What stabilizes a house on stilts?
Answer:
Howdy neighbor! Don't see many fellow Alaskan's here...
The stilts are embedded deep into the ground by drilling a large hole to whatever depth is specified and then cementing the stilts into place. The depth of embeddment is always several feet so the portion above grade (ground level) is always less than what is below grade.
The stilts are then additionally stabilized by lateral and diagonal bracing if required. The structure on top serves to stabilize the stilts as well.
I work on Alaska's North Slope (Kuparuk) and everything here is built on pilings (steel stilts). We drill the holes as I described, set the pilings to the depth required, and then fill the hole with a mixture of sand and water called slurry. The slurry then freezes solid due to the permafrost and presto, the pilings are permanently secure! All of our buildings and pipelines are built similarly, everything! The reason everything is built on pilings is to avoid thawing the permafrost.
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I believe the stilts should be stuck into the ground down until they hit solid rock underneath (the bedrock). Then they build on top of those supports - at least this is how I understand pier and beam homes to be stabalized.
Drilled piers and vertical beams. When the vertical beams are all tied together below the flooring of the structure, this is where the strength occurs against lateral forces that would otherwise destroy the building.
A "deep foundation" is used to stablize these types of buildings. Frequently, these are drilled deeply into the soil-bed of the area where the building is.
The stilts must withstand various loads - mostly compression, but also bending when the wind blows. Someone has calculated how much force a typical stilt can handle ( I'm sure this data is published, or readily known by carpenters). Therefore, a house with a given square footage will need X number of stilts to hold the house up.
The stilts are driven deep into the ground so you basically have a strong piece of wood with most of it rammed into the earth. It's a pretty strong member actually.
They are good to protect homes from occasional flooding, but the house itself will become a pile of toothpicks in a hurricane or tornado.
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