Past storms such as Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo, Charley, Katrina, and
Rita, and recent events such as Hurricane Ike continue to show the
vulnerability of our built environment. While good design and
construction cannot totally eliminate risk, every storm has shown
that sound design and construction can significantly reduce the
risk to life and damage to property. With that in mind, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has developed this manual to
help the community of homebuilders, contractors, and local
engineering professionals in rebuilding homes destroyed by
hurricanes, and designing and building safer and less vulnerable
new homes. The intent of the manual is to provide homebuilders,
contractors, and engineering professionals with a series of
recommended foundation designs that will help create safer and
stronger buildings in coastal areas. The designs are intended to
help support rebuilding efforts after coastal areas have been
damaged by floods, high winds, or other natural hazards. The
foundations may differ somewhat from traditional construction
techniques; however, they represent what are considered to be some
of the better approaches to constructing strong and safe
foundations in hazardous coastal areas. The objectives used to
guide the development of this manual are: To provide residential
foundation designs that will require minimal engineering oversight;
To provide foundation designs that are flexible enough to
accommodate many of the homes identified in A Pattern Book for Gulf
Coast Neighborhoods prepared for the Mississippi Governor's
Rebuilding Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal; To
utilize model layouts so that many homes can be constructed without
significant additional engineering efforts. The focus of this
document is on the foundations of residential buildings. The
assumption is that those who are designing and building new homes
will be responsible for ensuring that the building itself is
designed according to the latest building code (International
Building Code(r), International Residential Code(r), and FEMA
guidance) and any local requirements. The user of this manual is
directed to other publications that also address disaster-resistant
construction. Although the foundation designs are geared to the
coastal environment subject to storm surge, waves, floating debris,
and high winds, several are suitable for supporting homes on sites
protected by levees and floodwalls or in riverine areas subjected
to high-velocity flows. Design professionals can be contacted to
ensure the foundation designs provided in this manual are suitable
for specific sites. This edition of FEMA 550 introduces the Case H
foundation, which is an open/deep foundation developed for use in
coastal high hazard areas (V zones). It is also appropriate to use
the Case H foundation in Coastal A and non-coastal A zones. Case H
foundations incorporate elevated reinforced concrete beams that
provide three important benefits. One, the elevated beams work in
conjunction with the reinforced concrete columns and grade beams to
produce a structural frame that is more efficient at resisting
lateral loads than the grade beams and cantilevered columns used in
other FEMA 550 open foundations. The increased efficiency allows
foundations to be constructed with smaller columns that are less
exposed to flood forces. The second benefit is that the elevated
reinforced concrete beams provide a continuous foundation that can
support many homes constructed to prescriptive designs from codes
and standards such as the IRC, the American Forest and Paper
Association's Wood Frame Construction Manual for One- and
Two-Family Dwellings (WFCM), and the International Code Council's
Standard for Residential Construction in High Wind Regions
(ICC-600). The third benefit that Case H foundations provide is the
ability to support relatively narrow homes. It is anticipated that
Case H foundations can be used for several styles of modular ho
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