Designing and Building in a Floodplain

Waterfront properties are among the most desirable home-sites in the world. Living on the water offers incredible views and recreational activities. However, they may also be in the floodplain. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), ranks Travis County (including Austin, Texas) in the Top 10 % of counties in the nation that are at risk for significant flood damage. Along with the beauty and allure of owning waterfront property comes the challenge of building within an established flood zone or flood plain area.

The two primary documents for designing & building in the flood plain (zone) are ASCE 24-05 (American Society of Civil Engineers) andFEMA 54 (Federal Emergency Management Agency). ASCE 24-05 & FEMA 54 engineering standards are broken into two basic categories: Step 1: Function and Step 2: Form / Aesthetic. (“It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -Steve Jobs)

STEP 1 – FUNCTION

• All structural components must be adequately connected to prevent flotation, collapse, or permanent lateral movement. FILL DIRT MUST REMAIN STABLE UNDER FLOOD CONDITIONS!
• All service equipment must be elevated above the flood zone – including heat pumps, air conditioners, hot water heaters (tankless), circuit breakers, electrical junction boxes, outdoor appliances, etc.
• Any space designed for habitation MUST be elevated above the Flood Zone.
• Permitted in the Flood Zone: vehicular parking, limited storage and building access (stairs). Elevators are permissible subject to separate design guidelines.

REDUCING HYDROSTATIC PRESSURE

Constructing a crawlspace beneath the first floor will raise the lowest floor of the structure above the surrounding grade. Openings in the foundation walls are then required. If flooding reaches the building, the openings allow flood waters to enter the area below the lowest floor and equalize the hydrostatic pressure on the foundation walls.

WIND:

Buildings elevated above the ground can be more vulnerable to wind!

STEP 2 – AESTHETIC

Design to meet performance standards, but don’t forget:

• VIEW (We paid for lake views, we want lake views)

• SUN ORIENTATION

• WIND

• NEIGHBORHOOD / DESIGN GUIDELINES

Technique #1: Raise the lowest floor

Technique #2: Design lower level of house as non-habitable and build habitable home above floodplain

How Do I Get a Permit to Build in the Flood Zone?

IT’S COMPLICATED…

1. See City of Austin Land Development Code 25-7-92, 93, 94, 95 & 96…….

OR

2. Call Jenkins Custom Homes.

Bethany Jenkins Quoted in Article on Virtual Golf

In an article entitled Teeing Up Indoors which appeared in the June/July 2011 issue of Urban Home Magazine, author Sue-Ella Mueller highlights the Interactive Sports Technologies, Inc. product, “High Definition Golf” (HD Golf™).  She writes, “It may sound like a video game, but HD Golf™ is nothing like your kids’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour5 game. With a Linux operating system, sophisticated computer vision (smart cameras) for ball and club tracking and simulations of the top golf courses in the world, HD Golf™ combines the best of the best to produce a simulated indoor golf experience that will have you swearing you just finished playing Pebble Beach^®.”

Jenkins says it isn’t always necessary to work with a room in your home. ”A garage enclosure would be ideal for a golf area and would probably be fairly easy to remodel,” she says.

Jenkins Custom Homes showcased the golf simulator in their 2010 Parade of Homes™ entry.  In that home, Jenkins built an indoor/outdoor media room specifically for the installation of the system.  Mueller quotes Jenkins Vice-President, Bethany Jenkins, as saying, “We had sliding glass doors that opened up to an outdoor living space with a view of an Austin hillside. Then when you turned back inside, you had breathtaking views of famous golf courses.  It was easily the favorite room of almost every man on the home tour.”  Mueller goes on to write that “Fortunately for the homeowner who was not a golfer, the space was also the perfect media room and since the HD Golf™ system doubles as a home theater system, families can adapt a larger, current media room for the simulator.”

For the complete article, click here.

