With all due respect to the great work that we as a community have done and continue to do in response to the flood, I want to make a plea for better preparedness and mitigation of damage from future floods. We are building back and that is great, but is it better?
Number one. It is the government’s role to sit around and come up with guidelines for how to build back better when the inevitable flood destroys the basements and first floors of all the city’s businesses. We have been duly warned by climatologists and our own experience in the last 30 years that this kind of flooding will be occurring with greater and greater intensity and frequency. So where do landlords go to find out how to build back better?
I am not an academic in the building sciences, but I have 50 years of building experience and know that there is no such thing as a waterproof building. Water gets into a building, especially when it is surrounded by 4 or 5 feet of standing water. To keep it from rotting the building, the water needs to have a way out.
One solution is to put plastic or metal floors and walls on the first floor in such a way that they can be easily removed and cleaned. This would expose all the studs and insulation so that they could dry out. When they dry out, the wall and floor coverings are put back in.
It is a knockdown form of building/renovating. If the studs in the wall and the exterior sheathing are soaked, the only remedy is to expose them to a lot of dry air. If you try to cover the interior and exterior wall with a water-impermeable membrane, you will be trapping the water in the building and creating a breeding ground for mold and rot.
Into the void of silence from the experts, I put forth my humble opinion on the subject.
Chris Pratt
Owner of Opensash, a window repair and weatherization company in Montpelier
Read the story on VTDigger here: Letter to the editor: Are we building back better?.