Pensmore is a home in the
Ozark Mountains near
Highlandville, Missouri. One of the largest homes in the
United States, it has five stories, contains 14 baths, 13 bedrooms; has exterior walls 12 inches thick, and was designed to survive
earthquakes
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
,
tornadoes, and
bomb
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...
blasts. Its owner,
Steven T. Huff, told ''
The Kansas City Star'' in 2015 that "the house should stand for 2,000 years".
Construction
In 2008, the Steven T. Huff Family LLC applied for a construction permit to begin construction of the Pensmore mansion—made unique because it is an
insulated concrete form structure designed to showcase sustainable construction techniques on a large scale, with it being designed to be
earthquake resistant,
bullet resistant
Bulletproofing is the process of making an object capable of stopping a bullet or similar high velocity projectiles (e.g. shrapnel). The term bullet resistance is often preferred because few, if any, practical materials provide complete protecti ...
, blast resistant, capable of withstanding an EF5 tornado,
bug resistant, and
fire resistant. Its construction was completed in 2016.
The home's large size and its location in the
Ozarks (which experiences both high and low temperatures, as well as tornadoes) were chosen so that Huff could explore how these concepts work on a commercial scale and under a broad range of climate conditions—with it, also, being noted that it was built in an area where it was not subject to government building inspections or regulations.
2016 lawsuit and 2017 settlement
On July 3, 2016, the
Associated Press reported that lawyers for Huff filed a lawsuit against Monarch Cement Company, of Humboldt, Kansas, and its Springfield subsidiary, City Wide Construction Products, seeking $63 million in damages and alleging that Pensmore was shorted more than 70,000 pounds of a crucial steel fiber, named Helix (invented in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, Helix is an alternative to rebar and was developed for the
United States Army Corps of Engineers)—but a settlement being reached on 21 July 2017 with no terms about it being publicly revealed.
References
{{US housing by state
Buildings and structures in Christian County, Missouri
Châteauesque architecture in the United States