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

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n2doc Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:01 AM
Original message
25 story Apartment building, 9 years old, to be razed in Seattle due to corrosion
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
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Joanne98 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:03 AM
Response to Original message
1. China
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CBGLuthier Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:05 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. America
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MattBaggins Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:16 AM
Response to Reply #1
7. It is possible since the fly ash used in the dry wall we imported from China
Edited on Mon Apr-12-10 08:28 AM by MattBaggins
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.
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Joanne98 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:22 AM
Response to Reply #7
8. Dry wall is shit
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jmowreader Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:01 AM
Response to Reply #8
12. We know that...
And it's also the cheapest, quickest way to build.
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MattBaggins Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:52 AM
Response to Reply #12
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?
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conscious evolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:38 AM
Response to Reply #7
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.
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:06 AM
Response to Original message
3. Nice work.
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StopTheNeoCons Donating Member (608 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:07 AM
Response to Original message
4. Deleted by author
Edited on Mon Apr-12-10 08:10 AM by StopTheNeoCons
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ellenfl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:09 AM
Response to Original message
5. holy cow. if it IS american, that's sad . . . and fodder for the outsourcers.
Edited on Mon Apr-12-10 08:11 AM by ellenfl
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
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jmowreader Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:05 AM
Response to Reply #5
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.
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Love Bug Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:14 AM
Response to Original message
6. Who paid off who while this was being built?
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jmowreader Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:11 AM
Response to Reply #6
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.
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ensho Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:32 AM
Response to Reply #6
15. bingo
nt
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Javaman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 10:54 AM
Response to Reply #6
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.
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pnorman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:23 AM
Response to Original message
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)
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Odin2005 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:37 AM
Response to Original message
10. OK, who fucked up?
:crazy:
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jmowreader Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 08:55 AM
Response to Original message
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.
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MicaelS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 11:16 AM
Response to Reply #11
26. Latex in the concrete? Never heard of that one n/t
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jmowreader Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:34 PM
Response to Reply #26
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.
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tammywammy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:40 AM
Response to Original message
17. Where were the inspectors? n/t
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gmoney Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:46 AM
Response to Original message
18. The contractor did another high-profile project a few years ago
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KansDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:51 AM
Response to Original message
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.
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Dyedinthewoolliberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:56 AM
Response to Reply #19
21. I like your sig line!
:toast:
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KansDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 10:00 AM
Response to Reply #21
22. Thanks!
:hi:

I wish it weren't true...
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Kievan Rus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 10:59 AM
Response to Original message
24. An extreme example of our throwaway culture
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suffragette Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 11:09 AM
Response to Original message
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.
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Heddi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-12-10 09:55 PM
Response to Original message
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.....
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