Also - how roomy is your crawlspace?

I’ve seen two homes with a closet trapdoor that led to a crawl space shelter.

I have read anecdotes of families being in these and not being able to get the gate/door open and drowning. I absolutely would not own one of those.

I'm in the same boat OP. Frame house with a crawl space and no garage.

The one thing I do have is a sloping hill just outside the house so my plan is

to bury a shipping container into the side of that hill. I have 17 acres to deal with

so I have plenty of land and my house is built on the crest of a hill.

Last night a storm knocked down a tree that took out part of my backyard fence.

My tub has a window above it on the wall so that's not really an option.

I don't know the brand or model, but my brother in law has a steel shelter in his garage.  It is purposely designed to be mounted in the space between your car's side and the garage wall.  It is about 30 inches deep 5 feet tall and long enough for two people to sit facing each other.  I think it will seat 4 normally sized people comfortably.  Or 2 TN sized people.

Pro tip.  Never, ever, start storing stuff in a storm shelter.  Not even one tiny little item.  Once that starts, there is no end and your shelter will soon be full of non-living things.  Which is what you will be when the storm hits and you are digging that shit out.

The problem is that you don't need one ... until you do.

Tornados are rare for any one spot, yes.  But, we rebuild and the landscape in the east regrows. And we lose sight of what was, and what could be.

That’s surprisingly good advice for general discussion.

Before we built our shelter we had a storm one night and about 1am I was out in the garage throwing guns out of the safe so I could stick my kids inside it because that was the best option available at the moment.

I have had three of the large in-ground ones. Big enough for a couple cots, etc. Next one will be a safe room or garage one. In-ground outside always has moisture issues after a few years.

I'm not in Tn, but it only takes one unlucky day to ruin your life. You may not ever need a storm shelter, but when you do, it's priceless. F1 or F2 is meh. F4 or F5 is world ending for some people. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't.

Or drown when the water lines break and flood the garage.

I've been within a few miles of a couple mid-TN tornados with the one three weeks ago in Columbia being the closest yet (300 yards from my house to start of destruction). I watched out the back window while the rest of the family was sheltered inside the downstairs central bathroom.

My family growing up and I as an adult have never considered a storm shelter - just go to a central location. I know several people who have them and they never seem to use them for various reasons - full of water, used as storage, too difficult to get in, etc.

I don't blame anyone for being interested in a shelter but certainly compare the various options and consider ease of access and placement not just now but also later on.

That is awesome.

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That was taken in Claremore OK from this Saturdays storms. That big white box is a shelter. That’s not my house but we have one cut into the garage floor.

Thanks all! I have room in the garage so may look into one of those types.

Good demonstration as to why you want the door to open inward.

I know of one of those stories and it was installed in a flood zone.

Ours is above-ground.

I'm comfortable in it up to an F4 (I mean, I'd rather be 100 miles away, but if I have to be here, I'm as comfortable as can be). But let's be honest: If an F5 hits you in an above ground shelter you're still likely to die. If an F5 hits here and I have a choice between my above-ground shelter or huddling in a cave, I'd take the cave.

If your local EMA isn't set up for area-specific warnings, ok, maybe.

But, many EMAs have their sirens tied into the Tornado Warning polygon issued by the NWS.  There can be a tornado. In your county. On the ground. Throwing buildings and people high enough into the air that the whole world can see them on radar.  And your particular sirens won't go off unless that siren is inside the NWS polygon.  That's how dialed in, how specific these warnings are.

And, no, they don't leave the continuous warnings up.  If there is a NWS issued Warning - it is because the event is real, and it is there, not something that is merely forecast.  If it is a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, it's because radar indicates it is there, and it meets the criteria for issue.  If it is a Tornado Warning, it's because there is a tornado, not the mere possibility of one - it's either visually spotted, radar indicated rotation or radar indicated/confirmed debris in the air.  

