Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Visiting Lecturer in Sustainable Development Ran Boydell, The horrific collapse of the condo building in Surfside may be a warning of things to come, if we don’t reduce CO2 emissions.
Most buildings were designed for an earlier climate – here’s what will happen as global warming accelerates
July 3, 2021 1.29am AEST
Ran Boydell
Visiting Lecturer in Sustainable Development, Heriot-Watt UniversityClimate change will affect every aspect of our lives – including the buildings we live and work in. Most people in the US, for example, spend about 90% of their time indoors. Climate change is fundamentally altering the environmental conditions in which these buildings are designed to function.
Architects and engineers design buildings and other structures, like bridges, to operate within the parameters of the local climate. They’re built using materials and following design standards that can withstand the range of temperatures, rainfall, snow and wind that are expected, plus any geological issues such as earthquakes, subsidence and ground water levels.
When any of those parameters are exceeded, chances are some aspect of the building will fail. If there are high winds, some roof tiles may be ripped off. If, after days of heavy rain, the water table rises, the basement might flood. This is normal, and these problems cannot be designed out entirely. After the event has passed, the damage can be repaired and additional measures can reduce the risk of it happening again.
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The tragic recent collapse of an apartment building in Miami in the US may be an early warning of this process gaining speed. While the exact cause of the collapse is still being investigated, some are suggesting it might be linked to climate change.
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Whether or not the link to climate change proves to be true, it is nevertheless a wake up call to the fragility of our buildings. It should also be seen as a clear demonstration of a critical point: wealth does not protect against the effects of climate change. Rich nations have the financial clout to adapt more rapidly and to mitigate these impacts, but they can’t stop them at the border. Climate change is indiscriminate. Buildings are vulnerable to these impacts no matter where in the world they are, and if anything, the modern buildings of developed countries have more things in them that can go wrong than simpler traditional structures.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/most-buildings-were-designed-for-an-earlier-climate-heres-what-will-happen-as-global-warming-accelerates-163672
I tried to find Ran Boydell’s staff entry on the Heriot-Watt university website, but his name didn’t appear in my search.
As for Ran’s claim about the building collapse being caused by climate change. We are used to climate scientists trying to opportunistically attach themselves to any recent crisis, to push their fear mongering. But in my opinion trying to exploit the Miami building collapse, before the investigation has concluded, while people are still searching for bodies, sets a new low for this kind of behaviour.
I’m no engineer, but the first thing that struck me when they showed us pictures of the building was that the columns holding the thing up looked like toothpicks.
I’d like to hear from somebody who knows about such things what they make of them.
Not an engineer but can speak to that. Depends on the concrete PSI loading (a function of how much cement, sand, and crushed stone in the mix—more cement and less sand gives a higher psi crush strength—and the steel rebar design.
Specific example. Our building is 27 stories from ground level, so 28 from the lower lobby/bottom garage foundation slab, itself tied into numerous large concrete/rebar columns sunk down about 80 feet thru sand into the limestone bedrock. (Same as a newer, lower height complex just completed about a half mile south, also on the beach).
So we are over twice as high as Champlain Towers South. The vertical columns are exposed in the garage, and partly exposed in the lower lobby and lockoff storage rooms of the tower itself. They are all the same, about 1 foot wide by two feet long (rectangular), 10 foot high to next floor (each floor slab is also tied to the column by extra ‘Tbar’ set in an extra concrete floor thickness “box” about 5 x 5 foot square and about 8 inches thick around the column itself, integral to the ‘ceiling’ slab, done in one pour. The columns are not regularly spaced because of the building shape, but average about 15-20 feet apart.
So ‘spindly’, but good enough for a 28 story structure to withstand a 150 mph Cat 5 hurricane (the rating of our balcony glass and sliding doors, themselves set in 1/4 inch thick extruded solid aluminum frames anchored every two feet into the floor/ceiling concrete slabs.
Champlain Towers was built pre-Andrew, so not to our newer codes, and less than half as high. It would have been ‘spindlier’. Think it was rebar corrosion forcing concrete spalling that was not repaired, rather than basic structural engineering, that caused the partial collapse.
This was interesting. Included portions of a building report. As you suggested, spalling had been identified as a problem.
https://youtu.be/k3-GCXS4ZMg
McDonald made general claims of beach sand and of salt water used in some foundations 40 years ago, which increases spalling due to rebar corrosion.
Also 40 years back there were much lower standards for the quality of the steel used in rebar, as well as the amount of reinforcement.
If Champlain was even partially inundated with salt water during Andrew or any subsequent weather event, or even badly implemented drainage of salt spray, that would also affect corrosion in reinforced concrete.
The building managed to stand for 40 years on those toothpicks.
It was constructed with salt tainted sand stolen from a beach.
That was an ‘Endeavour’ episode.
“While the exact cause of the collapse is still being investigated, some are suggesting it might be linked to climate change.
Whether or not the link to climate change proves to be true, it is nevertheless a wake up call to the fragility of our buildings.”
This must be straight from the editorial style book for climate alarmists that they all use. It must contain every weasel word known to mankind.
Whether or not Joe Biden was fraudulently elected, it is a wake up call for each state to pass strict election integrity laws.
