Building a (Storm-Resistant) Safe Room - a PDH Online Course for Engineers, Architects and Surveyors

Building a (Storm-Resistant) Safe Room

Course Outline

This three-hour online course begins with a discussion of the hazards against which safe rooms are intended to protect. Data are presented to help decide if building a safe room is appropriate for a given region. Then the discussion turns to planning a safe room. Considerations of safe room size, foundation type (basement, slab-on-grade, crawlspace or pile applications), new vs. existing homes, safe room location, construction materials, and costs are treated. A set of actual safe-room design drawings are included.

This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to enhance the understanding of the course materials.

Learning Objective

At the conclusion of this course, the student will:

Know procedures for assessing risk from high winds and determining if building a safe room is appropriate;
Be familiar with the similarities and differences of safe rooms designed for protection against hurricanes and for protection against tornadoes;
Be familiar with alternative safe-room locations such as underneath, in the basement, or in an interior room of a new home or small business;
Understand the effects of type of foundation on safe-room design;
Be aware of the special concerns arising when a safe room is constructed in the basement;
Know issues that arise when adding a safe room to an existing structure;
Be able to select appropriate construction materials;
Be familiar with those safe-room designs for homes or small businesses that meet or exceed the minimum shelter design requirements from the ICC-500 Storm Shelter Standard; and
Be able to estimate costs for safe-room construction.

Intended Audience

This course is intended in general for civil, construction, structural and mechanical engineers, and would be of particular interest to engineers employed in government agencies and the military concerned with residential construction practices.

Benefit to Attendees

An attendee of this course will be able to design a residential or small-business safe room and to review knowledgeably designs proposed by others.

Course Introduction

Having a safe room for your home or small business can help provide near-absolute protection for you and your family or employees from injury or death caused by the dangerous forces of extreme winds. Near-absolute protection means that, based on our current knowledge of tornadoes and hurricanes, the occupants of a safe room built according to this course will have a high probability of being protected from injury or death.

Course Content

This course is based on the technical publication: Taking shelter from the Storm, Building a Safe Room For Your Home or Small Business, FEMA P-320, Dec. 2008 4th edition.

Taking shelter from the Storm, Building a Safe Room For Your Home or Small Business, FEMA P-320

Please click on the above underlined hypertext to view, download or print the document for your study. Because of the large file size, we recommend that you first save the file to your computer by right clicking the mouse and choosing "Save Target As ...", and then open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you still experience any difficulty in downloading or opening this file, you may need to close some applications or reboot your computer to free up some memory.

Course Summary

Information for deciding if a safe room is appropriate is presented. Factors in planning the safe room, such as room size, new construction vs. retrofit, and room location are described. The particular problems arising from rooms in basements, in houses built on slab-on-grade or crawlspace foundations are discussed. Information about construction materials and cost estimating conclude the course. Sample design drawings are given.

Related Links

For additional technical information related to this subject, please visit the following websites or web pages:

https://www.fema.gov/safe-rooms

Quiz

Once you finish studying the above course content, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.

DISCLAIMER: The materials contained in the online course are not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of PDH Center or any other person/organization named herein. The materials are for general information only. They are not a substitute for competent professional advice. Application of this information to a specific project should be reviewed by a registered architect and/or professional engineer/surveyor. Anyone making use of the information set forth herein does so at their own risk and assumes any and all resulting liability arising therefrom.