Looking Back: Designing the House

“It would be better for true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.”

Daniel Bernoulli

This house was not designed to be beautiful. Rather than being based on aesthetics, the size and shape of the house were based on the physical dynamics of wanting to build a strong oceanfront house in a high velocity hurricane zone. Those forces of nature set a group of constraints in place which became the ruling body for most of the design decisions.

It’s all because of Daniel Bernoulli, and just before him in history, Isaac Newton, who were both smart guys a very long time ago. Both worked on what we now call “lift,” but neither used that word in his work. Here’s more than you might want to know about why it matters for a beach house, borrowed without permission from the folks online:

Bernoulli’s Principle, in physics, is the concept that as the speed of a moving fluid (liquid or gas) increases, the pressure within that fluid decreases. Originally formulated in 1738 by Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli, it states that the total energy in a steadily flowing fluid system is a constant along the flow path. An increase in the fluid’s speed must therefore be matched by a decrease in its pressure. The Bernoulli effect contributes to the damage caused by violent storms such as hurricanes and tornados by reducing the pressure above a roof and lifting the roof. (Wind = moving air; Air is made up of gasses; Gasses are fluids.)

Bernoulli's principle gives the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the roof, rather than the force directly. Pressure is force divided by area, so the force is the pressure times the area of the roof. The air inside the house is still, there are no elevation differences, and the wind is blowing over the roof. Bernoulli's equation tells us the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the roof is one half the air density multiplied by the wind speed squared. If the air density is 1.3 kilograms per cubic meter, and the wind speed is about 67 meters per second (=150 miles per hour - a strong hurricane), the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the roof is 3000 Newtons per square meter or 0.4 pounds per square inch. This pressure sounds insignificant, but the total force is the pressure times the area. A modest home might have a roof area of 1000 square feet. There are 144 square inches in a square foot. Multiplying 1000 by 144 by 0.4 pounds per square inch gives a lifting force of about 60,000 pounds (30 tons!). Higher wind speeds will produce even greater lifting forces. If the roof lifts from the house, the wind blowing under the roof equalizes the pressure below and above. With no lifting force, it crashes down. In the brief time the roof is suspended, entering winds can blow the walls outward. So it looks like the house exploded. There is a myth that opening a window before a tornado can prevent a house from exploding. The NOAA does NOT recommend this practice. Opening a window won't help, since most houses are already ventilated.

More simply put, if the roof is lost, the house goes with it. If a window or a door breaks or there is a hole in a wall, the roof is lost and the house goes with it. We don’t want to lose the house, so the house has a hip roof with a 5 -12 pitch over a shoebox whose dimensions were governed by the optimal pitch for the roof. Hopefully, it will be a beautiful shoebox (Jimmy Choo or Prada, not Converse), but the shape was not to be changed regardless of how the interior spaces would need to be put together. The shoebox could be longer, but not deeper (size 12N, but not 8W)

With scissors and a ruler and pieces of graph paper, Vince and I started putting the design of the house together back in the early winter of 200i, fitting cut pieces of paper together like a puzzle to get the basic layout of the house. There were plenty of appropriate squares and rectangles for all the rooms and functions, but the space looked institutional, like a rabbit’s warren with long narrow halls and rooms on either side. We needed some help from a person who could take that immutable rectangle and find a beautiful home within it. At first, we tried working with a couple of local OBX house designers, but the process didn’t go well. By asking around in Annapolis, MD., (where we lived) I heard about Cathy Cherry and read her web-site. Just from the words on her web-site back then, the tremendous energy and spirit of this woman bounced from the page. When I spoke with her, I knew she would be wonderful for us, and there was also the sense that she was strong and savvy and quick enough to work well with Vince.