Deck Waterproofing Explained (Video)

Waterproofing a deck at a Jenkins job site. The process is discussed with the trade contractor and Shan Jenkins.

Basic Pest Control Tips For Your Home

Here in the Austin area – just like any other area of the country – we deal with a variety of pests that try to invade our homes. However the two we are most familiar with, thanks to their destructive natures and sheer number of them in our area, are the scorpion and the winged carpenter ant.

The striped bark scorpion is the species of scorpion most often seen in Central Texas. While it is not usually deadly, like any member of the arachnid family (which includes ticks, mites, and spiders as well as scorpions), its sting is painful and can cause an allergic reaction in some people. It can survive without feeding for six months, and usually enters structures seeking water and shelter. Our local variety of scorpion is distinctly associated with dead vegetation, fallen logs, and human dwellings. It is common for this scorpion to climb trees and walls, and they often are found in the attics of homes. During periods of hot weather, scorpions may move into living areas to escape the high temperatures in attics.

The winged carpenter ant, while commonly mistaken for a termite, is second only to the termite in the amount of damage it can impose on a home. Adding to the confusion is that it is not uncommon for both the winged carpenter ant and the termite to swarm at about the same time. However, it is vital that they be identified accurately, because control measures differ greatly for the two insect groups. Carpenter ants are social insects that live in colonies, primarily in wood. They hollow out wood to build their nests, making their galleries and chambers velvety-smooth as if a carpenter had sanded the surfaces. Their tunneling in wood and foraging for food and water lead to their “pest” status in or around homes.

Carpenter Ant vs. Termite

The first line of defense against any pest is to control the environment, making it as uninviting as possible. In the case of these two pests, many of the suggestions are the same.

• Remove all trash, logs, boards, stones, bricks and other objects from around any buildings on your property. Because the scorpion is nocturnal, during the day it hides under stones, in piles of rocks, in cracks in masonry, in wood piles and under the bark of trees.

• Keep grass closely mowed near structures. Prune bushes and overhanging tree branches away from the structure. Tree branches can give scorpions – and other pests – a path to the roof.
• Store garbage containers in a frame that keeps them above ground level.
• Never bring firewood inside the house unless it is placed directly on the fire.
• Plug weep holes in stone or brick veneer structures with steel wool, copper mesh, pieces of nylon scouring pad, or small squares of screen wire. (Steel wool will rust when wet, so it should be used only on dark-colored facades.)
• Keep window screens in good repair. Make sure they fit tightly in the window frame.

Beyond the environmental control, there are also insecticides that are effective for controlling many types of pests, including carpenter ants and scorpions. Carbaryl (Sevin ®), chlorpyrifos (Dursban ®), diazinon, propoxur (Baygon ®), or any of the synthetic pyrethroids (permethrin, cypermethrin, cyfluthrin, etc.), lambda-cyhalothrin, deltamethrin, propoxur, or bifenthrin. Look for products containing these active ingredients, and them around the foundation of the house and up to 1 foot above ground level on the exterior walls. Also apply pesticides around doors, window eaves, and other potential points of entry. Indoor treatments should be directed at potential points of entry, corners, cracks, and crevices where scorpions hide. Follow directions on the package for dosage, mixing, and application methods, or call a pest control service to do the work for you.

Our thanks to the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service for providing much of this information!

Recently Completed on Lake Travis!

This beautiful old world home, which is over 8,000 square feet in size, was recently completed by Jenkins Custom Homes on the North Shore area of Lake Travis in Austin. Full of magnificent details, the most unique feature may be the stacked glass wall, shown in the picture below. This wall requires no steel for support but instead uses glass butted against glass. Usually reserved for commercial applications, this may be the only residential use of stacked glass in North America!

Another unique feature of this home is the custom made cabinetry that hides the flat screen TV above the fireplace. This fully automated screen cover, which lifts with the touch of a button, is not the first that Jenkins Custom Homes has ever installed, but this is the first video a client has shared with us.

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