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SynthOrange posted:That's an amazing wall/slab alright. How awful was the cleanup? That wall was about 10' tall, and 14" wide I believe. Naturally the gap was at the lowest part of it, and pretty much the entire contents of a cement truck emptied out. It took them the better part of three hours before they gave up shoveling cement and waited until the next day to take the jackhammer to it. By that night it was all gone and they had filled in the gap after some jackhammering. There were 10 guys working for the better part of two days to clean it up.
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May 6, 2013 03:50
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So, they're building a new span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The need for a new span was identified waaaay back after the '96 Loma Prieta earthquake, in which a segment of road on the old span between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland collapsed onto the lower deck. It took over a decade for the two cities, CalTrans, and the feds to decide what to build and get the money and have arguments about the design and so on, but they finally got to work a couple years ago. Obviously this is a multi-billion dollar project. In March, with most of the major work done (the bridge is supposed to open Labor Day), a third of these 96 enormous galvanized bolts broke. Just straight up fuckin' snapped, and the bridge isn't even done, so that's some lovely longevity. Well it turns out that there is a nationally-accepted standard for how these bolts should be, and that standard is "not loving galvanized". But CalTrans or someone actually approved these bolts anyway. quote:ASTM International, the industry standards organization, has for decades strongly warned against galvanizing the grade of high-strength steel used to make the 288 anchor rods -- including those that broke -- plus an additional 2,018 fasteners used elsewhere on the suspension span's anchorage and tower, and to connect the cable and suspender ropes to the road deck. Only 96 of those pieces were manufactured in 2008. Fixing this problem is going to cost millions of dollars and possibly delay the opening, which is another multi-million-dollar bill. So yeah, thousands of lives at stake, decades to design a world-class major fuckin' bridge, obviously this is a very complex project and (ignoring the delays caused by politics in just getting going) up to now the project has actually been ahead of schedule and within budget. Which is basically unheard-of for projects of this scale. Still, someone (and nobody knows who yet) approved this and there's really no excuse.
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May 6, 2013 09:13
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 And if they just replace all the coated bolts, it'll happen again, because galvanization is partly intended as a dry lube/antiseize for bolts (spark plugs are a good example) and so by design some of it will remain in every bolt hole unless they're carefully cleaned. Cutting corners is a lovely thing to do but doing it like this on bridges should cost the licenses of everyone knowingly involved. Things like this are the reason we have licensing in the first place, and as far as I know any culpable engineers would stand to lose theirs for life.
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May 6, 2013 12:19
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Splizwarf posted:
From what I've read this shouldn't be the case. Galvanizing involves first cleaning the metal then dipping it in molten zinc. The cleaning step necessarily involves acid which introduces hydrogen into the metals. Coating a freshly-cleaned piece of metal in zinc then traps the hydrogen in the metal causing hydrogen embitterment. This is a huge problem for hardened steels because cracking caused by hydrogen will not show up until days or even weeks after the whole process starts. And it sounds like that's exactly what happened here. Simply replacing the bolts with new (ungalvanized) ones of the same type shouldn't cause a second failure since the new bolts won't be exposed and if they are the hydrogen can outgas since they're not coated. It's not the galvanizing that's a problem, it's the hydrogen that goes along with it. In any case I suspect they needed corrosion resistance for the marine environment and someone poo poo their pants when they looked at how expensive structure-rated stainless steel fasteners were going to be. Of course now, they're going to have to buy them anyway and spend the money to replace them.
