Soft Story Retrofitting -Seismic Retrofitting Lost Angeles
Why Retrofit My Home/Building?
Soft story retrofitting is preventive maintenance practice. You have identified that your building faces a risk of collapse or failure if an earthquake hits, retrofitting makes it resistant to these earthquake forces and prevents collapse. Further, the collapse would mean the destruction of property, loss of lives and being rendered homeless. Retrofitting your building prevents all those. Also, because you have put more measures to deal with the risk of earthquake failure, you have the upper hand in negotiating insurance premiums. That means you will pay less because the risk of collapse because of a soft story is reduced. |
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Mandatory Soft-Story Retrofit ProgramThe City of Los Angeles recently passed Ordinance 183893, which requires the retrofit of pre-1978 wood-frame Soft-Story buildings and non-ductile concrete buildings. The goal of the mandatory retrofit programs, under the ordinance, is to reduce these structural deficiencies and improve the performance of these buildings during earthquakes. Without proper strengthening, these vulnerable buildings may be subjected to structural failure during and/or after an earthquake.
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A non-ductile concrete building is a structure that contains brittle concrete elements such as columns, beams, walls, and connections. These buildings tend to perform poorly during earthquakes due to the limited amount of reinforcing steel provided in their design. Let me explain further:
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