Earthquake Update - October 30, 2006
Aloha,
Well, today was an interesting day!
Mrs kendale got me up to let me know that the American Red Cross reps were heading our way to assess our situation and offered to help us get started with the repairs to the house. Mahalo plenty, guys!
Then, about 10 minutes before they left, the County Building Inspector for the Kona area pulls up to take a look under the hood (floor/foundation). I noticed that when I opened the door to the lower regions, he didn't jump right in. Instead he looked at the post/pier footings, joists, & braces before stepping in after me. Hmmm...
When he finally did take the plunge, he followed me down the length of the house, pointing out that the floor joists were spaced a little further apart than he liked (32" OC), but mentioned that certain subfloor plys are designed to work with that spacing.
I mentioned to him that mrs kendale & I have noticed that the house is considerably more sensitive to the still-occurring aftershocks, trucks passing by, and me and the dog marching across the floors at all hours of the day (and night!)
He suggested that installing additional joists @ 16" OC would help eliminate any recently acquired flexing of the subflooring.
After all was said and done, he said that the house/foundation/framing was safe for habitation and gave us the "Green Placard" seal of approval. Cool.
Next up, was a meeting in Waimea (25 minutes way) with FEMA to address the earthquake mitigation situation. I had taken a bunch of pics for the FEMA rep, and he walked me through several ways to tighten up the house. He agreed with the Building Inspector about adding the extra floor joists, and suggested straps, ties, and clips, as well as reorienting a few braces and places where more was needed. (We discovered several hours later that there was a 3.6 (minor) tremor while we were there.)
Nice!
We then drove down to Kona (45 minutes) to Lowe's to price out lumber, clips, straps, & ties to see what kind of $$$ shock we were in for. There were several areas along the way where the highway shoulders had disappeared in the October 15 quake.
There was a voice message when we got home from the Red Cross saying they would like to stop by in the morning to go over a few more things with us.
After that, it's back to crawling around under the house to tighten up the post & pier bolts, estimating how many new joists we'll be needing, and then figure out how many straps, ties & clips we need to tie everything together.
More later...
Aloha