I have a question for you engineers out there: what are the infrastructure problems if any that are causing all the flooding in taiwan? also i met a guy on the subway who said that taiwan bulidings are poorly constructed. also another person told me her architect friend didn’t trust the structural integrity of the 101 building at all. please respond.
I’m not an engineer, but one of the big problems here (and many places around the world) is that builders often have no qualms about building in flood plains.
Taipei 101 is as far as I know structurally sound.
It was built by a joint venture, with one of the companies being French.
They said in National Pornographic that when 101 was in the middle of its construction (when the structure tends to be the weakest) it was hit by a 6 earthquake, and it did fine. Actually I would rather live in older buildings, especially ones thats survived countless earthquakes. Im more worried about newer buildings because they might have shotty construction…
During that earthquake, a crane fell down, however the builidng itself did very well. Poor guys in the crane though.
I’d be most worried about what some of the buildings are made of… they put all kinds of crap into the cement here… sand, cans etc. to reduce costs. Also the mafia get contracts here for construction…
Overall though I would say that flooding is going to have less impact than earthquakes.
Another big problem with the Civils here is the soil here. Its apparently very difficult to build here.
A major problem with construction is the use of poor quality materials. For example, and I think this was noted here on another thread, Cement being made with sand with a high salt level. As water permeates the cement, it dissolves the salt in the cement mixture. This increases the porosity of the cement and weakens it. The is commonly seen in the water leakage in walls.
I have two buildings with a common wall that this is occurring in.
Just a shitty attitude about construction. Plus a lack of code supervision. Thats assuming there actually are ‘Building Codes’ here.
Sand is OK, if added in the correct amount - actually you won’t find concrete without it.
What I would worry about nowadays is low lime content.
They talk a fair bit about sea sand, and it’s true that you will find a bit in nearly every building built during the late 1980’s - as building sand was in short supply due to the building boom.
Mr He -
Would you reccomend adding additional lime to the mix?
And what is it about the sea sand that’s bad… salt content? Just curious.
The issue with sea sand is salt. You can rinse it out before you mix it out, but it’s hard to get it low enough.
Yes, when you build here, you can ask for the concrete to keep certain standards, howevwer I would test each batch before pouring it, if possible.
A lot of what people here thinks is salt coming out of their concrete walls is lime, which gets washed out, as they don’t waterproof the concrete here - concrete is not waterproof in itself, but needs additional treatment.