Walking into Cathy’s design studio for the first time, I found myself hoping that she wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at me that Vince and I live in utter chaos. I fervently wished that I could be better than I am about things like knowing the exactly best and right place for the silverware and always getting the old newspapers out to the recycling bin. I just wasn’t born with the domestic gene, and I have never been able to grow one, so some of the usual questions were hard to answer. The good news is that Cathy is a very human person, acknowledging with an impish grin that everyone is guilty of similar household sins, like having drippy coffee cups and doggy floors to keep up with. At that first meeting long ago, ideas and sketches were rebounding from one person to the other, and after about four hours, we had a good beginning. Cathy opened up the interior, creating a bookcase vestibule in the center of the first floor and moving the open staircase to the ocean side of the house in front of a wall of windows. Those three design elements are still our favorites in the house and have remained clear in our hopes and dreams all this time. There were plenty of lively discussions, with Cathy patiently listening to Vince’s zipping around with his ideas and waiting for me to more slowly consider each new aspect and then responding with a fast pencil drawing option after option. At other times, she would look right at us saying, “I’m not going to let you do that. It’s a mistake and here’s why…” I remember her asking, “So, where will you find your trashcan?” “Where do you lay your hairbrush,” “Are you sure you understand how close this wall is to…” and “When I come to your house, I will know exactly where to find the toothpaste”. I think that Cathy intuitively sees whole people going through their days within the house and then designs the walls and floors and windows to support real life: Wet towels, sandy feet and all.

From the time Hurricane Isabel hit in 2003 until last fall, 2007, our plans sat waiting somewhere in a Purple Cherry file. The house design needed to be reworked for a lot of reasons, and plans were made for Cathy to do the work even though weren’t in Annapolis. The core of the house is basically the same as it was in 2003, but the layout and the way the house will function is much better. Live and learn and then apply what you learn. Right?

Designing a house is not a simple task. Many, many hours were spent working with Cathy and also with Brain Bassindale, our project manager. Once the basic space was organized, there were the details of how the doors would open and what shape the kitchen island would be and where to put the light switches and at which corner to fit the shower. With a house on the beach, it is important to consider where the sun will be for the better part of the day and what might happen when a nor’easter comes through and everyone is socked in. The hundreds of bits and pieces that make up daily life all stand up to be counted in this process, leading to a bit of introspection. (“Wow. Do I really do that?” “Why do we have to have…?”) One thing becomes obvious: The house will be new, but the people will not be new. Looking at the differences in people with a grain of salt and a sense of humor goes a long way in a lot of situations. Cathy was so good about this aspect of the discussions, showing tact and diplomacy when she must have often wondered what spaceship dropped us off in her design studio.

Great suggestions came from friends and family along the way. Our talented friend Kathy Creel solved in about 15 minutes one dilemma that had plagued us for months. A few changes have been made since we said good-bye to Cathy and Brian in Annapolis, and we have the help of a great house designer in Kitty Hawk: Mike York at York Residential Design. Astonishing the number of people who have a part in this house!

In the long course of this blog, there will be a lot of to say about how each structural aspect impacted the completion of the design, from being determined to have no penetrations in the roof, to the type of insulation used and the impact of 8” walls on window sills. A good architect, besides needing to know how to make beauty and organization from the chaos of brainstorms, also has to know building materials, wiring, plumbing systems, tile, wood, soffits, and even about Bernoulli, visualizing all the pieces and how they will function together in the structure. Now, Cathy and Purple Cherry Architects have plunged deeply into something new that she is calling Purpose Driven Architecture (http://www.purplecherry.com/news/view/23). It seems to me that what Cathy has done all along has been purpose driven architecture, and it is her gift. Vince and I are thankful to have Cathy’s vibrant energy and spirit, as well as her talent and expertise, in all the nooks and crannies of our house.

Cathy Purple Cherry

Looking Back: Finding our builder

Back in the 1940’s, Woody Guthrie wrote a song for his children called, Bling Blang. The second verse goes like this:

Bling! Blang! Hammer with my hammer
Zingo, Zango, cutting with my saw.

I’ll grab some mud and you grab some clay
So when it rains it won’t wash away
We’ll build a house, it’ll be so strong
The wind will sing my baby a song

Bling! Blang! Hammer with my hammer
Zingo, Zango, cutting with my saw

Choosing a builder is the most important decision when starting a new house. All of the good ideas and knowledge in the world can’t build a house. It takes hammers and nails and shingles and sweat and being at the job until it’s completed. It takes the right person and the right spirit and the right sub-contractors to put all of the pieces together and end up with a beautiful, strong house on the last day of the job. It takes knowledge and experience and a lot of perseverance and patience, not to mention a sense of diplomacy and tact, as well as a good dose of hard work and good luck. We have all of these things in our builder, and this is how we found him. It makes you realize how much sheer good fortune has influenced so many things about our house…or was it magic?

