If the building has not been retrofitted, an earthquake can cause serious damage to a home, especially. Retrofitting is the modification of a structure by adding new components to make the building stronger. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the degree of structural issues in residential neighborhoods varied considerably from house to accommodate according to the steps each homeowner had delivered to fortify their residence.
Statistics show repeatedly that during seismic activity, houses that have been retrofitted may have less damage compared to a home that hasn’t been reinforced. It was the situation from the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, which resulted in the structural failure of brick buildings without reinforced masonry walls, including many school buildings in the community. If any, structural issues, buildings with reinforced concrete had very little. In the aftermath of your magnitude 6.25 quake, California’s Riley Act was adopted, which required local governments throughout the state to determine building departments and inspect newly constructed homes and businesses. In the years that followed, new building codes were implemented requiring the bolting of any wooden walls towards the structure’s foundation.
Particularly in areas like los angeles it is extremely vital that you take into account the dangers of earthquakes. To be able to minimize and prevent damage to a home during an earthquake, and the possibility of the costly necessity for foundation replacement, it’s important to consider earthquake retrofitting. Previously, fifty years or more ago, buildings were mainly designed architecturally to endure one type of load-gravity, which only creates an up-and-down pressure or motion.
Lately, however, it really has been widely recognized that most earthquakes create pressures on the structure moving from side to side, creating a lateral load. Thus, older buildings, originally designed just to adequately support gravity loads, may collapse due to the lateral pressure of an earthquake.
House bolting is a technique of retrofitting where a property is securely fastened for the foundation. It reduces the potential for earthquake damage by increasing the home’s resistance to ground motion. Any house built before 1950 that is not retrofitted, will never be connected to its foundation; it is simply resting around the home’s concrete base. In a earthquake, structures such as these can easily slide off of their foundation and collapse. Lots of the homes that fell away from their foundation or were damaged through the Northridge quake were not bolted towards the foundation.
Another way a home’s structural integrity might be improved is actually by bracing cripple walls. A cripple wall will be the wall between the first floor of any home along with the foundation. The walls produce the crawl space which is often found underneath a home. Cripple walls are usually only protected by exterior wood siding or stucco, and are considered the weakest a part of a building. Bracing the walls with plywood increases their strength and aid the prevention of the home from swaying throughout a quake. For more information please visit house bolting