Fortified Survival Home

Af­ford­able Strong House us­ing DIY Do It Your­self Con­struc­tion

We design for do-it-your­selfers by spe­ci­fy­ing strong and ex­tremely dur­able ma­ter­i­als.

We have de­signed en­ergy in­de­pend­ent safe homes all over the con­tin­ent­al USA, in the Carib­bean, and in Africa.  We con­sult us­ing email and tele­phone.  The first thing we do is cre­ate a ded­ic­ated se­cure web portal for your pro­ject where draw­ings and data can be stored and trans­ferred.

Us­ing our 3D design pro­gram, we cre­ate a Build­ing In­form­a­tion Mod­el (BIM), of your pro­ject.  You can fly through this mod­el on your pad and com­puter.  This 3D cap­ab­il­ity cla­ri­fies the design which helps in mak­ing de­cisions.  We provide: 

• concept draw­ings for your ap­prov­al
• con­sult with you along the way
• con­struc­tion cost con­trol us­ing item­ized labor & ma­ter­i­al es­tim­ate
• guar­an­teed code com­pli­ant plans for your build­ing per­mit sub­mis­sion
• spe­cif­ic­a­tions and de­tailed work­ing draw­ings for con­struc­tion
• sched­ules show­ing types and quant­it­ies of ma­ter­i­als to pur­chase.

Struc­tur­al Con­tinu­ity is the Key to Ex­treme Strength and Af­ford­ab­il­ity

Most struc­tur­al dam­age caused by hur­ricane, earth­quake, flood­ing, and storm surge oc­curs at the joints between build­ing ma­ter­i­als and struc­tur­al ele­ments:

• between found­a­tion and wall
• between wall and roof
• between wood and con­crete
• between ma­sonry and con­crete
• between wood and roof­ing
• at and around fasten­ers.

By em­bed­ding a gal­van­ized steel frame­work in the con­crete foot­ing, and coat­ing the en­tire frame­work with Fer­ro­ce­ment, you can cre­ate a con­tinu­ous struc­ture without ma­ter­i­al changes and joints between build­ing ele­ments.  This ap­plic­a­tion of Fer­ro­ce­ment en­gin­eer­ing saves about 70% of the con­crete re­quired to cre­ate a su­per-strong dis­as­ter res­ist­ant struc­ture.  It re­quires less work to build, and saves both time and money.

A con­tinu­ous uni-body struc­ture re­quires less ma­ter­i­al than one made of seper­ate ele­ments fastened to­geth­er.

What is a Sur­viv­al Home?

Sur­viv­al designs in­cor­por­ate struc­tur­al tech­no­logy to make your house strong enough to sur­vive:

• earth­quake
• wild­fire
• hur­ricane
• storm surge
• flood­ing and storm surge.

Sur­viv­al tech­no­lo­gies are in­cor­por­ated so that you and your fam­ily can sur­vive dur­ing the peri­od after a dis­as­ter when loc­al in­fra­struc­ture has failed:

• con­tam­in­ated wa­ter sup­ply
• elec­tric­al grid is down
• im­pass­able roads

Sur­viv­al tech­no­lo­gies in­clude:

• Sol­ar elec­tric­al power gen­er­a­tion, stor­age & dis­tri­bu­tion such as with a Tesla whole house bat­tery
• Sol­ar heated hot wa­ter sup­ply
• Rain­wa­ter catch­ment & stor­age
• Sol­ar powered rain­wa­ter puri­fic­a­tion, stor­age & dis­tri­bu­tion
• Sol­ar powered re­fri­ger­a­tion for emer­gency food stor­age.

Mac­don­ald Ar­chi­tects designs sur­viv­al struc­tures and spe­ci­fies sur­viv­al tech­no­lo­gies for own­er-build­ers.