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Stearns Custom Builders encourages Pine Island spirit

By PAULETTE LeBLANC / pleblanc@breezenewspapers.com - | Sep 13, 2023

Stearns Custom Builders owner Derrick Stearns said the company has been busy reconnecting with clients for which they’ve done work, to make sure they have everything they need.

He credits upgraded building codes for the large success rate of homes that have fared well through the last 20 or 30 years of tropical storms and hurricanes on islands like Pine Island.

Good engineering and good execution cannot be ignored, he said, but another important factor is pile foundations. In surveying and assessing damage due to storm surge from last year’s Hurricane Ian, Stearns said pile foundations became worth their weight in gold, as they were the heaviest evidentiary proof he found in homes that did well.

“There were multiple homes that I saw — some we built and some were built by others — but if they had a driven pile foundation, even if the land eroded next to or behind it, the house stayed still,” Stearns said.

Although some builders may overlook pile foundations, those who know the island well, will not. Not only is it reliable for settlement that comes over time, but in a catastrophic event it will make sure the house stays put, he explained.

“There are multiple kinds of piles, like wood, concrete and helical. The alternative is not driving the pile, but doing a conventional shallow concrete footing, but when the soils erode 4, 5, 6 feet, it fails, because the soil is the only support,” Stearns said.

Conversely, with a pile foundation there is no dependency on the soil, so if the soil erodes, the house will be maintained, he said.

In an area such as an island, where a waterfront home is vulnerable to storm surge soil erosion, Stearns recommends having a Geo Technical Exploration Survey soil test. This test will show whether the soil conditions require a pile foundation to prevent settlement.

After Hurricane Ian hit Pine Island, islanders immediately began caring for one another, Stearns said. A year later, he emphasizes people are ready to get past Ian and get back to some sense of normalcy. It was good to see the same tight-knit community spirit that welcomed the Stearns family to Pine Island in the 1970s when they first arrived.

“It’s going to take time but the island will bounce back. You can re-build houses, you can rebuild roads — there were times it was difficult to see our island in the largest state of devastation that I’ve ever seen, but the one thing that Ian never took was the Pine Island spirit. The Pine Island spirit was never broken,” Stearns said.