SF Millennium Tower Sinking and Leaning Precipitously

Are the forensic engineers as accurate as the structural engineering designers I wonder- they were only off by a factor of 150%, so far. A two inch off vertical lean is dangerous, actually very dangerous.

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And what the hell is "a braced soil-cement slurry wall system," a fancy name for a mud hut made to look like a tower?

Make America great again-

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bloggs.fredbloggs.fred
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A little lean isn't bad, but it will probably increase. And an earthquake might just liquify the crud that the beast is perched on.

Imagine 645 feet of concrete building sitting on 80 feet of pilings banged into ancient bay fill and the rotting carcasses of sailing ships, in an earthquake zone. They economized by not going down to bedrock.

It's really ugly, so we won't miss it.

Fortunately, the hideous building is heavily populated by lawyers.

Big chunks of San Francisco's soil can be expected to liquify in a serious earthquake; some did in 1989. Our building is just at the north edge of the Mission liquifaction zone, and we're sitting on sand. We put in a zillion dollars worth of footings and steel and bolts so we won't get squashed.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

That's what happens when you build on landfill. Th SF Business District used to be waterfront. The bay has lost a good portion of area over the decades to create more real estate. Underneath...mud.

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doh

It _can_ be done right: the Back Bay area of Boston is just that, the Back Bay land-filled.

However I do hear rumors that one of the freeway tunnels is a wee-bit leaky ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Jim Thompson

igners I wonder- they were only off by a factor of 150%, so far. A two inch off vertical lean is dangerous, actually very dangerous.

name for a mud hut made to look like a tower?

The problem with the lean is that it begets more lean because it unbalances the weight distribution on the pilings.

The main danger seems to be the bottom being kicked out from under the top before it has a chance to make the same lateral displacement, and they have all that part pretty much super-fortified. You don't want to ever see the earthquake that will make this thing topple, the whole city will be in ruin s.

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Good.

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bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

Tourist attraction, The Leaning Tower of San Francisco. I figure we can prop it up with some 4x4's.

Other places get earthquakes, just not as often as here. New York, Boston, St Louis, would be huge disasters. We do have building construction and upgrade laws here, especially for brick buildings, and I suspect middle-america and east coast cities don't.

Seattle could get whacked. Or LA.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Italy was once an empire that spanned the known world, too. So was Babylon - I wonder if they had a leaning tower as well? Perhaps with gardens hanging from it?

Either way, there are historical precedents, and little chance that anything will "make Italy great again". Or Babylon, for that matter. I hope the USA can get its act together, but it's not looking good at the moment.

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Clifford Heath

Italy already had their "Trump" Berlusconi

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Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Trump is merely a symptom of a much more intractable disease.

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Clifford Heath

His political success is a symptom of "the governing class" feeding off the working class.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Does this mean it goes up 7740 inches and the top is moved over by only two inches? The equivalent of having a ten foot pole with the top moved over

0.0025 inches. Going a little further the equivalent footprint of the 10 ft pole is 0.18 inches. Hmm. ahh, Ok, 0.0025 doesn't look so good now. Might want to move all the lawyers over to one side. You can decide which side.

Mikek

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amdx

:

ing designers I wonder- they were only off by a factor of 150%, so far. A t wo inch off vertical lean is dangerous, actually very dangerous.

fancy name for a mud hut made to look like a tower?

n.

balances the weight distribution on the pilings.

His political success - so far - is mainly evidence that the Tea Party Repu blicans couldn't find a more attractive candidate. It's not an obvious and specific symptom of the gross and damaging income inequality that is wreck ing the US at the moment, though it might be seen as one of the incidental consequences.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

Not just "the governing class", rather the wider class known as "The Establishment" in the UK.

Not just "the working class", rather everybody that feels that their children's prospects are not as good as their own prospects, or that money is being /unfairly/ concentrated in those that already have more than they can reasonably use.

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Tom Gardner

Agreed, and Hillary's the disease--a self-entitled, arrogant group of ignorant radicals, who've destroyed a generation's education, families, and thrift with failed, quack theories.

(Loved her "Russian reset.")

Cheers, James Arthur

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dagmargoodboat

The gc is allied with the stock market, the big drug companies, the banks, the corn farmers, and the trade unions. They buy influence (ie, elections) and twist the law for fun and profit.