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May 7, 2013 03:03
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ductonius posted:Coating a freshly-cleaned piece of metal in zinc then traps the hydrogen in the metal causing hydrogen embitterment. I think you meant "embrittlement", but "embitterment" makes it kinda funny, too 
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May 7, 2013 07:58
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ductonius posted:In any case I suspect they needed corrosion resistance for the marine environment and someone poo poo their pants when they looked at how expensive structure-rated stainless steel fasteners were going to be. Of course now, they're going to have to buy them anyway and spend the money to replace them. When you build huge stuff (bridges, buildings, cruise ships) the cost of materials should always be calculated against the cost of failure. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 09:56 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 09:00
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A pretty good read about the Citigroup Center engineering fiasco: http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm
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May 7, 2013 13:58
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I was basically assigned the job of a civil engineer in Afghanistan, working with a police mentoring team. I got to go to several different job sites all over the Northern part of the Country and see/document/the work. Here are some of my favorite pics:  Look close at the bricks!   I have more, I need to find them though.
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May 7, 2013 22:20
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Was the last one with the trenches, in the floor and done so a carpet would lie flat on it? If so, that's my favorite.
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May 8, 2013 16:13
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Nah, wall. I have some great electrical ones. One time we were driving through a small village with power and the MRAP antenna pulled a power line over to another and the short made a nice big flash and spark.
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May 9, 2013 02:12
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Mercury Ballistic posted:Look close at the bricks! Help me out on this one. I can't figure out if it's just that there is no mortar or what.
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May 9, 2013 10:46
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No mortar. Normal brick construction. We had people sign off on buildings with no mortar at all.
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May 9, 2013 11:58
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Mercury Ballistic posted:No mortar. Normal brick construction. We had people sign off on buildings with no mortar at all. A stonemason friend of mine says that they're going to key into the rebar with the second story, and that this looks like legit work to him.
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May 9, 2013 21:53
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Mercury Ballistic posted:No mortar. Normal brick construction. We had people sign off on buildings with no mortar at all. In their defense, were they Incas?
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May 10, 2013 03:40
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Just got a new apartment!!    ... "circuit" "pange" "STAB-LOK" e: Oh wonderful, the GFCI outlet in the bathroom has no voltage on the contacts but it makes a buzz when I press "TEST". And the ceiling fan doesn't spin. But i guess that's no big deal since it doesn't have any loving blades.  Guess I'm gonna get what I pay for! Farmdizzle fucked around with this message at 10:34 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 10:26
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I imagine that Pango is a giant death robot hidden in the apartment building's underground bunker. Pango would wreak havoc upon the world, but the contractor who built him spliced some Romex to an ungrounded extension cord, and he can only take three steps before it pulls loose. Besides, he's only pulling fifty amps. But whatever you do, don't cut power to Pango. Pango would get angry.
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May 10, 2013 11:59
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What the gently caress, is it just missing a huge piece there?
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May 10, 2013 12:18
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Pango is range?
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May 10, 2013 12:52
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basx posted:I imagine that Pango is a giant death robot hidden in the apartment building's underground bunker. Pango would wreak havoc upon the world, but the contractor who built him spliced some Romex to an ungrounded extension cord, and he can only take three steps before it pulls loose. Besides, he's only pulling fifty amps. My old job had a dedicated 40 amps going to something called a "Dwyer", which was apparently some sort of 1970s kitchenette or something. In present day...it powered 4 outlets outside of some cubicles with one of these receptacles (nothing was plugged in):  They couldn't add any circuits to our server room...because the panel was maxed and they wouldn't change any existing wiring.
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May 10, 2013 13:04
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Killer robots are the least of your worries with a Federal Pacific panel in your home. And if you decide to fix replace that GFI or ceiling fan on your own; please please please, get a good tester. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CIs7zcoOE0 SneakyBeef fucked around with this message at 13:30 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 13:27
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SynthOrange posted:What the gently caress, is it just missing a huge piece there? Yeah, a giant "CONDEMNED" sticker. basx posted:I imagine that Pango is a giant death robot hidden in the apartment building's underground bunker. Pango would wreak havoc upon the world, but the contractor who built him spliced some Romex to an ungrounded extension cord, and he can only take three steps before it pulls loose. Besides, he's only pulling fifty amps. LMAO Seriously this place is, well... interesting. The counters are all crooked, as in like a full inch of warp in 6 feet of lateral run. There are no drawers in the kitchen. The dishwasher door opens about 45 degrees before it hits a wall. No GFCI in the kitchen AFAIK. Nice big walk-in closet though!
