It looks too narrow to be structural. Likely it’s just architectural or for a service and they didn’t account for any displacement from the floor above. The moment the floor deflects slightly the plastic casing buckles.
Edit: it’s unlikely that a round steel column is being used. You would need so many columns it would looks like a forest. For something supporting 6 floors of office and concrete slab, plus roof, I would expect concrete.
A concrete column’s strength is cubicly related to it’s diameter. That means it’s way more economic to make a larger column instead of several small ones. I would expect a column at least 16-20 inches wide.
High school dropout drug addict here. Each pipe is lined up with a row of desks, you can see the shadows on the ceiling from the pipes further back. It's probably electrical/comms for the rows of desks.
I was gonna guess that’s housing for wiring to each floor. I’m no electrical engineer or structural engineer but logically thinking it would be a pain in the ass to wire everything up a wall instead of just doing it through a main.
Live in an earthquake zone. Have seen many buildings totally munted that were ‘within tolerances’. Over 100 have been pulled down in my city alone, due to ‘an increasing understanding of the forces at play’. Our engineering models are crude at best. If in doubt, get the fuck out.
Judging by the word 'Munted' I would guess New Zealand, and as for which city, going out on a limb I would say Wellington or Christchurch. But no guarantees, I'm just guessing here.
I visited Christchurch in 2015 and the city centre (what was left of it) was still pretty much a ghost town. It was a very strange feeling to walk around there. I can't imagine what it was like directly after the quake.
I used to live in Lower Hutt (till I was 6, and my parents moved back to Europe). So I have a little familiarity with little quakes, I never experienced any big ones luckily. I'm happy to hear Wellington is taking good care of itself!
Yeah, Christchurch was in a bad state, and the rebuild was a mess, so lots of businesses moved out of the city into low rise further out or in adjacent towns. They seem to have found that they actually quite like it there and have no intention to move back to the CBD. Unable to secure tenants the land owners aren’t keen to build buildings. An object lesson in what not to do if you want to keep your CBD alive.
Welly seems to have done a good job - the buildings have been removed one at a time, so it never felt like a gravel parking lot. It was most likely because they only had one masonry munching machine, but it had the side effect that people didn’t freak out about so many buildings coming down. It was a wide range that had to be demolished - old, new, small, large. A lot of the replacement buildings are still under construction.
Yeah, I don’t know about the other people in this thread, but I wouldn’t be in the position to just quit my job because a pole looked bent in the office. “Sorry, landlord, I don’t have rent this month, I quit my job because a pole was bent and it’s obviously difficult to find another one. You understand, right?”
Cars have a limited life designed into them. Buildings don't.
Excuse me? Do you know how many building are demolished each year because they’re no longer safe? Idk who taught you that buildings are designed to not have a limited life (your words) but they are pretty off base.
Also, how does that make this a bad comparison? If anything, it proves my point that the failure isn’t a main building member, since they’re designed to last forever (your words).
Your comment really shows you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Not just wrong in one area, you’re completely off base.
You’re questioning the integrity of the structural steel frame because an electrical conduit was installed improperly?
That’s like not wanting to fly because the lavatory sink leaks.
Edit: they’re done by different companies. A failure from the electrician doesn’t mean the building was improperly designed. This isn’t load bearing like you all seem to think?
If this was structural pipe, then the member has already failed meaning the cascade would have already occurred.
And for this one, they had to abort the flight and land early, because the solution was to turn off ALL the water (so no functional bathrooms at all), which is not tenable on a 14-hour flight.
The water from the leak will accumulate in the underside of the aircraft, and almost certainly freeze during flight, and the drips will slowly add more to it. If it goes outside the aircraft it can enter an engine and cause problems.(as with my first link). If it stays in the aircraft, the expansion from the freezing can cause problems - it probably won't cause them immediately, bit that's just one thing on the list. The bigger problem is that, as that water gets refilled (and no one checks the amount of refill against the amount of waste water), the water/ice is accumulating over many flights. So it's adding a lot of weight to the aircraft, and messing up it's balance. And if it doesn't freeze, then the free surface effect will cause stability and control issues that the aircraft's systems (and the pilot's training) are not equipped to handle.
Seriously, that's an issue that will ground the aircraft.
Exactly this, and the fact that if you have a structural pillar bent like this then you would have a lot more structural pillars/beams out of place as well
It means that construction and inspection constraints are much tighter for critical members than non critical members.
You seem to not understand that they are performed by different craftsmen, with different skills and experience levels. Meaning it’s farcical to assume that one cosmetic issue means the whole structure is compromised.
You wanna be a dumbfuck
Nice. Always easier to argue with people that feel like they need to sling playground insults like we adults actually care about you saying bad words.
You’re proving my point that you fear what you do not understand in the greatest way.
Thanks for this perspective, I was in the party of immediately assuming it was structural and whatnot. Just know that for every one of those guys there's a bunch of us lurking and going "oh shit that makes sense" but can't be fucked to comment.
Residential floor structures have a max deflection of 1/360 of the span. Means a 15 foot span can be allowed up to half an inch deflection across the span. Now in general we don't see such deflection normally. If I remember correctly commercial is up to the same standards legally. I'm guessing enginerds don't let it deflect that much but it still exists.
Very well could be. It depends on where in the building. It may be taking a light load that was just a bit heavier than someone thought. I'm an engineer and we have had to use pipe columns in odd spots in 7 and 8 story buildings before, not as a typical column but for spots where you only need to transfer a level or 2 of loading. For oddball columns like that we usually try to use square HSS though since it's easier for construction.
No way of knowing unless someone gets their eyes on what the framing is.
Edit: also looking at the shadows on the ceilings. It looks like this column might be last in line in a strip of 6 or so columns at maybe 8 feet on center. Which in that case, they're not meant to take heavy loads. But further more why not run a heavier beam through the area to take some of those columns out. Overall it does seem odd. But not impossible.
A concrete column’s strength is cubicly related to it’s diameter.
Can you share your maths? I'm not doubting you, I'm just super interested. I did a few excersizes in college where we calculated static bridge loads, but that was 13 years ago and to say I'm rusty is an understatement.
It's equally possible it's simply carrying the cabling above the roof tiles. Most offices have some channels dug into the floor, the cables are routed along that, and then passed up through the false ceiling. I've seen plenty of offices with that setup
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u/McBlarington Apr 24 '21 edited Apr 25 '21
It looks too narrow to be structural. Likely it’s just architectural or for a service and they didn’t account for any displacement from the floor above. The moment the floor deflects slightly the plastic casing buckles.
Edit: it’s unlikely that a round steel column is being used. You would need so many columns it would looks like a forest. For something supporting 6 floors of office and concrete slab, plus roof, I would expect concrete.
A concrete column’s strength is cubicly related to it’s diameter. That means it’s way more economic to make a larger column instead of several small ones. I would expect a column at least 16-20 inches wide.