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Eiffel Tower riddled with rust and in need of repair, leaked reports say
- baud147258 4y ago> The company that oversees the tower, Sete, which is 99%-owned by the city hall So that's another thing that's going to be added on the long list of points political opponents are using to say that the current city hall management is doing a poor job at taking care of the city.
- soco 4y agoYou're perfectly right, they will blame the current management for the poor status of a product which lived over 5 times its planned lifespan...
- Kuinox 4y agoIt is know that they botched maintenance. So yeah.
- baud147258 4y agoThe current management's been in place for 8 years already so blaming them for the current situation is fair; if the tower had actually outlived its maximum lifespan, they'd have to start the process of dismantling it.
- zppln 4y agoAside for the obvious potential tragedy, it would be kind of interesting to see how the Eifel tower collapsing (or any building of similar status) would effect the public image (both internal and external).
- SquareWheel 4y agoThe Notre-Dame fire was in Paris, and that evoked world-wide concern.
- usrn 4y agoIf this happened I'd be willing to bet the Eiffel tower would be more associated with Hitler than France after a few generations.
- avgcorrection 4y agoIt would be kind of interesting to see how the World Trade Center collapsing would affect the public image. (1999)
- curiousgal 4y agoThis is hardly news-worthy.
- timeon 4y agoThere are always complains about rust articles on HN.
- mrlonglong 4y agoHey I like coding in rust ...
- drogus 4y agoYou are not the only one thinking about it https://twitter.com/drogus/status/1544125440197017600?s=20&t=XiQ4qo3Ry-risPiaYVXMEA https://twitter.com/drogus/status/1544125440197017600?s=20&t...
- mrlonglong 4y agoThis had me in stitches "Linux kernel riddled with Rust and in need of repair, leaked reports say"
- aliswe 4y agoIs this a surprise? I thought its there for everyone to see?
- bragr 4y agoThe article addresses that the poorly adhering paint is obscuring the corrosion in the metal.
- raverbashing 4y agoEvery steel structure needs periodic repair and repainting, like the famous bridges in the US As much as there's a tendency for shoddy repairs by some there's also a tendency to be biased towards alarmism by some others. Stripping four layers of led based paint is some job, no wonder people are reluctant to do it. Sounds like repainting but addressing areas of corrosion individually might be the best way of going about it
- bpodgursky 4y agoIt sounds like the concern is less the repair expense and more the time that the tower would have to be closed and the loss of tourist revenue.
- borkt 4y agoThe lost revenue you describe is just one part of the repair expense, it is not separate
- pyuser583 4y agoGolden Gate bride has a crew whose only job is to paint it. Again and again and again. That’s all they do. Repaint it. Kind of give you an idea of how important maintenance is. I’m still not certain why all those Roman bridges are still around though.
- lordnacho 4y agoOverengineered things will tend to survive. Since they didn't really know how gravity/structural forces work, they would have made some bridges with too much reinforcement and some with too little. You end up seeing the survivors. Luckily they are also not made of something requiring maintenance like metal.
- brnaftr361 4y agoYour conclusions about what the Romans did and did not know seem dubious. Even in the modern era we still fuck constructions up, despite all we know. If I recall correctly they had pretty strict standards for the roads themselves [citation needed], I would suspect much the same existed for bridges. Having said that, I think it stands to reason that chemical processes and variances in materials locally sourced would be something worthy of scrutiny. Porting tons of materials in those days would be suboptimal to say the least, so concrete compositions could suffer, alongside with a litany of other material compromises. Add in process errors and I think it becomes a far more compelling hypothesis than "they just slapped shit together but somehow invented keystones, leveraging both structural and gravitational forces" Knowing what we do know, I think, tends more towards material optimization. We can more confidently design structures and do it with greater respect to cost - something I don't know that earlier civilizations paid a lot of mind to, especially when looking at the multi-decadal constructions of cathedrals for instance or more on point the coliseum.
- checkurprivlege 4y agoTime to replace it by a recycled plastic structure
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoIt’ll very likely say Made In China on the bottom.
