One of our neighbors has a nailgun powered by 22 cal blanks. It is capable of firing a nail with a 1" washer through plywood, fastening it to the brick wall with no drilling. It was incredibly fast and he went house-to-house with it helping people put up plywood.

The problem was you had to be extremely careful with nail-placement. You had to get shoot the nail into the center of the mortar between the bricks. If you hit the brick with the nail you would end up just spalling the brick, knocking out a large chunk (1.5" by 0.5") of it rather than penetrating and holding the plywood.

Two problems occured when trying to remove the plywood. The first was that it was just about impossible to get a hammerclaw or prybar under the nail head. I had to bust up my wood to get enough space around the nailhead to pry it out. The second problem was that the nail was held so tightly to the mortar that I ended up pulling out chunks of mortar with the nail. I do wonder if this was partially because it was so hot out (100 F) while I was doing this. The nails were much cooler when he put them in and they may have expanded with the heat of the day, locking them in place.

YMMV.

-Blast

I doubt it. While a fast (and secure) mechanism to fasten the wood, I suspect anything fastened in this manner is going to be 1) difficult to remove and 2) damage any cement/mortar upon removal.

-john

Thank you for the reply. A long time ago I had a case in which Remington stud guns were being use to attatch metal strapping to the botton of the subfloor of the floor above to hang a suspended celing in the renovation of Wilford Hall Medical Center at Randaolf AFB.

A tempered steel nail spalled on the concrete, ricocheted, and went into his heart. He didn't make it.

While hopefully there will not be a next time, you may want to consider Duplex nails for use where you will be removing the plywood.
Duplex Nails


Pete

Or screws.

Adam

Bravo! Excellent post. Makes me wish I lived in a community more like yours.

We live in a townhouse development where with a high come-and-go factor. People are moving in and out all the time.

It's a bedroom community. Everyone leaves in the morning for work and comes home at night.

Also, the housing association takes care of the landscaping, so you don't really see anyone outside on weekends.

-- Craig

You know, something I plan on doing when I get home is throwing a big "Back from Irak" party and invite my neighborhood over. I will show slides and tell tales, and we will eventually discuss how our little community can help each other and come together. The propensity for catastrophic action is not that great, but great enough that it should be planned for at least minimally. Plus it is a great way for folks to start socializing. I really don't know any of my neighbors back home that well, and that is a shame. These could be people I might turn to in an emergency, but I won't know if I can rely on them or not until I get to know them at least a little.

Of course, when I move out into the Thules some day, I won't have much of a community to deal with. I guess I better plan on being better prepared on my own.

Perhaps a corollary would be, "If you plan on returning home after an evacuation, bring gas! (Or stash gas at home!)"

I haven't noticed anyone mention this observation on the forum yet, so I'll mention this article I found. Apparently, there is only a single gas station open in Orange County, Texas, out towards Port Arthur. Must be a lot of Orange County residents anxious about being able to keep their vehicles and generators running.

I'm surprised that the price is only $2.51/gal. Are there any price controls in place now there?

Blast, hope the gas situation is better in your neck of the woods.

For masonary walls use Tapcons.

http://www.itwbuildex.com/tapcon.htm

SMS text message is definately faster. The reaon is that it is sent on the control channel that all cell phones use to connect to the tower. The capacity is much larger, and your phone can "automatically" retry a few times, similar to ethernet. Plus, people can email you back. Make sure though that they know you are limited to something like 120 characters.

Also, designate an out of state contact. With the design of telephone systems, the local trunk lines (between local exhanges) can be overloaded. Also, the cellular phone network uses the POT to go between towers, thus, they go between local exhanges.

The long distance trunks will probably be underused, or in most situations (i.e. 9/11 in New York) normally inbound trunk lines will be restricted to outbound calls, because of call volume.

If could be wrong about this, if so, I need correcting! Please, post any site that has good information