See, it works for the side of sanity also.
Yep, all that weight of additional CO2 in the air made the building fall down. Couldn’t be flawed design, flawed materials, flawed construction, or insufficient maintenance. This could not have happened if CO2 had stayed around 350 ppm.
And to make sure it would not happen in the future, we need to BORROW/PRINT/SPEND about $150 TRILLION to get CO2 below 280 ppm, as during the golden ages of no fossil fuels.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-total-energy-consumption
My dog had a very rare accident this morning and shit on the floor. It took it as a sign that I would need my hip boots despite it being a sunny and dry day. And Lo and Behold I was right!
Wow, so 40 years ago, nobody knew about sea level rise, which was an ongoing process, or the possibility of flooding damaging foundations? Nobody knew about hurricanes? Amazing. I suppose, that was before Google. Cracking a book is hard.
If you’re going to claim Climate Change caused something, prove it. Don’t wave your arms and say sea level rise has accelerated, show me the data, and make sure you’ve subtracted out land subsidence. As an engineer, anticipating such changes in nature is what we do, not based on blind faith, but based on a solid framework of how nature works.
The Pantheon in Rome is still standing having withstood the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Modern Warm Period, although this last event is a bit of a ‘pretender’ compared to it’s predecessors. Anyway, if a modern building falls down because of ‘climate change’ then the architect or builder needs firing.
Especially true given that the Pantheon also survived numerous earthquakes over its history. Surely it can handle a couple of degrees by 2100 and a bit extra rain?
Where is the visiting lecturer visiting from: Shutter Island??
How can anyone with brains claim “Climate Change” when the firemen and volunteers digging in the rubble question the fact that “It looks like these columns and floor does not have sufficient rebar?”
It seems logical that anyone stupid enough to make a ridiculous statement like this should be a candidate for Darwinian imposed extinction. The fact that he’s not dead, I blame on the welfare state that keeps the dumbest alive.
Does this moron understand what he is saying.
We will need to build stronger buildings.
That is ADAPTION.
A. Tell engineers quantitatively how much stronger we need to make buildings.
B. Tell us how much money you need to go net zero emissions – MITIGATION.
C. Give engineers the money needed for B to do A.
I’ll keep the change.
He’s an architect. I’m sure he will let you know for a price.
The guy is a lunatic. The problem with the condo is probably more likely linked to payoffs to inspectors, contractors, etc., when the building was built. And it was built around the time of enormous profits due to cocaine coming into the country and the cartels were laundering the money by building apartments, etc. My guess is that the concrete was weak due to not putting in enough rebar and mixing too much cocaine into the concrete!
This guy is a fool.
“Whether or not the link to climate change proves to be true, it is nevertheless a wake up call….” Beautiful — just like fake hate crimes!
Given that there has been virtually no warming in the US since this building was built this claim is garbage. Idiots like this should be arrested and thrown in jail.
Fool, clearly does not know a blessed thing. Those of you who have not owned property at the ocean’s edge in Flodia, have no idea what an absolutely brutal environment it is for man made things.
Great. Grossly neglect preventive maintenance but pin the blame on the boogey man. Sadly, more than a few morons will fall for this crap.
Ran Boydell’s a complete idiot.
Adding it to my ever-growing list of things that are to be blamed on “climate change’.
Otherwise, yawn.
If they judge it to be climate change, then they should not rebuild on this property. If they rebuild then who cares if it was climate change or not.
the climate is a set of statistics, it has no power, is not some force, and has never caused any event of any type….people claiming the climate had impact on that building are LYING, stupid beyond belief and certainly not scientists in any way.
I’m sure there are some dodgy contractors or crokked materials suppliers or shoddy building code inspectors or just general all-round shonks who are hoping climate change takes the rap.
It was affected by climate but not caused by climate change.
1) The building is built on a sand bank that once had vegetation (eg. mangrove swamps) & close to salty water reduces the life of typical concrete structures. Always has been open to the storms & hurricanes of a similar level, no significant change.
2) The building had a basement that was dug several metres below the sea level when it was built, adding a few centimetres of average MSL would not have changed that.
3) Several levels lacked or damaged water sealing so more water was in contact with the concrete & moving through it. This includes from the pool level into the basement, water through doors/windows (lacking seals/drainage or later damage of frames).
4) The rebar had no protection against rust. Modern steel reinforcement bars can be coated in plastic to keep out water (costs more). Rusting steel expands, cracks the concrete & eventually fails.
If this building was constructed >5km from the sea with basement & footings above sea level & proper waterproofing & drainage then it would have lasted >60years.
Germany only lost because of climate change, and so did Belgium..
This disaster sound more like what happened in “The Towering Inferno” than “An Inconvenient Truth”!
(DANG! I’m “Awaiting for approval” because I typed “Gunga Fin” instead of “Gunga Din”!)
Obviously a better man!
Prone to typos.
Evidently Ran Boydell has not read the parable Jesus told nearly 2000 years ago of someone who built on the sand. More than 2000 years ago there was an intelligent treatise by a Greek on building and foundations but we are far too clever to bother about that old stuff.