For the week of the new millennium, Vince rented us a condo on the beach in Duck. While there, we decided to hunt for a builder for our eventual house. Starting from scratch, we made a list of names by looking around in the phone book and from seeing the signs near new construction on the beach. At the time, we knew we wanted to build a strong house, and we knew that it would truly be a custom house…not someone else’s ideas. It would have been hard to imagine how far our dreams and Vince’s research would eventually take us in terms of building specifications. Vince knew the constraints given by the physics of construction in a high velocity hurricane zone, though he had only just begun to scratch the surface of what would be learned over the next eight years. Needing some kind of instrument for comparison, we decided to use a test question for each builder that we interviewed.

Some years back, during Vince’s career at the Naval Research Center in Annapolis, he worked on the design of a fire suppression system for submarines. The design was like a sprinkler system that releases mist, rather than streams of water, so that the fire is smothered and extinguished with a relatively small amount of water damage. It’s a system that would work well in a private home, so we decided to tell each builder that we wanted to install a system like that in our house and to ask if he could so that for us. If the builder listened with interest and responded with curiosity, that company would be a reasonable prospect. The first stop was an interview with a large, well-known construction company. It did not go well. The representative began by telling us all the things that we would want to put in our house. When Vince responded with some of the things we really DID want to put in our house, the man said, “Oh, no. You don’t want that. You want blah blah blah.” When it came time to ask the test question, we already knew this would not be our company, but Vince asked it anyway. The response was, “You don’t need that.” End of conversation.

For many companies on the beach at that time, a custom design meant that the home owner could opt for one of a few given layouts and also choose what colors would be used in the house. That was it. Most of the houses being built were to be used for summer rental programs or vacation homes, and not many were being built for year around residence. That’s true today as well, though not nearly as many rental houses are going up. Neither Vince nor I had ever lived another person’s plan of any kind, and we had seen some wonderfully individual houses, so we knew someone was out there for us!

One of the construction companies on our list was “BC Custom Builders.” Since the word “custom” was in the name of the company, we had high hopes and made an appointment to see them. Walking into an office in Kitty Hawk we saw a Christmas tree decorated with little houses. We met a man named Ben Cubler, who was/is the founding president of the company. With Ben was his son, Karl, who formed the company with his dad in 1989, and Karl’s wife, Elizabeth, who worked closely with them. Vince and I liked them all immediately. Ben and Karl were clearly committed to quality construction. Both were extremely knowledgeable about building houses up in our area of the beach, having vacationed and explored there since the early 1980’s. In recent years, Karl and Elizabeth had built a house in the north part of Carova Beach and knew it well, so their experience was in depth and first hand. Ideas for the house were met with nods and good counter-questions, and finally…Vince asked the test question. Karl said, “What a great idea. I think we can do that!” Good answer.

On New Year’s Day, Karl drove Vince, Addie and me around to look at some of the houses that they had built. The work was beautiful. One house had a juniper ceiling that was perfectly stunning, and we saw different choices for siding and interior finishes. Karl had an obvious level of involvement and friendship with the people whose houses he built, and it was good to see.

In the years that followed, while we planned the house and planted the dune grass, Vince and I rented a couple of BC’s houses up in Carova, so that we could have some experience with actually staying in BC houses. We wanted to try out the plumbing and to see for ourselves if things that were wobbly or awkwardly put together. Everything that we saw affirmed our initial impression of BC’s good work.

Over the next three years, we worked with Ben, Karl and Elizabeth to get a basic plan for the house and to schedule when we would build. Their experience and input set us firmly on the path of the research that has been done ever since: Reading FEMA reports, learning about materials and technological advancements for this kind of construction, understanding CAMA, on and on. BC spent a tremendous amount of time with us finalizing our original design plans and conferring with our architect, Cathy Cherry. Vince was reading myriads of information about Coastal Construction and sending reams of documents to Karl and Ben. Finally, in the fall of 2003, we were ready to break ground in early November, and then came Hurricane Isabel.

I will never forget Elizabeth’s phone call when she said, “You have to understand that there is nothing left. No dune. No grass. It’s flat, like a pancake…like the desert.”

