A spring snowstorm is howling through southwestern Ontario and people are being warned to stay indoors. But the gusting winds and heavy snow don’t deter University of Western Ontario engineering professor Mike Bartlett and his research team in London, Ont.

In fact, it’s this kind of nasty weather they have in mind as they work to assemble the Insurance Research Lab for Better Homes — a research facility supported by Canada’s property and casualty insurers designed to make homes better withstand the impact of harsh weather. This could result in fewer insurance claims, insurers say, thus lowering premiums for clients.

The research lab — formerly known as the Three Little Pigs Project — contains a 176.5-square-metre, two-storey brick home constructed within a corrugated steel building by carpentry students from nearby Fanshawe College. It sits on dual tracks, which will allow it to be rolled outside to test the impact of rain, snow, wind and other harsh weather conditions.

How so? By this fall, for example, air-bag testing panels of varying sizes will be attached to the exterior of the house to simulate wind pressure up to 420 pounds per square inch — equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.

“Bad weather has really gotten the attention of the insurance industry,” says Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Toronto-based Institute of Catastrophic Loss Research. He notes that the cost of repairing buildings damaged by bad weather is now 20 times greater than it was 50 years ago.

The ICLR was established in 1998 by Canada’s P&C insurers to reduce losses by developing disaster-prevention strategies. The ICLR put up the initial funding to get the research lab project going. In February, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the national trade association for home, auto and business insurers, donated $500,000 to the project.

Bartlett and his team have several research goals. They’re aiming to:

> modify building codes to provide safer and, hopefully, less expensive homes;

> develop cost-effective ways to retrofit existing houses;

> work with building-product manufacturers to develop wind-and rain-resistant products;

> develop quality controls to minimize construction errors.

Working with the insurance industry to develop implementation strategies will be key to disseminating the research team’s findings.

“Insurers don’t want to be in the business of paying and paying. We can support the science, and we can support the builders that will do a better job. My hope is that builders will pick up on this research,” says Kovacs. If they do, the results from the research lab should be good news for insurance clients.

“Anything we can do to reduce claims would reduce the cost of insurance,” says Grant Kelly, the IBC’s director of policy development and assistant chief economist. “From the insurance industry’s point of view, weather happens; but disasters happen when we’re not prepared. The lab is a way we can get concrete scientific evidence into building codes.”

Ultimately, the research team hopes its work will also influence builders and assist building inspectors. The researchers aim to provide Web-accessible videos to building inspectors that they will be able to use on building sites to persuade builders to “do it the right way” — based on scientific evidence developed at the lab. On May 1, the lab will host a workshop for builders and suppliers.

Once construction of the lab is completed, the research team will focus much of its work on the impact of high winds. Bartlett and his colleagues have looked to southern U.S. states such as Florida, which has amended its building code as a result of hurricane Andrew in 1992 and subsequent hurricanes.

“However, there is still room to improve and optimize construction,” says Bartlett. The lab will be looking at other related factors affecting housing construction, such as mould, structure and construction error.

For example, says Bartlett, if part of a roof blows off during a bad storm, interior walls will be exposed. This may result in mould developing in the walls after the roof has been repaired. The question for his research team is: what should be done, beyond replacing the roof, to mitigate further damage and possible further claims? Recent research shows that indoor mould caused by superfluous moisture is linked to upper respiratory disease, especially in children.

Some materials, such as drywall, are thought to be more susceptible to mould, he says, but the evidence is anecdotal. Moreover, he says, it is difficult to detect indoor mould without obvious signs of deterioration. The lab plans to make scientific advances in this area — growing mould to see what causes it.

@page_break@Wind velocity is more intense at the pinnacle of a roof than it is at ground level, says Bartlett. The researchers will examine “load paths” outside the building, from the roof down to the foundation, he says: “We think those patterns change under varying pressure.”

The roof is what is first affected, Bartlett says. Most roofs have a shallow slope, he notes, and that creates lift — like wind against the wing of an airplane.

If the roof doesn’t come off under the intense pressure of the wind, the load will transfer to the walls, pushing in on the wall facing the wind, while the other three walls will balloon outward.

The second area of a house that is most affected as a result of present construction practices, Bartlett says, is the point at which the second storey is attached to the first storey. In a worst-case scenario, the top storey would separate from the storey under it.

Hopefully, the lab will be in testing mode this fall. The researchers will begin with moderate load-path testing. “Then, we might lift the roof off by November,” says Bartlett. After reconstruction, testing will resume in 2008.

The lab will welcome building material companies that wish to contract the lab to test their products. For example, one of Bartlett’s doctoral students has built an air-bag machine that tests the endurance of window glass under varying wind pressure and over different durations.

Inside the lab, a video shows a test in which a window withstood strong wind pressure, then subsequently shattered under lesser wind force. This suggests window glass weakens under sustained pressure.

The research lab project has also received significant funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust. As a result, Bartlett and his team are looking to have a direct impact on national and Ontario building codes.

Meanwhile, the ICLR is pursuing another project to build what it calls “safer-living homes.” It has already built one in Sudbury, Ont., and another in West Point, P.E.I. More are being planned for the other parts of the country.

Future safer-living homes will include some of the features developed in the lab, Kovacs adds, even if they have not yet made it into the building codes. He notes that homes in Florida built under the revised codes have sustained only half the damage of homes that were built under previous codes.

“With this research,” he says, “we can do better than that.” IE