quote:

So here's your--here's our hotel room. The door to the bathroom is clear, so you enter the bathroom, and everything's normal, you look at yourself, and everyone who's in the hallway can see you. And over here's the shower, it's relatively private. You enter the shower, and like wash yourself-- *breaks down laughing* Well okay okay, you decide to wash your hands, or sit down on the toilet and-- *another fit of laughter* Fine, fine, it's actually all okay because you grab this and you...uh, and you're like 'I want some privacy'", and you close--you close the curtain, and then you close this curtain-- *laughs* And you close that curtain too, and now you want to sit on the toilet and you're like 'Okay everything's closed, you can't see in", and so you sit down on the toilet-- *intense laughter*

razorscooter posted:

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_rkid8nNFMV1xoyw8p.mp4

razorscooter posted:

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_rkid8nNFMV1xoyw8p.mp4

Orvin posted:

Rebar is that soft that it is easier to bend it out of the way, rather than make two cuts in each piece?

Or was someone delusional enough to think they were going to bend the rebar back and cover up the work location to make the structural column look whole?

Potato Salad posted:

While structural columns should be installed with a generous safety factor, that safety factor isn't generally gonna be multiple whole integers. Removing over a square foot of area from the column may very well have reduced the column below acceptable strength.

Not to mention that exposing rebar intended to be buried inside of concrete without additional coating marks the member for a slow death. Rebar and concrete are intended to have each other's backs: the rebar reinforces the concrete to bear moments that concrete is bad at handling alone, while the concrete protects the rebar from the elements. Penetrations and deep cracks that aren't sealed proper can lead to slow, creeping failures as moisture can suddenly make its way to the rebar, rust it, expand it, and push apart the member from the inside.

Worse, the location of that member next to a seam between two walls potentially suggests that it is intended not only to take downward load, but buttress some outward thrust as well. Cutting it here might be even worse because it's compromising more than one design goal that the column was supposed to fulfill because that rebar is no longer helping to tie the wall in. you have to see the plans to know for sure, but you also can't just assume that concrete members are intended only to help handle downward forces.

Dick Trauma posted:

https://twitter.com/RomeInTheEast/status/1716525127582536146?s=20

https://twitter.com/KuHu2011/status/1716544935648801197?s=20

Blindeye posted:

This isn't crappy construction but an intentional choice. Often the houses were made from repurposed ancient leftovers or the debris from collapsed projects in part to demonstrate the supremacy of the handyman but also to show that the defilement of the trades do not incur reprisals from code enforcement, undermining their wages.

Blindeye posted:

I don't see the seam between two walls

Blindeye posted:

This isn't crappy construction but an intentional choice.

Blindeye posted:

I don't see the seam between two walls but my guess is that the column is compromised but the shear wall is bearing additional axial load (likely in excess of its rated capacity).

Dick Trauma posted:

Those tweets are spolia to help prop up the thread.

Potato Salad posted:

My eyes might be misinterpreting this, but you can see from the path the pipe takes that the member at the right side of the photo is set back from the wall at the left, so it looks like some kind of coupled shear wall with an L or C at the left and just more wall at the right

edit: which, of course, would only go on to reinforce your point

"Thucydides posted:

the whole population in the city was to labour at the wall, the Athenians, their wives, and their children, sparing no edifice, private or public, which might be of any use to the work, but throwing all down.
...
In this way the Athenians walled their city in a little while. To this day the building shows signs of the haste of its execution; the foundations are laid of stones of all kinds, and in some places not wrought or fitted, but placed just in the order in which they were brought by the different hands; and many columns, too, from tombs, and sculptured stones were put in with the rest

canyoneer posted:

Spolia alert!
Whole lot of buildings in Cuzco post-conquest are built right on the top of the Incan foundations. They're trapezoidal profile foundations built with giant blocks of stone expertly shaped so they fit together without mortar. The joints are so tight you can't slide a piece of paper between them. Using mortar in stonework was the crappy construction technique for unimportant buildings in the ancient Andean way.