- AnonymousPlanet 4y agoSo the little tourist versions you can buy around the city will be more accurate then.
- winReInstall 4y agoThis building needs a sacrifice annode ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opferanode https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opferanode) and electrical charge to prevent rust.
- belter 4y agoMaybe the problem is because they are looking into Wikipedia, but they should be looking into Corrosionpedia! https://www.corrosionpedia.com/definition/1657/sacrificial-anode-cathodic-protection-sacp https://www.corrosionpedia.com/definition/1657/sacrificial-a... The Corrosion Doctors are also on it... :-) It takes 60 tons of paint and needs to be done by hand. The solution for Cathodic protection would have to be, it seems, by covering it in Zinc before the repaint. https://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Landmarks/Eiffel.htm https://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Landmarks/Eiffel.htm
- quakeguy 4y agoGreat resource!
- dekhn 4y agoI'm sure all the engineers who worked on the Eiffel Tower in the last 100 years nobody has thought of that. You should call them up.
- tim333 4y agoI don't think that works on something like a tower. When they use them on ships they change the voltage of the hull relative to the water but the tower doesn't have a continuous body of water to make a circuit.
- rootw0rm 4y agotime to buy some phosphoric acid
- thejackgoode 4y agoMaybe use a chance and dismantle the thing
- cinntaile 4y agoI'm sure they'll take your advice and dismantle the most iconic building in all of Paris.
- 13of40 4y agoI'm pretty sure having the Eiffel Tower in view of your window pushes up the value of an apartment. Maybe they should do the opposite and just place about 20 replicas around the city?
- orra 4y agoQuite. Of course not. That said, the tower was originally intended to be temporary, for twenty year. And con artist Victor Lustig sold the tower to scrap metal merchants—twice.
- dsego 4y agoGuy de Maupassant ate lunch everyday at the base of The Eiffel Tower, because that was the only place in Paris from which he could not see it … https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/20/priority-french-writer-ate-lunch-everyday-base-eiffel-tower-place-paris-not-see-2 https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/20/priority-french-wr...
- ASalazarMX 4y agoGuy de Maupassant could have used any restaurant seat that wasn't facing towards the tower, but I respect his way of expressing contempt.
- jacquesm 4y agoMarketing.
- Geee 4y agoDestroying and rebuilding it would create a lot of jobs, and increase the GDP of France during these hard times. /s Edit: added /s
- justinator 4y agoFunny how such a dire diagnosis lacks any photographic evidence of the damage. Like just for basic journalism: "We think" is different than, "We know". If it's so bad, wouldn't one be able to casually see some sort of rust/damage from a visit? That would then comfort the leaked documents.
- uni_rule 4y agoIsn't the situation of photo rights with the Eiffel Tower kinda fucked? Like to the point where picture of the tower at night are copyrighted vs in daylight?
- srvmshr 4y agoFor context: https://mymodernmet.com/eiffel-tower-copyright-law/ https://mymodernmet.com/eiffel-tower-copyright-law/ (You could possibly photograph Tokyo tower which is a near clone of Eiffel tower & slightly taller too)
- Sebguer 4y agoThe light display that occurs at night is copyrighted, meaning photos of the tower at night can't be used commercially.
- jacquesm 4y agoI'd say 'screw that' and publish my pictures anyway. It's in about as public a space as is possible, and I'd love to see them win in court to claim copyright over 3/4 of the night sky of a major European city.
- Sebguer 4y agoI think the general consensus is that no one's going to get in trouble for posting pictures, e.g. on twitter or instagram or their personal site, but I believe that there have been cases of folks being pursued for using them for commercial purposes. There's definitely a fair bit of people claiming that personal use might also run afoul, but it seems to be the normal baseless panic you see around this stuff rather than anything to legitimately worry about.
- maxnoe 4y agoSo, you're telling me, the Eiffel tower is being rewritten in rust?
- badjokedetector 4y ago
- Soulsbane 4y agoIt should be safe then!