) are not always in convenient places. On top of that there is the historical development, cities and infrastructure just happens to be where they were built.
Moving an entire populated area has a similar cost to that area being lost due to a natural disaster, so that’s not such an attractive proposition anyway.
Note that most of the time, the older parts of cities don’t get affected nearly as much as the newer neighborhoods.
It’s like some people learnt over the centuries about not being at the wrong place.
oh, and I’ll second Prior Semblance just below
Everything is a floodplain if the flood is big enough =p
When do the chariot races begin?
What’s the fuzz all about? That some Americans finally started to think? The Dutch do this for centuries to protect their houses.
That is completely different, the Dutch build their houses below sea level… This is an area far above sea level that only floods once in a great while… and they also, still, have levies, exactly like the Dutch do. Levies can only be made so high and still be economical and still actually work, though.
Also the army corps of engineers destroyed some levees to prevent large more densely populated areas from flooding.
Right, at the expense of the agricultural industry, they protected the cesspool, low income, welfare dependent, towns.
It is not the army corps of engineers place too make such decisions.
How about just not live in the flood plains and just use the land for farming in the rich soil.
Because people have to work the farm. When you’re working 14+ hour days regularly, having to drive 50+ miles to get to the farm isn’t practical or cost-effective. Also, it’s very hard to keep tabs on things from that distance.
You could be the owner and do it, but you’re going to have to pay help anyway (at a minimum harvest, but almost certainly at other times), and they won’t be able to afford to live too far away.
^this!!
I am sick to death of armchair central planners!
People are smart enough to take care of their own lives without basement virgins telling them what the best course of action is!
And they said no man is an island.
I think I’d be keeping the levee once I’d built it. Obviously with some enhancements to get a roadway over for vehicles. Plant some trees to give it some stability and make it more attractive. Plus the earth I’d dug out would make a nice large swimming pool in the future… or a big nasty bog.
Although you can see the levee in the first picture is already eroding, and they’re lucky the water on the outside isn’t too deep otherwise seepage would do them in. View from the porch might suck too! And no upstairs to move stuff to either!
lol,the video with the boat pretty much reminds me of half life 2 xD
Good luck to them all! I hope as many people make it safely outta this situation as possible.
If I were ever to live in a flood zone, I’d build my house on stilts.
The next hurricane will thank you
Damn.
At 0:20 in the vid, that guy TOTALLY runs that stop sign. I’M CALLIN THE COPS!!!