The NWS has gone through great lengths to greatly narrow the scope and issue of Warnings over the years.  Non-conservatism puts lives at risk.  But, general complacency of the public more so.

When they issue a Warning, they mean it.

In 2019, we had a Warning that ended at county boundary, perhaps because the radar returns indicated diminishing rotation.  The Warning wasn't issued for the next county until nearly too late.  In a matter of a minute, two minute, the rotation that had diminished to the point where they were going to allow the currently issued Warning (time/area) to expire, had turned into an EF-4 and less than 4 minutes warning for people because of the confluence of a diminishing radar trend and a county line boundary.  4 minutes later, 24 people would be dead.  You couldn't see it coming - everything looked tornadic, and in every direction - the lead photograph for the newspapers was a tornado-looking-thing right over my neighborhood - because it sure did look like a tornado, but it wasn't, and NWS wasn't issuing a Warning for it - because that cell wasn't the issue.  Their warning was very specific, and for a few miles down the road.  Our sirens never went off.  We weren't in the polygon.  We weren't in the Warning area.

I'll never forget looking at that radar return.  We were were fine.  A thunderstorm.  That's it.  And I'm watching the radar return blow up with the remains of our friends' homes.  Some of their stuff was found scores of miles away in Georgia.

Four minutes.

Bro, this is GD.

If the smart guys at the weather channel can't send me a map telling me exactly which houses are about to get destroyed, at least 3 hours in advance, what good are they? And don't even get me started about how magnets work.

Tots.

I just spent the last hour checking out all the provided links in this thread. Much appreciated.

Honestly the concrete offerings from Safe Shed look the most appealing to be.

However, as the great philosopher Ron White once said, "It's not that the wind is blowing, it's what the wind is blowing."

I'm not sure any of these structures are surviving a 1 ton pickup impact at 100mph+.



Still, it's certainly better than nothing and I would never discourage anyone from getting one.

If I wasn't poor I'd have one.

In "Tornado Alley", we build the storm shelter first and then build the house around it . . .

Here's the back side of the inward opening door:


Here's how my wife had it set up for the storms that rolled through last night:


Here are the bolts heads that is holding it down. The two big ones are 1" x 18" lags that they set in 24" of concrete after boring out a 4" hole in the slab and the substrate. There are four of those.  The smaller ones are 1" x 8" lags straight into the slab around the perimeter of the shelter:


Just because, gratuitous pics of the gun safe.  I want to get some sort of slat or peg board for the walls to hang some of it and free up floor space for more stuff.

Not sure of the strength of the tornado yet and if that was a direct hit. I wouldn’t want to be in one of those during one as strong as the Moore tornadoes.

To reinforce your plan - story time. Decades ago I went to help clean up debris after a tornado (F3/4?) and got dropped off between two houses about 50 yards apart.

In between was a statue of Mary, and out back was a dilapidated old fence. House to the left lost some shingles. The fence was leaning but still standing. Mary shined a smile on a bunch of clueless Boy Scouts who were useless looking at a giant debris field across the street.

The house to the right had the slab swept clean like someone had swept it with a broom except the downstairs half bath - it was the only thing still standing and is where I understand the homeowners rode out the storm. The drywall was stripped to the studs outside, but if you went in and closed the door, you could pretend everything was normal.

Until you looked up and saw the sky.

I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been. It still gives me chills.

So that’s where we go in our house in a bad storm. A shelter would be better, but …

Did a housing project at Whiteman AFB and all of the houses got one of the garage type shelters for this reason. Good use of your tax dollars for once.

A proper above-ground shelter will survive EF5.


For example:
http://www.familysafemo.com/storm-shelters/
https://www.apr.org/science-health/2014-05-08/ua-researchers-study-tornado-damage-in-oklahoma

We moved to middle TN six years ago from Idaho. After a few storms, we opted to get a shelter, we went with these guys  https://valleystormshelters.com.  

