Expert: Bruce E. Johnson - 2/17/2011

Question
My home is 22oo sq.ft,brick, with 2 bedroom frame addition.  Crawl space is 18". Can I purchase pylons or ?, to help protect my home from earthquakes?  What kind of support do i need and where might I find the product?.  I don't live in an earthquake zone....but they are coming, and have had sizemic 4 already. Thanks .

Answer
Hi JoAnne, earthquakes are hard to retrofit for mainly because the foundation is what is affected the most during the event since it is in the shaking ground.  The foundation transfers the shaking to the structure causing the damage.  Your best course of action is to make sure that the structure of the house is well secured to itself, i.e. the trusses properly anchored the floor joists and supports attached properly to one another, this type of thing. This allows the house to move around during a quake but holds the pieces together.  It sounds like you might be living in Arkansas?  I have heard that there have been several seismic events recently in that state.  By keeping all of your foundation elements connected using clips  and other anchorage devices there will be less of a tendency of one or more of these supports to break loose and move far enough away as to allow a beam to sag.  As far as your brick goes brick homes seem to hold up rather well in seismic events.  The bricks, if they are not complete dislodged, will move and sway with the ground to some extent and unless you are right over a strong epicenter of 6 or stronger I don't think you have much to worry about.  I hope this information helps, please feel free to write again regarding this or other matters, sincerely bruce e johnson..bejohnsonconsulting.com