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May 10, 2013 20:13
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SneakyBeef posted:Killer robots are the least of your worries with a Federal Pacific panel in your home. I will be sure to show this to the new management company. Along with the first page of Google results for "federal pacific stab-lok"
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May 10, 2013 20:15
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drat, I hope there are WORKING smoke detectors in every room of your apartment, and that you have a nice soft spot to land when you inevitably have to jump out of a window to escape the flames. Invest in a few smoke detectors if there aren't any there, and possibly consider a safer place to live. gently caress STAB-LOK panels. gently caress them HARD.
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May 10, 2013 21:08
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Well, I'm on the ground floor, so that saves me the time of falling to the ground at least. And there is a smoke detector, and it runs on line voltage so I don't have to worry about a battery. I'm just glad I remembered to plug it in... apparently whoever painted the unit in the turnover forgot that little detail. TBH $415 including WSG in Tucson, I'm pretty much getting what I paid for. It's worth it to not have lovely roommates.
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May 10, 2013 21:54
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Farmdizzle posted:Well, I'm on the ground floor, so that saves me the time of falling to the ground at least. Will line voltage work if all of the electricity is going into burning your apartment down?
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May 10, 2013 23:28
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Pile of Kittens posted:A stonemason friend of mine says that they're going to key into the rebar with the second story, and that this looks like legit work to him. Good to know your taxes were reasonably well spent then. Most brick structures there were without mortar unless we made the contractor use it. They would also use mud bricks unless we specified real ones. They tended to melt pretty quick. I should add I am in no way qualified to do the job I was assigned.
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May 10, 2013 23:33
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I caught a buddy of mine doing some tree work a couple months ago. Company name has been removed from his sweatshirt to protect the guilty. Screw the innocent.
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May 12, 2013 17:38
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I dunno man, those are only low voltage/telco lines and I have seen them hold up some pretty big trees. 
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May 12, 2013 17:41
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iForge posted:I caught a buddy of mine doing some tree work a couple months ago. Company name has been removed from his sweatshirt to protect the guilty. Screw the innocent. Yeah, it's actually normal for utility workers to rest their ladders on telco cables like that.
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May 12, 2013 18:06
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I was more interested in the fact that its an aluminum ladder tied to the cables with rope while he cuts a branch within 6 inches of the power lines with a hand saw. Utilities use fiberglass ladders with special hooks on them. The rope is also tied around his thighs. Sure, the power lines aren't primaries but still... I had a fiberglass ladder with cable hooks on my roof rack he could have used.
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May 12, 2013 18:17
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DNova posted:Yeah, it's actually normal for utility workers to rest their ladders on telco cables like that. Not on the cables but the support strand  Yeah also a telco or cable employee will (or at least should) be using a fiberglass ladder with hooks and have a leather harness to secure himself and the ladder to the strand, not a rope that will become a fashionable tourniquet should something go awry. Also hard hats, gloves, voltage detector and the like. If they were caught working aloft as pictured above it'd be immediate termination.
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May 12, 2013 18:48
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iForge posted:I caught a buddy of mine doing some tree work a couple months ago. Company name has been removed from his sweatshirt to protect the guilty. Screw the innocent. Without the explanation and to my uneducated eye, this was a total Even with the explanation it seems like madness!