We don’t use it often but we’re glad we have it. Especially last December when one came that was entirely too close for comfort. My youngest son was at his friend’s house up the road that night. The tornado passed less than a quarter of a mile from him.

There was quite a bit of damage in that neighborhood. Roofs removed or damaged, boats and jet skis tossed about with some sunk in the lake. I posted pictures of some of the damage in the hometown thread when it happened.

When I picked him up  the following morning, he said he was pretty scared when it actually hit. He said he wished that he was at home so he could have gone in the shelter. As opposed to hiding under the stairs.

The investment in my family’s safety in my opinion is completely worth it. Just need to get a generator now as we were without power when it happened for just over two days.

We have some undeveloped land in Middle TN. There is a small cave on the property, and our neighbors asked if we minded if they use it for tornados. We told them to go for it.

If you said it *might* survive I'd agree with you.

If you said that some above-ground shelters had survived some F5 tornadoes....yeah, absolutely.

But a blanket statement? No. Unless you pile a dump truck load of dirt around three sides of it.

Do try to stay away from the thinner ones at big box stores unless that’s just all you can afford. Most of them won’t have a welded steel floor in them, only wall side panels that get put together. Those are probably the least well built ones on the market.

Like I said, unless that’s all that’s in the budget. I’m sure they are better than nothing but I would be scared shitless if I were in one of those with F5s bearing down on me.

I've read it. The Moore tornado was ~200MPH IIRC. There's no F6 category - an F5 can go up to, IIRC, something like 300MPH; I'm not sure where the exact physics-limited upper end is. All I'm trying to say it that an above-ground shelter does not guarantee survival in an F5. I'd say your chances were very, very high, in the typical F5, but the upper end of F5 strength gets into hypotheticals where I don't think it's wise to speak with certainty.

Atlas Survival Shelters
Owner is a great America and big time 2nd A supporter.
Will even help you build your own.
No experience, as in Florida there is nothing underground but water (about 5 foot down).

Speaking of weather radios, what do y'all recommend?

I just bought this for my son and his family. I have two of the 300 models at my house.

Thanks! I found the "survival" forum and they have an active thread in there on the radio topic. I went with the Reecom recommended there.

Hell, in another 19 years you might find another subforum here.

Went to Cookeville on a “work trip” right after the big one went from Nashville to Cookeville. These pictures said something to me. I took them with my phone. That was in the garage and the entire house had been shifted back off of the foundation several feet.


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There's lots of forums.

That's incredible.

I'm likely going to go with one of those Valley shelters recommended a couple times in the thread.

I had to go take a picture of a house yesterday, for work, for reasons that had nothing to do with the recent tornadoes. When I got there the roof was missing and the carport had vanished. The rest of the house was still standing.

I'm assuming that once the door is compromised a garage isn't much different than a carport - both are basically empty cardboard boxes.

*However* once you're in the shelter, meh, let the garage blow off. The shelter will be fine if properly anchored to a proper slab.

Been in Middle TN for 20 years (from PA originally).

Our house was built in 1984. No basement. When we had construction done a few years ago I had an area under the central stairs reinforced for a storm shelter. I added a trap to the crawl which I excavated to 5 feet.  It's not perfect. I'd prefer a basement or proper storm shelter.

The topography in Middle TN is strange for tornados. Lots of rolling hills that make them pop up and down at seemingly random spots, not like the plains where you can see them for miles. Plus, with visibility limited, people think they are fine, until they aren't.

But I would take the threat seriously. Clarksville, Gallatin, and Nashville proper have all had twisters touch down in the city since I've lived here. If not for moderm weather tracking, we'd have far more casualties than we do.

I was actually almost set on getting an in ground one but the water drowning and not being able to open it anecdotes and now you had to go putting that possibility in my head...I might just get an above ground. With only a crawlspace it has to be in the garage and its already cramped. I am anal and hate storing shit in my garage too.