25 story Apartment building, 9 years old, to be razed in Seattle due to corrosion

[n2doc]

Sunday, April 11, 2010
Last updated 2:21 p.m. PT

High-rise unsafe; hundreds uprooted
By LINDSAY COHEN
KOMO-TV STAFF


KOMO/4
The nine-year-old McGuire Apartments high-rise is unsafe for occupancy and will soon be torn down.

A nine-year-old high-rise near downtown Seattle with hundreds of residents and dozens of retailers will soon be nothing but a hole in the city's skyline.


The 25-floor McGuire Apartment building at Second Avenue and Wall Street -- built in 2001 -- has to come down because it soon will be declared unsafe for occupancy by the city.

The building's occupants were told in last-minute meetings on Saturday that the building will have to be torn down -- and the residents need to be out as soon as possible.

KOMO News has learned that the issue involves cables, concrete and corrosion that have become so costly to repair that it would be cheaper for the owner to tear down the building than to fix it.

more

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/418281_unsafe11.html

[Joanne98]

1. China

[CBGLuthier]

2. America

[MattBaggins]

7. It is possible since the fly ash used in the dry wall we imported from China

is also used in cement. It would seem strange to import cement from China but it would not surprise me. We may find this happening in other parts of the world as well. I bet producers around the world are probably guilty of using raw fly ash in building products.

We need more info on what was causing this corrosion, but it could be the same problem as the dry wall sheetrock.


ON EDIT: Links are saying the tension cables were not properly painted and grouted.

[Joanne98]

8. Dry wall is shit

[jmowreader]

12. We know that...

And it's also the cheapest, quickest way to build.

[MattBaggins]

20. So what would be the impact if unprocessed fly ash were also in cement?

This isn't what happened here but if they were making dry wall with it; how much made it's way into cement? Will we be hearing horror stories about that in a few years?

[conscious evolution]

16. Rusting tension cables in pre-stressed concrete?

I would be out of that place so fast it would make your head spin.
Tension cables are what gives the concrete floor panels there strength.Without them the concrete floors are to thin to take much wieght.A recipe for disaster.

[JVS]

3. Nice work.

[StopTheNeoCons]

4. Deleted by author

[ellenfl]

5. holy cow. if it IS american, that's sad . . . and fodder for the outsourcers.

could well be chinese drywall, however. we have a lot of buildings corroding here from chinese drywall. i would not be the least surprised.

ellen fl

[jmowreader]

13. There was no Chinese drywall in the United States in 2001

Think about it this way: In 2001 drywall ran about five dollars a sheet. You can get 680 sheets of 4x8 drywall in a container. It would have cost $5000 to bring a load of drywall you could have sold for $3400 to the United States. Even if you could get the board free you'd lose $1600 on the transaction, so no there was no Chinese drywall in the United States at that time.

[Love Bug]

6. Who paid off who while this was being built?

[jmowreader]

14. That, my friend, is the $64,000 Question

Steel-frame buildings on the coast don't survive unless you paint the steel with ship paint. This paint has so much zinc in it, it will conduct electricity. So...if you want to be sure the builder specified the right coating, you just get out your ohmmeter and check the conductivity.

SOMEONE didn't do that.

[ensho]

15. bingo

nt

[Javaman]

23. Not only that, the OP should find out what the city has lined up to replace it.

the devil, as they say, is in the details.

[pnorman]

9. Sheesh! That;s only 3 blocks from my apt. building!

(I believe mine was built in the Twenties, and is typical of the 6 story buildings of that period)

[Odin2005]

10. OK, who fucked up?

:crazy:

[jmowreader]

11. I know what this is, and it's not Chinese drywall

It's inadequate rustproofing on the steel they used to build the building, and concrete not suited for coastal environments.

Think about where Seattle is: right on the coast. There's a lot of salt air there, and it rusts steel quickly. Concrete will also corrode in a high-salt environment if special additives are not in it. They've been making durable concrete and steel for decades, you just have to use the right products.

What I think happened: The contractor who built this place decided to go with low bid materials sourced from companies not in the Puget Sound area, and the low bidders didn't know you have to paint the steel with ship paint and add latex to the concrete if you want the building to last more than about eight years.

[MicaelS]

26. Latex in the concrete? Never heard of that one n/t

[jmowreader]

27. Neither did I until this morning, and I looked it up

There are two or three different admixtures they can use to make "coastal concrete," and one of them is latex. There's also polyurethane and epoxy, but you can pretty much figure out what either of those cost compared to latex.

[tammywammy]

17. Where were the inspectors? n/t

[gmoney]

18. The contractor did another high-profile project a few years ago

[KansDem]

19. It lasted more than three years!

It was built to be "durable"*
________
*A durable good is any product which is expected to be in service at least three years.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

21. I like your sig line!

:toast:

[KansDem]

22. Thanks!

:hi:

I wish it weren't true...

[Kievan Rus]

24. An extreme example of our throwaway culture

[suffragette]

25. There were a ton of apartment buildings slapped up in Belltown

in the 1990's and early 2000's.

This one is probably more extreme in its faulty construction, but it's far from alone in having issues in that area.

I lived in one for awhile and the place leaked like a sieve. It would leak, they would do some cheap, stop-gap repair that didn't address the main issue (poorly constructed roof and top decks) then rinse and repeat.

Had a great view of the Sound for awhile though (until a new building chipped off part of it and the summer cruise ships blocked the rest) and was in walking distance of the Market and waterfront.

[Heddi]

28. Wow, I was looking at moving into that building last year

but decided to move across country instead. We lived in another building in Seattle a block below this one. Wow wow wow. I just had to wake my husband up from a dead sleep "OMG THAT BUILDING IN SEATTLE WE WANTED TO MOVE INTO...IT"S ROTTEN AND BEING TORN DOWN"

the poster above me is right with regards to the amount of buildings just thrown up in Belltown in the late 90's and early-mid 2000's. We lived in a Condo building as renters, but most of those around us in the building had bought...but what? It was an *apartment building*. cheaply built, cheap siding, cheap walls...no way I'd pay $465k for a 1bdrm with a view of the alley (going price for condos in that building with no view). Fuck that.

It really wouldn't surprise me if revelations like this popped up about more buildings. They were just up overnight...not literally, but really *really* quickly, and so many of them at once.....