And so here we are again, five years later with a new sand dune and a lot of grass, working with Karl and Elizabeth and actually building our house. Ben Cubler is happily retired. BC has taken huge strides in the last 8 years, always looking ahead, learning more, and expanding horizons. Karl frequently tells me that “we are all flawed human beings, doing the best that we can to make something wonderful happen. We work together. We try hard, and it usually comes out well in the end.” How fortunate for us that they chose to put the word “custom” in the name of their company. (http://www.bccustombuilders.com/)

Looking Back: Building the Dune

“I believe that a leaf of grass is no less than a journey-work of the stars”
Walt Whitman

It’s been all about the grass, really: Sand fence and beach grass, though we didn’t know it at first. The wind blows the sand across the beach, and the sand fence slows the grains of sand down enough for them to drop onto the land and gather into mounds. The beach grass grows forward with deep roots that help to hold the sand in place, and the grass fronds trap sea oat pods so that they can safely take root. The sea oats grow in clumps that are strong and secure, with a deep network of ever-expanding roots. That’s what makes a sand dune grow and stay in place. It doesn’t happen by itself. Sand fence alone will gather sand, but without the plants to hold it there, a new dune can be in place one day and gone the next day, at the whim of the tide and the wind. During a hurricane, the dune system protects the land from damage and erosion largely by buying time against the elements of the storm. The longer it takes for the dune to be destroyed, the more the house and land is protected as the storm moves away. That’s important.

The local folks told us a lot of stories about how to plant beach grass. There were some creative approaches, including using a broom handle to both create the hole and push in the sprig, but common sense, what we read and what we heard were not in agreement. We tried several things before Vince finally designed a tool for planting that would work for us. This tool is a long dibble that can be used from a standing position, so that Vince can poke holes in the sand at the correct depth for planting, and I can then drop in the sprigs and fill the holes. Vince machined the dibble at home and had it welded by one of his friends at the Navy Lab. It's made of stainless steel, so it will be a useful tool for a very long time. It’s really too heavy, but it works for us. One year, we planted more than 6,000 sprigs across the winter. I complained, but it was a good thing to do.

The first time we ever planted beach grass was over Christmas. 2000 / New Year’s 2001. It was unusually cold, and the ground was frozen. We used the fireplace poker from the house we had rented to poke the holes. The grass that we planted thrived, but we didn’t get many sprigs in the ground that day!

The grass that we call “dune grass,” but whose name is really “American Beach Grass,” needs to be planted in the winter. We buy the grass sprigs in bundles of 250 from Central Garden, a nursery in Kitty Hawk. Each grass sprig must have its own hole, though we sometimes put two sprigs together. Vince and I can do this job, he poking the holes with me skittering along on the sand dropping in the sprigs, for about two hours, maybe three, and that’s enough for one day.

When Vince and I bought the lot in August, 1999, it was flat. At the time, we had no idea how important it was that the lot NOT be flat, especially not flat enough to easily see the breakers from the very back end of the property! Vince and I didn’t own a 4wd vehicle, and we were busy with other parts of life, so we didn’t go back up to the lot until Christmas, 2000. Not checking on the property was a mistake. People had been using it as a drive-through short cut to get to the properties on the next row back, creating a big depressed swath from front to back. Taking Ben Cubler’s advice, we had some guys put up the first of many, many rows of sand fence (they call it “sand fencin’”). It was New Year’s Eve, and those boys were already drinking, but the fence did go in. It was a beginning, at least. From then on, we fenced and planted, fenced and planted, and by the winter of 2002 / 2003, there was enough of a little bump of a dune and enough thriving grass sprigs to hope that we could get a CAMA (Coastal Area Management Act) permit. Firm plans were made to build the house that next fall. The Severna Park house was renovated and put on the market, I sold my school, Vince retired from Uncle Sam and began a temporary double dipping job in Arlington, VA., and we rented a little “beach box” house in Kill Devil Hills so that I could watch over the construction.

Two weeks later, on September 18, 2003, Hurricane Isabel took our entire sand dune, leaving the land scoured bare and flat, like a pancake…or the desert… flatter than flat! There was not a sprig of beach grass to be found anywhere, but the big clump of sea oats on the northeast corner survived. We were completely devastated, and it was time to start over.

In late September, 2003, North Carolina Sea Grant published The Dune Book, by Spencer Rogers and David Nash. Spencer Rogers has been the coastal construction and erosion specialist for NC Sea Grant in Wilmington, NC, since 1978. David Nash has been as extension agent in coastal management and commercial horticulture for the NC Cooperative Extension in Brunswick and New Hanover Counties since 1993. Vince and I attended a dune building workshop presented by NC Sea Grant after Hurricane Isabel, and we later spoke with Spencer Rogers by phone about rebuilding our dune. The processes Rogers and Nash describe are really effective, and we listened to them. With a lot of sand fence, thousands of grass sprigs, and 200 sea oat sprigs, the peak of our frontal dune is now about 20’.

