What’s the Connection between the Three Little Pigs and the Angus Tornado?

Although you are no doubt quite familiar with the bedtime tale of the Three Little Pigs. Are you aware of the Three Little Pigs project? As one might suspect there is a commonality between the two. We know that the title characters in the first case each built their house of different building materials. The Three Little Pigs Project is more formally known as the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes. Western University in its overview depicts its lab as a multi-million dollar research facility built to examine all aspects of house construction by performing experiments including extreme wind effects.

What’s the Connection between the Three Little Pigs project and the Angus Tornado? Western University’s lead researcher, Gregory Kopp, pointed out that their research, reported in the Toronto Star, has found “that small, low cost measures can prevent family homes from common tornado and hurricane damage.” Knopp says, “that [though] its counter-intuitive for builders [to think of holding the roof down] because they think of holding the roof up with walls…but in a windstorm you have to hold the roof down. In particular, he says, the installation of what’s known as “hurricane straps”- small pieces of metal that bind the roof truss to the top of the wall-can help enormously. He estimates the cost per house to be about one hundred bucks. Kopp says replacing two-inch nails holding down plywood roof sheeting with 2.5-inch nails, for example can double binding strengths. And the difference in cost is probably pennies per house.”

Joe Vaccaro, CEO of the Ontario Homes builder Association says, “It isn’t their cost, but their absence from the building code that dissuades builders from installing straps [or often making other changes].”

Hopefully, the research being done at the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes will provide the necessary evidence to support changes in the building code to ensure the construction of homes more resistant to wind damage.

Nancy Wales, CSJ