Adding a storm shelter

[newbury]

It's not quite the same but this thread reminds me of the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960's. Many folks in the town where I grew up installed radiation proof underground bomb shelters. My mother wanted one but my father was more pragmatic. "You can't live in one forever. If there's a nuclear war, there won't be much left to come out to."

The same philosophy doesn't apply to tornadoes, since they are relatively short lived and fairly localized. The idea of having a safe place to go is the same though and the construction methods were much the same as being discussed here.

My Father and Grandfather built a duplex for the family in 1963 in northern Vermont on 30 acres.
My Dad, a former pilot who had been in the Army Air Corps, worked at IBM in Essex Junction, Vt.
We were about 25 miles from the Plattsburgh SAC base, considered a prime nuclear bomb target.
So they built a bomb shelter, about 10x15, thankfully never used for it's primary purpose. Made a great root cellar eventually.

 

[westcliffe01]

Put a jack inside for just in case.

Yes, buy a high lift jack and weld on an extension pipe so it can be set on the floor to jack against the door if needed and weld a piece of heavy angle to the inside of the door that gives a non slip point to jack against.

 

[Joel/ak]

We live in an older house and we have a room in the basement that used to be the coal room. When built they actually reinforced walls. Been thinking of throwing a steel door on it and using it for a shelter/ gun room.

 

[3Ts]

For anyone building a storm room, you should really use an actual storm door. They are different than all other doors and are more expensive as a result. The storm doors are heavier steel, more deadbolts, and longer dead bolts. There was a couple that built a storm room with an exterior steel door with a regular dead bolt. During a storm they were in the storm shelter and an impact on the door bent it such that the dead bolt pulled out of it's socket in the frame and the door was pushed into the room. They did not survive.

There are engineered drawings from FEMA that show how to build a storm shelter. Now, having said all that, any amount of reinforcing is better than none even if it doesn't meet the FEMA specs.

Here are things to consider for a storm shelter. There are 91 pages in the PDF, the actual drawings for a storm shelter start on page 75.

storm shelter considerations

 

[RSKY]

We live in an older house and we have a room in the basement that used to be the coal room. When built they actually reinforced walls. Been thinking of throwing a steel door on it and using it for a shelter/ gun room.

The guy that taught our Concealed Carry class has a room like that. Actually bought an old bank vault door and had it installed. Of course he had, as of ten years ago, 17 AR-15s, 18 AK-47s. all kinds of other guns and a belt fed Browning machine gun. He did mention that it could be a tornado shelter.

RSKY

 

[airbiscuit]

Great combo room - Storm Shelter/Looter Deterrent