4 ms·
I wonder why they still use wood.
by dwighttk 8y ago
I wonder why they still use wood.
- vonmoltke 8y agoWhat do you mean, "still"? The wooden tanks are decades old.
- stronglikedan 8y agoMike Row built a new one from wood relatively recently on Dirty Jobs. IIRC, only the bands holding it together were metal.
- vonmoltke 8y agoI'm not up on NYC code, since I don't live in the city, but I wonder if it was a rebuild of an existing wooden tank under a "repair in kind" exemption. I have seen shit like that before, such as codes that allow knocking down all but one wall of a building and still calling it a "remodel" (and thus preserving grandfathered code exemptions).
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoMy favorite one is keeping one wall, building three, knocking down the last wall and huraah... still a 'remodel'
- vonmoltke 8y agoCode hacking like that is almost a sport in South Florida.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoLiterally where I saw it... Wynwood in Miami.
- dwighttk 8y agoWhat do you mean, 'What do you mean, "still"'? They are still using wood...
- vonmoltke 8y agoI interpreted "using" in the context of construction methods, since it was attached to the material, not the object like your statement is here. To me, your statement implied that new towers are still being built with wood. It sounds like you meant to ask why wooden towers are still in use.
- dwighttk 8y agoThey were still using wood in 2012, at least https://www.businessinsider.com/rosenwach-wood-water-tanks-in-new-york-2012-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/rosenwach-wood-water-tanks-i...
- vonmoltke 8y agoSee my other comment above[1]. That company is rebuilding existing tanks on existing buildings, not building new tanks. That might sound like hair-splitting, but it is significant in the context of building codes. I'm not defending the code as written. However, there are a lot of complexities involved in retrofitting newer things to older buildings that are difficult to encapsulate in codes, hence the reason grandfathering provisions tend to be more generous than some people would like. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19442493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19442493
- dwighttk 8y agoThey put a new tank on a new building in 2007 http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2007/09/wooden-water-tank-tops-nyu.html http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2007/09/wooden-water-ta...
- dwighttk 8y ago"Indeed, new tanks are being built every day, in part because of the current building boom." (again 2007, but NYT instead of a blog) https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/nyregion/thecity/03wate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/nyregion/thecity/03wate.h...
- MisterTea 8y agoCost effective and comes with a few benefits such as: natural material which won't taint water, and it has good insulating effects in winter. There was a Dirty Jobs episode which featured Mike accompanying a water tank crew doing a roof top replacement. They shape the boards of wood at the shop, truck it in, and use manual labor to schlep the boards up to the roof. Old boards come back down the same way. No extremely expensive crane service or metal working necessary. So it is quite cost effective.
- Scoundreller 8y agoAnd somewhat naturally immune to leaks because the wood swells to fill the gaps.