The Dune Book can be purchased or downloaded from the NC Sea Grant website at:
http://www.ncseagrant.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=news_item&id=238

This is what the lot looked like after the hurricane: Very bleak.

By obtaining a CAMA minor permit in late autumn that year, we were allowed to have enough sand hauled in to jump start the new dune. Mark Thompson did the hauling, sculpting a mound about 4’ high and 20’ deep across the 120’ width of the lot. New sand fence was put in across the winter, and we planted beach grass at every opportunity. When the weather warmed, Vince and I planted 200 sea oat seedlings bought from Angie Kite at Coinjock Farms. Our dream for the new house was still alive and well, but it was in the nebulous future and completely dependent on the whims of the wind and the sea. Vince was determined to get that dune back into shape, and we spent a tremendous amount of time and energy either fencing or planting or fertilizing. By 2005, Vince had become dissatisfied with hiring local men to put in sand fence, and we began to do the work ourselves.

Putting in sand fence is hard work. We bought 50' rolls of sand fence and 4x4 posts at the Home Depot in Kitty Hawk, about 12 miles south of our house in Duck. We then hauled the materials up to the lot, which is about 25 miles north of Duck. Vince dug the holes and set the posts, and together we strung the sand fence from pole to pole, nailing the fence to the posts with staples and then tightening each weave. Vince did most of the work, and my job was to hold the fencing steady. Working together, we could manage about 3 roles in a couple of hours, but we were exhausted. Vince by himself could do two rolls in about two hours... also exhausting. In the winter of 2006/2007, Vince decided that we were up against impossible odds and bought himself a Milwaukee Hole Hawg drill, a 4' long, 5" diameter augur, and a small 1200 watt generator. With those three things, we could put in 30 posts in an hour, and stringing the sand fence was much easier. That winter, we did a huge amount of work, installing about 40 rolls of sand fence all over the lot. It was such a relief to have a good working system in place. Putting in the fence is still hard work, but what we have gained from it is incredible.

As a side note, it is important to understand that the damage from Hurricane Isabel came not from the wind as much as from the unusually high storm surge (26’ one mile out). If our house had been standing, it would not have been damaged.

Vince and I will always be working on our sand dune, planting and fencing, fencing and planting. Over time, we want to add more species of plants that thrive in our environment, because each one helps the others to survive, and they will help us to survive. In time and with another storm, we may have to build it again from scratch, but we can do that. It will help that the house will be there and the coffee pot and bathroom waiting.

Here are two slideshows to show the lot in 2003, before Hurricane Isabel, and then this year when we decided to build.

Beginning Construction: Pilings in the ground at last!

Carefully watched over by a Chocolate Lab named Keya, a man named Duncan Aydlett and his crew have completed the job of putting our pilings in the ground. Duncan started Lightning Marine Construction in 1991, and his experience is obvious even to an unpracticed eye. ( see http://lightningmarine.com/) Vince and I went up to the site on Monday (7/14) and watched them put in three pilings in about an hour. I spoke to Duncan, who said that they had never put in pilings this deep before and that the work is really hard on the men. It was very hot out there with no wind behind the dune, so I know that’s true. For their sakes, I was glad that we are having days with highs in the 80’s and not the 90’s or worse. Duncan told me that the Chocolate Lab, Kaia, is his dog and that the name means “turtle” in an Indian language, though he didn’t say which. I have read that "Keya" means a lot of beautiful things in several languages, all having to do with the earth and beauty, so it’s a great name for a Lab. This dog was named Keya/turtle, because of the way he laid with his paws turned out like a swimming sea turtle as a puppy. Keya was clearly very much an old hand on the job site, patiently adjusting his position as the men moved the equipment, digging for cool spots in the sand, and finally taking a nap in the shade under the truck. I felt good about the work and the man, knowing that there was a Lab on site.