The gc needs a pool of poor, unhappy voters to keep them in office, so they create it.

Money isn't the issue: it's just bits on a hard drive somewhere. Most wealth is actually stock shares. Bill Gates doesn't have 90 billion dollars stuffen under a giant matress, and it wouldn't hurt the general public if he did.

What hurts is wasting stuff that people really need. Like jobs and energy and food.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

She destroyed Libya and Syria to demonstrate how tough she is. Hill and Bill profited off the misery of Haiti. She is a monster.

Trump is the first potential president in a long time to say he will do LESS for us. Specifically, lower corporate regulation and taxes, and admit fewer illegals, so as to create jobs. All Hill can offer is to tax more and spend more.

The EU is now terrified that Britain will lower corporate taxes and steal all their businesses. That is hilariously known in europe as a "race to the bottom", another threat to the governing class.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

I've always been optimistic that the U.S. could recover from this fiscal crater by just getting back to letting people work and innovate. But, with the damage done in the last eight years, plus all the permanent changes, I'm not sure it's not unrecoverable. It's at least getting very close. It's going to be pretty ugly for a generation, best case.

Four years of Hillary would pretty well cinch it. You simply can't fix what ails the poor by raping anyone else, and you wreck a lot when you try. She wants to pour gas on all the fires. (Correction--she's doing it already, campaigning.)

Setting a country against itself...be careful what you wish for.

James

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

th:

e

There are a few Syrians and Libyans who deserve rather more of the credit.

One wonders how. Haiti has always had a lot of misery, but nobody seems to make any money out of it.

He may have said something like that once or twice, but he says a lot of th ings, many of them contradictory, and you haven't got a clue what he might do if he came to power, which does seem happily unlikely.

Quite a few voters are at least as silly as you are, but it doesn't look as if there are enough fools to elect an obvious buffoon.

As she should. US taxes rates are remarkably low for an advanced industrial country, and that's part of the reason it's getting progressively less adv anced.

That kind of race to the bottom has been going on outside of Europe too - i ndividual US states engage in the same kind of self-defeating beggar-my-nei ghbour competition.

The problem is that if you over-do it, you end up as the kind of under-serv iced failed state where it isn't worth setting up a business. UK's problem is that it used to be part of the EU and setting up a business in the UK us ed to give you access to the whole European market. Not any more - it now w on't be an attractive place to start a business no matter how enthusiastica lly the UK government doles out inducements.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

h:

James Arthur peddles his own set of quack theories, and doesn't like the co mpetition from theories that work better.

From most points of view, James Arthur is an arrogant radical. His ideas ar e silly enough that he hasn't got any political power, so he's intensely re sentful of people who don't share his silly ideas and still manage to be mo re politically successful.

He is consequently enthusiastic about ascribing their success to criminal b ehaviour (not it that did Nixon much good, or Reagan either - the plumbers did go to prison, while Oliver North merely got a suspended sentence and co mmunity service, but convicting the guy in charge would have worried the ge neral public).

And - as a matter of fact - it isn't the Democrats who have destroyed thrif t in the US, but rather the Republican enthusiasm for making the rich riche r, which means that the 99% has had progressively less disposable income wi th which to practice thrift since Reagan came to power.

Families may not look the same as they did when James Arthur was growing up , but the evidence that they've been "destroyed" doesn't seem all that conv incing. Similarly education is more ambitious than it was when James Arthur was growing up - an appreciably higher proportion of kids finish high scho ol now than they did back then, and more of them seem to literate when they emerge, but James Arthur may be looking for the kind of "education" that p roduces people who share his silly ideas, and with any luck that may be goi ng away.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

signers I wonder- they were only off by a factor of 150%, so far. A two inc h off vertical lean is dangerous, actually very dangerous.

name for a mud hut made to look like a tower?

It's much more complicated than that. The tilt, as small as it is, introduc es all kinds of shears and strains into the structure that are unaccounted for in the original design and may even be incalculable. Aside from the mor e critical structural failures, the owners of the multi-million dollar cond os within don't consider the building to be a convenient walk-up design whe n the elevators start binding and fail to function.

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bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

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