As it turns out, giant blocks of fitted stone is a really great construction technique when you live in earthquake country.

Blindeye posted:

This isn't crappy construction but an intentional choice.

Blindeye posted:

Cyclopean architecture is amazing and it's criminal that we'll never see the glory of the temple complex thanks to the conquistadors.

There's also a medieval town in Portugal called Óbidos where the aqueduct that went into the town eventually blends into the houses built inside the city walls in a similar way.

Blindeye posted:

This isn't crappy construction but an intentional choice. Often the churches were made from repurposed ancient pagan temples or the debris from collapsed pagan temples in part to demonstrate the supremacy of the Christian church but also to show that the defilement of the temples do not incur reprisals from the old gods, undermining their continued influence.

quote:

In May 2008, 11 buildings on the North Side burned in a three-night period. “It was all one guy setting the fires, working with the brick thieves,” says Allen. Roughly a year ago, there was a spate of four more fires. “They may burn the building down, to get the fire department to loosen up the wall with high-pressure hoses, but they’re burning a building that’s already been abandoned, sometimes for 15 or 20 years,” he says.

“But that’s not something that most of the thieves do,” he continues. “They’re showing up and using bare-knuckle force, pulling chimneys down with ropes, knocking out the base of a wall and letting it cave in. That’s more of the typical approach.”

`Nemesis posted:

The Dave posted:

Stop. How does any sane person just cut through all that?

The Dave posted:

Stop. How does any sane person just cut through all that?

peanut posted:

Here are some nice stone walls.

One of my favorite walking spots is Yamane Ground, a giant stone stadium built in my town in the 1960s.

https://hardcandy.exblog.jp/27939388/

You can see it being used naturally in this festival video (main competition around 31:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBfi8iWroI

This summer we visited Marugame Castle. The stone foundation collapsed due to a cycle of heavy rain, and they are carefully replacing each stone into its original location, with seismic reinforcements.
Introduction
https://www.city.marugame.lg.jp/site/castle/

Repair work
https://www.city.marugame.lg.jp/site/castle/2924.html

Powerful Two-Hander posted:

This might actually be literal crappy construction; one of the soil pipes vents directly into the loft (which made being up there when a toilet was flushed a sub optimal experience), but the loft itself is fully vented to the outside through the soffits so I can't decide if this is bad or not.

The bathroom below it is being replaced which has uncovered some fun things like the aqua board by the shower drain being mouldy because the relaid tiles hosed the drainage up and the toilet being plumbed in so badly that it was trying to flow uphill and had also been fitted to plasterboard which had crushed so it was now on an angle. To quote the guy doing it "it would have been easier to do a proper job".

Harry_Potato posted:

“When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.” – George Bernard Shaw

Powerful Two-Hander posted:

This might actually be literal crappy construction; one of the soil pipes vents directly into the loft (which made being up there when a toilet was flushed a sub optimal experience), but the loft itself is fully vented to the outside through the soffits so I can't decide if this is bad or not.

The bathroom below it is being replaced which has uncovered some fun things like the aqua board by the shower drain being mouldy because the relaid tiles hosed the drainage up and the toilet being plumbed in so badly that it was trying to flow uphill and had also been fitted to plasterboard which had crushed so it was now on an angle. To quote the guy doing it "it would have been easier to do a proper job".

Harry_Potato posted:

“When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.” – George Bernard Shaw

PurpleXVI posted:

We call them vacuum vents here, but I'm not sure if American plumbers might call them something else.

PurpleXVI posted:

Normally in this sort of arrangement you'd have a one-way valve capping off the pipe, so it can draw in air and prevent itself from developing underpressure, rather than just having it open into the attic. I'd look into getting one of those, they're little mushroom fellas.

We call them vacuum vents here, but I'm not sure if American plumbers might call them something else.

Darchangel posted:

For the record, the sewer vent should go all the way through the roof. That’s not just smell, but methane being vented to your attic.