[Strawbale] Death in collapsing SB house

[Rob Tom]

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:58:35 -0400, <dfugler at cmhc-schl.gc.ca> wrote:
>
> Someone died in the collapse of a Quebec straw bale house under heavy  
> snow loads last weekend. He was able to evacuate the wife and children  
> before
> the roof fell in and crushed him. Here is a link to the story (in  
> French).
> I have learned that the house was straw bale from other sources. It is  
> not stated in the article.
>
> http://www.canoe.com/infos/societe/archives/2008/03/20080317-054702.html
>
> Someone with structural expertise should probably follow this up and
> report on it to the SB community.

I just did a quick search to see if there might be other reports in the  
media on this collapse (there are many it seems) and here are a couple of  
English-language hits, one (the first link below) with a photo that shows  
some straw bales laying on the ground.

http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/340935

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080316.wcollapse17/BNStory/National/home

I don't know that there's much to report to the SB community specifically  
WRT to SB structurally because the roof collapse would have to do with  
deficiencies in the roof framing and/or roof design. I recently posted a  
link to story about a roof collapse here in Ottawa (on a non-SB house)  
that occurred a few days before the Quebec SB house roof collapse.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SB-r-us, Message # 13525.

One of the stories reported that the Quebec SB home was owner-built and  
one might speculate that that may have also have been a factor.

But I suspect that the biggest factor in the collapse may have been that  
the house was deep in the woods.  Trees surrounding the home would prevent  
winds from sweeping some of the snow accumulations off of the roof and  
with the record snowfalls we've had this winter, it wouldn't take much to  
overload a roof built just to Code specs, especially if there was an  
eccentric loading situation (ie a north slope sheltered by the trees and  
in shade, south  slope exposed to sun & melt).

I spent part of last Saturday morning clearing off snow and ice that had  
accumulated on a sheltered porch roof on the north side of my own home, in  
anticipation of rains that the weather forecasters had predicted for the  
weekend but fortunately didn't come.

The low-slope porch roof is one storey below the main house roof and the  
snow/ice had piled up to the full height of the second storey wall (ie  
snow blocked out a second storey window) + the 2 ft depth of the parallel  
chord roof truss at the eave... so that the foot-or-so accumulation of  
snow on top of the main roof (metal) made a smooth slope of snow from the  
roof to the built-in gutters of the porch roof so that the show/ice was  
about 10 feet deep in the corner adjacent to two perpendicular walls.

If the rains had come and the snow had not been cleared off, the snow,  
like a sponge, would have sucked up the rain, further exacerbating the  
already overloaded condition of the roof.

I've been meaning to put a glass over-roof over that porch roof (to create  
a second storey porch) for quite some time now specifically so as to avoid  
having to shovel of that roof in years of extraordinary snowfalls but  
well, you know. Maybe I'll get around to it sometime this decade.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
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