Preventive Actions

What is involved in house reinforcement?

House reinforcement
DW works with families to strengthen houses that already exist. No two houses are the same. Each house is surveyed and assessed against the criteria of the ten key points of cyclone resistant construction. This assessment identifies the various weak points, works out what can be done with the materials and resources that are available, and what needs to be added. The work is discussed with the owner who has from the start participated in the assessment of her or his house. The costs are assessed and if the owner agrees, a contract is drawn up, and work can start. The house owner supervises the work and makes the arrangements for skilled labour and materials; the commune technical staff and DW oversees the work to make sure it is done well.

What can one do ?

• Typically, houses need their basic structure reinforced so that it will not be deformed by the pressure of water or wind.
• In the majority of houses, the different parts of the building are not tied together at all or insufficiently, which means that a roof covering can be sucked or blown off, or that the whole roof frame can be moved; to correct this, each component (roof truss, purlin, rafter, roof covering, supporting columns, etc.) needs to be tied to its adjacent component. This is done with metal connectors, wire and reinforcing bar.
• The veranda roof needs to be separated from the main roof, as verandas are very vulnerable, and one does not want their destruction to destroy the roof.
• Shutting doors and windows helps keep the walls and the roof intact, but many houses have no shutters, so these often need to be added. If shutters cannot resist, it is then important that there is a balance of openings in opposing sides of the house, so that pressure does not build up inside and push the roof off.

These are just a sample of the quite simple actions that can be taken to make a house secure. They take a few hours to do, and use skills that DW develops through training, but also use techniques that in almost all cases already existed in the commune but were not being applied through lack of knowledge.

A big weakness is that people often do not use relatively recently introduced materials very well, and that many buildings are unfinished.

The following example - Mr Le Van Lon’s House (Thuy Thanh) - is drawn from DW's 1999-2002 programme of work, and is provided here as a typical illustration of the survey process (using the 10 key principles as a benchmark) and of the actual costs of strengthening work and how this is shared.