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May 12, 2013 20:21
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Breaker panels, eh. The one in my apartment was fun for a while. It was very neatly and clearly labelled: living room, bedroom, spare room, bathroom, toilet. It doesn't go to my credit that I didn't see anything wrong with this until I managed to trip the main breaker while hanging up ceiling lamps, checked closer and realized, hold on, this is a studio apartment. And the toilet's right in the bathroom. I did think the different breakers might be for different ceiling light fixtures, as there's one on each end of the room, but nope. Got an electrician to come around and in the end, there's one breaker for all ceiling light fixtures except the bathroom, the one labelled "bedroom" was for the fridge, the one for the washing machine is also for the kitchen hood (because the kitchen is adjacent, and they drilled a hole in the wall and led the hood's power cord through there), and the one labelled "toilet" was hooked up to a circuit properly but flipping it on or off did not make any difference anywhere in the apartment. I have a mystery breaker now. Thing is, this is a brand newly built apartment, finished only last year. But there are so many issues here that this wasn't a surprise. There's a whole other post in there. sidenote: still don't have proper ceiling lights up.
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May 12, 2013 20:25
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My Lovely Horse posted:the one labelled "toilet" was hooked up to a circuit properly but flipping it on or off did not make any difference anywhere in the apartment. I have a mystery breaker now. That's what you think now. Whatever you do, don't turn it off.
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May 12, 2013 21:21
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Sagebrush posted:That's what you think now. Whatever you do, don't turn it off. And relabel it 'magic/more magic'.
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May 12, 2013 21:33
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My Lovely Horse posted:the one labelled "toilet" was hooked up to a circuit properly but flipping it on or off did not make any difference anywhere in the apartment. I have a mystery breaker now. I can think of 3 possible culprits. 1. Do you have a porch/patio? Is there a GFCI out there? 2. What about exterior lights, including by your front door? 3. Does your apartment have its own water heater? Also, it's normal for all lights to be on their own breaker, especially for small living areas. For apartments, all bathroom GFCIs are typically on one circuit throughout the apartment and exclude bathroom lights/fans, but there does exist an exception in the code for a single bathroom to have one dedicated circuit including GFCIs, lights and fans.
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May 12, 2013 21:44
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Sadly, because I would have loved to label it something interesting, we later determined it must indeed be an exterior light. Originally there was supposed to be a separate front door for this apartment and there's a light fixture left over from when that was the case. There are just windows there now. Apparently the whole interior of the building got replanned and restructured something like 2 or 3 times; the story goes that it was supposed to be wheelchair-accessible, but someone hosed up and it wasn't built remotely according to accessibility specifications, so the owner cut his losses and made it into regular apartments. That's how I got a pretty kickass bathroom with a floor drain for the shower. It's awesome, basically cleans itself. I did mention the numerous issues, yes? This is all in Germany by the way so don't go thinking too hard about US building code when I tell stories. I'm just used to breakers being, very broadly, one per room + kitchen appliances so it came as a bit of a surprise.
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May 12, 2013 21:56
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If I had to guess, perhaps that breaker ended up being in tandem with another due to someone crossing circuits. For instance sometimes people will go to put a regular outlet and a switched outlet (for floor lamps, etc) on separate circuits, but forget to break off the little jumper tabs that joins the two outlets together electrically. So then either breaker powers the whole circuit.
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May 13, 2013 01:08
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At least your breakers were labeled. As far as telco line chat goes, I guess dude in the picture could be just fine depending on the circumstances. The strand is usually a 1/4" or so steel cable, and the actual line is lashed to it with wire. It's actually pretty drat sturdy, the poles or the mounts will likely break before the line does and that takes a LOT of weight. As far as safety precautions though, he's kind of an idiot. I've been on job sites where you had to be harnessed to be on any ladder 12' or taller. Of course, Now that I'm in AZ I see guys up in buckets without them all the time. YMMV I guess. And even if it is telco, CATV distro has 90V AC carrier on it, and if the spans are shared with power there's always the possibility of a short somewhere and it could be a mile away, and that strand will conduct it right to you. There's a reason you always touch the strand with the back of your hand before doing it with your palm...
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May 14, 2013 06:23
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I'd be more concerned with the wire swinging back and forth, allowing the ladder to sway and dip and whatever. I would not want to stand on that as it shifted under my feet.
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May 14, 2013 18:34
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