Discovering a better way to build safer homes

In the summer of 2008, engineers at the University of Western Ontario began a series of experiments that would eventually destroy the two-storey, four-bedroom, suburban- type brick house they had recently built.

Destroy isn't an entirely accurate word. More specifically, the researchers wanted to know what happens when nature's equivalent of the Big Bad Wolf huffs and puffs and blows houses down. If winds the forces of which would eventually equal that of a Category 5 hurricane buffet a house, when would the roof begin to peel off and at what places? When would the windows shatter? How would the walls bend? And just as important, what changes could be easily and cheaply engineered into a building that would make it - if not quite hurricane-proof - hurricane-hardier?

What was striking to an observer visiting the site just before the testing was to begin was how classically windless the UWO experiment was going to be. The house wasn't going to be huffed upon by generated gales. Rather, it was going to be subjected to forces produced by 100 pressure load actuators located at key spots along its walls and roof. The actuators would simulate the varying pressures and lifts that hurricane winds generate as they whistle and gust over buildings. All of which poses an obvious question. Why would you build a test site in southern Ontario to simulate the effect of hurricanes on homes when the area is rarely hit by even Category 1 hurricane-force winds?

The main reason, says Mike Bartlett, professor of civil engineering at the University of Western Ontario and a researcher on what is known as the Three Little Pigs Project, is the pull of Ontario's existing world-renowned wind expertise. Modern wind tunnel engineering was created in the 1960s at what is now known as the Alan Davenport Wind Engineering Group at Western. Davenport's expertise is so respected that it has been hired to determine the effects of high winds on models of structures ranging from the World Trade Center to the Confederation Bridge linking PEI with New Brunswick to the CN Tower.

What the existing tunnel couldn't do easily was measure the wind's effect on specific parts of a structure, particularly houses; thus, the need for actuator-induced wind simulations.

However, this entire quest for more knowledge exists within the context of what the world's insurance industry believes is a growing crisis.

"When I talk to someone in the insurance industry and say wind and water and storm damage is up, they automatically respond yes and often point to statistics showing payout of claims is 20 times higher than 30 years ago," says Paul Kovacs, executive director of the insurance-industry-backed Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, which has helped raise money for the UWO facility, officially known as the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes.

In response, the insurance industry wants data to show builders that things like storm straps that hold roofs down during inclimate conditions really do make a difference and - more importantly - are worth the extra dollars they cost.

A noble effort, you might say, but even more noble is the fact that all this is to take place within the context of what you might call an Internet-based science translation revolution.

What nobody involved in the project wants is for its findings to exist solely in scientific papers - papers the busy builders and the busy owners of Canada's new homes are unlikely to ever read. If dramatic enough, the findings might eventually result in the changing of building codes. But the Three Little Pigs researchers also want to seize the day by showing the entire world what they have done when they do it. To do this, they will put cameras in place to record what happens when the hurricane-like forces start to rip and shred their test house to bits. They then plan to mount what they hope are dramatic results on Internet video sites such as YouTube.

"To see the walls or the structure bulging, to hear some of the frightening noises is a way for us to talk directly to home builders and home buyers about what we have learned," says Bartlett. "The videos will say graphically: Here is what happened when your roof wasn't properly tied down. Here is what happened when it was."

In the modern world it seems seeing is not just believing; seeing is understanding that you have got to do some things differently.