Duncan had Rick House’s well-used piling layout in his hand, and he and another one of the men marked off the spots where each piling should go. Since the holes are so deep, I wondered how they could possibly know how far into the sand to dig, but each post is marked at about 16’, 18’ and 22’, so they can read the depths from the top down. Steve, who operates the crane, is like the choreographer in a ballet, moving the boom and augur around the site as exactly as if it were his own arm and hand. First, he lowers the augur tip to the spot Duncan has measured and marked, digs down to first one level and then another, shaking the accumulated sand off the augur in between, like a wet animal without a towel. The augur is huge, making a clean round hole about 2 feet in diameter. When it comes up out of the hole caked with sand, it looks like a fat round man after eating too much at a big meal. After digging the hole, Steve then moves the boom over to grab one of the pilings from the stack. There is a big hook that is on a reel that allows the hook to be pulled farther from and then back towards the rig. Another worker takes the big hook and loops it into a piece of wire rope that is on the piling. The boom slowly lifts and drags the piling until it is erect over the hole, and then it is lowered in. Several of the men guide the piling as it sinks deeper and deeper into the ground. Judging from the marks on the piling, the augured holes are about 16 feet deep. The hole is deepened the last six or so feet by jetting an intense stream of water down into the hole as the men push the piling deeper and deeper until it reaches the 22 foot mark. This process is a muddy mess, and the water and wet sand are everywhere. The water comes from temporary shallow wells that are dug on site and stored in a tank called the mule. The strength of the jetted stream comes from the power of the pump. Finally, Duncan makes sure the piling is standing level, the men fill in the hole, and they do it all again. .. about 44 times.

When I went back up to the lot on Thursday (7/17), I found Duncan grilling hamburgers for the guys under a tarp. I met Steve’s little Yorkie, Rusty, who also spends his days at work, carefully tucked out of harm’s way in the truck and watched over by all the men on the site. The pilings are surely one of the most important elements of having a strong house, and I was glad to know that such a good crew did that work for us.

It seemed that getting the pilings started would take forever! Once Karl ordered the pilings, there was a problem between Kellogg’s (the lumber yard) and the piling source. When the order was corrected, there was an issue with getting the pilings treated, because the treatment facility was not equipped to handle the larger pilings. The piling treatment had to be outsourced to a commercial facility. Once they were finally delivered to Kellogg’s, a special truck was needed to get the pilings up to our lot, since they were too long for the typical delivery truck and too heavy to be carried in just one or two trips up the beach. Mark Thompson came to the rescue with his big 8-10 ton military truck, (he can haul ANYTHING!) and hauled them up there in a couple of trips. SO, the right pilings with the right treatment finally arrived on the lot on Monday, 7/14. Next, there had to be a piling inspection by the Currituck County Building Inspector to make sure there were no knots or other deformities that would make them too weak to support our house. Having passed the inspection, the first piling was installed on Wednesday afternoon. As of Friday evening, July 18, the last of the pilings were in the ground and tamped. Vince and I had planned to be there watching and toasting the event with champagne, but since it was so long past the time that we expected things to begin, neither of us could be there for the first ones. It was a moment that I truly wanted to see, especially since it was only a once in a lifetime occurrence!

Things became a bit more complicated because we made the decision to use very long pilings: 34 footers. The usual pilings are 24 feet long, with 8 feet off the ground and 16 feet in the ground, so ours had to be specially ordered. (That’s a BIG tree!) According to Vince, FEMA guidelines recommend that pilings for ocean front houses be 10 feet below MSL (mean sea level). Our lot has an elevation of 12 feet above MSL, so that adds up to 22 feet in the ground. We are putting the house nearly 11 feet above the sand, so that’s 33 feet of piling, with the extra foot allowed for leveling and some discrepancy in the depths. At our location on the beach, flood level is considered to be 12’ above MSL, so our grade is at flood level. The problem that arises during a high water event (translation: hurricane or nor’easter) is that when water flows onto the land from the sea, the wave action erodes the sand around the pilings and eventually causes the piling to lose its lateral support. Here in North Carolina, we call that process “wallering out,” as in “the hole got wallered out.” When the force of the wind then pushes on the weakened piling system, the house does what is called “racking,” leaning farther and farther until it falls over. The deeper pilings provide support that shouldn’t “waller out” with the depth and energy of the water that we expect in North Carolina, so there you go…longer pilings are important! A toppled over house is NOT a good thing! For the extra long pilings and the different facility for the treatment and the additional hauling, we paid about $5,000.00 more than if we had used the standard 24 foot pilings. Definitely a case of something worth its weight in gold.

Whew!