What's the safest room in your house?
Being prepared for severe weather conditions goes beyond buying batteries
and stocking up on bottled water during storm season. It starts right in the home.
During a storm, windborne debris, ranging from broken building materials to common
household items, can become dangerous flying missiles. Unfortunately, masonry, framing,
and sheet rock alone are not designed to stop this kind of threat. If a tornado
suddenly appears on the horizon, or a hurricane lands close to home, it is critical
that families have a secure shelter.
The DuPont™ StormRoom™ with KEVLAR® is an invaluable, simple and easy addition to
an existing home, or an important element in new building designs. Families feel
protected in their own home and builders feel confident that their houses offer
reliable storm protection. Houses can be rebuilt, but families are irreplaceable.
Proven by Science
The building science experts at DuPont have revolutionized severe weather
protection for the home with the DuPont™ StormRoom™, the only in-home shelter reinforced
with DuPont™ KEVLAR®. The same life-saving fiber used in bullet-resistant vests,
KEVLAR® is, pound for pound, five times stronger than steel. These specially reinforced
walls form a virtually impenetrable barrier to protect families from harm.
The DuPont™ StormRoom™ is specially designed to endure wind speeds of up to 250
miles per hour. Independent impact tests show that the DuPont™ StormRoom™ withstood
repeated hits by building timbers fired at speeds equivalent to those experienced
in Category 5 hurricanes and F5 tornados. There’s also the added insurance of knowing
that the DuPont™ StormRoom™ is solidly anchored to concrete foundations with chemically-set
anchors powerful enough to help resist the wind uplift generated by the most powerful
storms.
Meeting and Exceeding Safety Standards
Coastal regions are becoming more populated every year. Many of these areas
become dangerous during severe weather with the threat of strong winds and extreme
conditions. Many states, such as Florida, encourage residents to have a room in
their home built to withstand the windborne debris of a storm. The DuPont™ StormRoom™
with KEVLAR® has the strength to endure the dangers of severe weather.
In a series of tests conducted by an independent lab at Texas Tech, the engineered
panels built into the DuPont™ StormRoom™ with KEVLAR® were tested against a 12-foot,
15-pound two-by-four piece of wood shot out of a cannon at 100 miles per hour.
National standards set by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) require
a room withstand the impact from a 15-pound two-by-four moving at 100 mph (the speed
a 250 mph wind would carry a building timber). The entire DuPont™ StormRoom™, including
the door, withstood repeated hits by the same size two-by-four fired at windborne
debris speeds greater than those seen in Category 5 storms. That meets and exceeds
the FEMA performance standard for hurricane and tornado shelters.
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