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Just curious about the insurance issue. My understanding from earlier reads here is that you can't get lava insurance. What you have is fire insurance, which is normally sufficient as the lava catches and burns the house before it crushes it. What if you have a fire proof steel or castleblock house? Are you then left in a gap, insurance wise?
Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.
Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.
Posts: 8,470
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Joined: May 2003
Interesting question. I own Castleblock and I have a Castleblock house. It's structure is 4-hr fire rated at 2,000 degrees. It is quite capable of withstanding a lot but I don't project my house would be more capable than Pele in the long run. Enough thousands of degress for enough hours and I think I'd be collecting on my policy.
Meanwhile every town and district in America has a fire department. They don't have tornado, earthquake, hurricane and termite departments - they have fire departments. The one most consistant threat to life and property is fire. In that vein having a 4 hour fire rated structure, I think, serves me well. Very rare for a house fire to exceed 4 hours at 2,000 degrees - and have the structure survive..
Assume the best and ask questions.
Punaweb moderator
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I was thinking an `a`a flow might crush the house before it had enough time to burn if it's a very fire resistant house. I'm still thinking castle block or your other product on stem walls. Steel also sounds interesting if the rust issue can be overcome. I'm also thinking I need to figure out how much land prices need to drop before it makes sense to sell my lots and take a loss and then buy new lots at lower prices.
Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.
Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.
Posts: 485
Threads: 49
Joined: Dec 2006
Another factor to consider with steel home and commercial building kits, as it turns out, is that you may need to have a crane move the container off the flatbed at your site, versus the usual big forklift(s) doing it.
A container loaded with steel I-beams nearly maxes out the weight limit on shipping containers.
The Port of Hilo can offload a near weight-maxed container and set it atop a flatbed chassis without difficulty, but the big forklifts appear to have difficulty once a 40' container has reached its destination. A 20' container was offloaded OK by the big forklifts, but on the first 40' container the forklifts were tipped forward at an alarming angle when they tried to offload the container, so they backed off and a crane had to be brought in. Because of all the oversize flagging escort and faldarall involved with moving a crane to and from Hilo, this gets into a bit of expense and bother.
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Astonishing skill! This archer is a real-life Legolas and then some!
http://geekologie.com/2013/11/real-life-...rs-anc.php
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