4 ms·
Condo issues aside, another takeaway is that reinforced concrete is a bad material as it’s currently used. You’re lucky to get 50 years out of it with perfect m
by ashtonkem 5y ago
Condo issues aside, another takeaway is that reinforced concrete is a bad material as it’s currently used. You’re lucky to get 50 years out of it with perfect maintenance, and places like Florida are even worse because any water ingress is guaranteed to be salt water.
A much more reasonable approach would be to ban iron or steel reinforced concrete in new Florida construction, but I doubt that the government would be willing to do that.
- tomatotomato37 5y agoYou'd be surprised. Florida has some of the highest building standards in accordance to disaster/hurricane protection in the US thanks to the major hurricanes of the 80s; this may prove a watershed moment for the same to happen for corrosion prevention & maintenance standards today. Of course that won't do anything for buildings already standing (in fact this condo would have also been rolled over by a hurricane too given its construction date) but it could be revolutionary for new construction
- CincinnatiMan 5y agoAs someone not familiar with large-scale building materials, what should be used instead?
- ashtonkem 5y agoThe short answer is “don’t build that tall”. There really isn’t any material available to build that tall that cheaply without it being throwaway work, so don’t. Building tall is really only necessary because of the amount of space we set aside for cars, both for parking and roads. You can get really good density by building 4-6 story apartments close to where people actually want to live and work, plus a bit of mass transit (preferably trains).