How to Build To Withstand the Weather

My wife is a Filipina. Most of her family live in and around Cebu and Leyte. You might remember Leyte from Typhoon Haiyan last year that killed over 10000 Filipinos. A sad day for sure.

My wife didn't have direct relations living there but she did have friends who lost loved ones.

The Philippines gets at least 20 typhoons a year not to mention earthquakes, floods, and many other natural occurances. I keep thinking about our future and wanting to live in Cebu but the natural disasters there are certainly something I have to consider.

I look at the types of buildings available from nipa huts which are just wooden houses on stilts to the more regular style of breeze block buildings with wooden upper floors. Most of the houses are built as cheaply as possible due to the low wages and cost of materials. One thing always hits me, there are no round/cylindrical buildings. When you think of modern house building in fact virtually nowhere in the world will you find round house styles which is strange really.

The round shape gives a much stronger design while costing on average only 88% of material costs. If you imagine a force pushing against a round wall the force doesn't act on one point but is partly transfered around the whole wall making it able to withstand impacts better than a flat face.

Admittedly a round house needs a slightly wider land to achieve the same area for example a 10 metre by 10 metre house gives 100 square metres of floor space where as an 11.283 metre diameter round house gives the same area and with land at a premium this is out of the question for many Filipinos however not for me. I would prefer more land and build for less.

There are other bonuses to building round houses such as the shape which allows water and wind to flow around it instead of meeting resitance on flat faced dwellings.

The wind is also is less likely to try to lift the roof on a round house as the shape naturally means wind pushes the roof downward.

The more I think about the idea the more I am certain I will be building this style of house. Two floors with a central concrete column that will be used to support the roof and also replace load bearing walls. I can have curved balconies and a spiral staircase.

The best part of course is the ability to withstand all the types of weather that the Philippines can throw at me.