spog posted:

Concrete layered with ex-mafia employees.

Proteus Jones posted:

A 200m span of a major bridge in Genoa, Italy collapsed, plunging over 30m. Estimates (which are notoriously inaccurate this early) are 10 dead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45183624

tetrapyloctomy posted:

Yikes. Uneven settling of the foundation, maybe.

Or it'll just be that one bolt in a seemingly inconsequential hanger/fastener, in a hard-to-visualize area, was cross-threaded and not set to spec, and millions of little jiggles over time caused it to fail, triggering a catastrophe.

Splicer posted:

Has there ever been a case where a structural failure was linked to a mob-informant-in-concrete scenario?

the news posted:

The discovery came after a store manager noticed the strange odor stemming from a pillar outside the entrance of a California supermarket. Thinking a sewage leak had occurred, the manager called a plumber, who chipped away at the pillar's brick to reveal a person's leg inside.

Factor Mystic posted:

Splicer posted:

Has there ever been a case where a structural failure was linked to a mob-informant-in-concrete scenario?

This is pretty close? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/08/13/body-found-pillar-winco-grocery-store-lancaster-california/977058002/

schmug posted:

Yeah that doesn't cover either one of op's questions. Weird story though.

Splicer posted:

I didn't reply because that story is going to give me genuine nightmares.

Splicer posted:

I didn't reply because that story is going to give me genuine nightmares.

FrankeeFrankFrank posted:

https://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/worlds-largest-tree-house-stands-10-stories-tall.html

I saw this thing on tv last night. I only watched about 5 minutes of it, but they interviewed the builder. I'll paraphrase... "It's a solid structure. If it was a small piece of wood I'd use 1 nail, if it was bigger I'd use 2 or 3 nails. I'd use nails until it was solid. Some pieces of wood are just full of nails."

I guess this guy just started nailing pieces of wood together until it turned into this.

Do you not need permits or inspections for something like this?

FrankeeFrankFrank posted:

Do you not need permits or inspections for something like this?

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_VPGOWYz_8

This is a clip from the show I saw, but unfortunately it doesn't include the nail explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Burgess%27s_Treehouse

"Closed by the state for fire code violations"

FrankeeFrankFrank posted:

https://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/worlds-largest-tree-house-stands-10-stories-tall.html

I saw this thing on tv last night. I only watched about 5 minutes of it, but they interviewed the builder. I'll paraphrase... "It's a solid structure. If it was a small piece of wood I'd use 1 nail, if it was bigger I'd use 2 or 3 nails. I'd use nails until it was solid. Some pieces of wood are just full of nails."

I guess this guy just started nailing pieces of wood together until it turned into this.

Do you not need permits or inspections for something like this?

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_VPGOWYz_8

This is a clip from the show I saw, but unfortunately it doesn't include the nail explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Burgess%27s_Treehouse

"Closed by the state for fire code violations"

Proteus Jones posted:

A 200m span of a major bridge in Genoa, Italy collapsed, plunging over 30m. Estimates (which are notoriously inaccurate this early) are 10 dead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45183624

FCKGW posted:

https://media.giphy.com/media/31X5ghk7jVujsiSstg/giphy.mp4

FrankeeFrankFrank posted:

you could take someone off the street that knows nothing about construction, let them watch a 30 min. DIY tv show, and then turn them loose and they would do a better job than that.

Were they actually trying to make shelves out of only the tiles themselves? It's like this person has never even seen a tiled shower.

Kanish posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/97i674/diy_gone_wrong/

at what point would a normal homeowner realize this wasnt going great??

quote:

quote:

Pay peanuts, get a monkey.

Now if only I could convince my aunt of this. At her old house she hired a guy to do some tiling in her closet-sized basement bathroom. It took him a few months to do what should have only taken one person a few days.

She bought a new house for dirt cheap from a guy who does shoddy handywork as a side job; he said that he renovated the entire house on his own. As it turns out, he used bits and bobs from his other house-flipping endeavors. Within weeks of living in the house, problems begin to emerge. The boiler and furnace break, the sump pump doesn't pump, the concrete patio cracks, etc. The best part is that she is now next-door neighbors with the guy she bought the house from.

She wanted to fix these issues with the house so she hired basement bathroom guy to redo her backyard. She wants sod, the concrete patio should be replaced by brick, a roof over the patio, and the gutters need somewhere to drain so that it doesn't just pool in the yard and driveway. Well for the drainage he digs a massive hole in the backyard, fills it with rocks, then throws a few inches of dirt on top of it. Now, rather than having large puddles all over her yard she has a swimming pool in her lawn. He threw the shittiest sod I've ever seen over the top - it came with weeds pre-installed. Her yard looks like a lumpy piece of poo poo because he couldn't even be bothered to level the dirt he threw over his rock pit. Then he builds the roof, which fails inspection multiple times, lays the bricks, which almost immediately became uneven, and did about half of the finish on the roof and pillars. This took him the entirety of the spring, summer, and fall. At the end of the season he leaves a wheelbarrow with a flat tire and several shovels, picks, etc. behind her shed.

It's worth mentioning that this whole time my family has, for some reason, been treating these random workers with the kid gloves on. I'm talking about buying them meals on a weekly basis, giving them bottles of water from her fridge, providing beers at least once IIRC, etc.

My aunt says that he couldn't be expected to work during the Winter so she doesn't contact him until Spring warms up. He starts going on about how he needs to get to other projects before he can return and finish hers for several months. Eventually he stops answering the phone. Several months later we hear that he ran back to Nicaragua or wherever the gently caress he was from.

My aunt then gets stuck trying to find someone who will finish the job, which absolutely no one wants to do for the reason you mentioned in your comment. Everyone just assumes that she's a bad client.

She recently hired another company to do a different project on the house, and of course she went with the contractor that lowballed everyone. It took him months to complete what every other contractor said they could have done within a week. He also stole an avocado from her kitchen and ate it like a savage - no knife; he ripped off the skin with his teeth and just started taking bites out of it.

tetrapyloctomy posted:

Yeah, that sounds like a particularly uncomfortable way to go.

Haifisch posted:

Bonus unrelated story from the comments:

Jaded Burnout posted:

I'm currently iffy about the painter I plan to use because he's cheap, but.. seems to have very good reviews? Like half the price of other people cheap.

Dillbag posted:

Cash? My old painter was great, invoiced for big and corporate jobs but if it was a small family gig you could pay him about 60% of his normal rate if it was in cash.

Motronic posted:

canyoneer posted:

Their lead bridge builder was off somewhere running a church, I doubt he signed off on the construction.

Dillbag posted:

Cash? My old painter was great, invoiced for big and corporate jobs but if it was a small family gig you could pay him about 60% of his normal rate if it was in cash.

kid sinister posted:

Love the hose clamp slices! Those are service lugs on a power panel. What's the story here? Stealing power from a neighbor?