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The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

nytimes.com

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Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#61

Post by jansan »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #18
cm2187 wrote: post #8

Noise is what turns me off from high rise residential buildings. When you watch the construction, many don’t event have concrete walls between apartments on the same floor, and I am ready to guess the concrete floors are as thin as required to keep the weight of the structure down. Add to that all-glass external walls, and I only heard stories from friends who live there that you hear everything your neighbours do, p…

I’ve lived in high-rise buildings in Seattle where the walls were effectively soundproof. Your neighbors could be as loud as they wanted to be and you never heard them. It took some heavy crashes on the floors above for you to hear the dull thud. Quality of construction matters a lot. Making apartment buildings highly insulated sound-wise is old science, not magic.

Even dry walls can be made virtually sound proof. If you look at the pdf below (it's in German) on page 49, you can see that noise reduction of almost 80dB is possible. This is impressive. For reference, a very simple drywall has a noise reduction of roughly 45dB.

https://www.knauf.de/wmv/?id=1112 (link updated, thanks for pointing this out)

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#62

Post by fsloth »

choeger wrote: post #40

> Initial findings showed that 73 percent of mechanical, electrical and plumbing components observed failed to conform with the developers’ drawings How is that even legal? Let alone technically possible? How does construction of these monsters work? "Yo, Bert, I need some 5x5 high-elastic steel framing for the 72th floor!" "Sorry man, we ran out of that when we 'redesigned' the elevator shaft, how about you take thi…

"Let alone technically possible?"

Most of MEP work is laying out pipes and wires so that the fixtures such as airvents, electric sockets and so on get connected to the system. The MEP contractor's task (overly simplifying) is to punch holes into walls and drag their spans of pipes and whatnot through them.

The designs' intent is to specify the fixtures, and how the perform (airflow etc). The subcontractor basically promises that they make those fixtures do their job - and not that their wiring and whatnot follows any specific plan necessarily.

Modern digital workflows are getting slowly integrated to the process and they may improve the productivity and quality in long term.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#63

Post by indy »

xyst wrote: post #6

for once, a subsection of rich people get a taste of what most regular people go through on a daily basis just goes to show that this project might have spent more money on marketing and advertising rather than on their engineering and architect departments.

They won't get a taste though. These people are rich enough that at the first sign of a leak in their apartment they'll have people to book them into a luxury hotel before flying off to another apartment, or maybe a little holiday to help them get over the stress they've had to 'endure'.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#64

Post by PartiallyTyped »

rtx wrote: post #55
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a living in organized crime. You can make a living polluting the environment. You can make a living defending corruption, helping the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. The problems of the wealthy are as the problems of a tick sucking the lifeblood from a host. Rest assured that extending them empathy and compassion will be a strictly one-sided arrangement when push comes to shove.

>strictly one-sided arrangement Because we are going to eat the rich, right?

I can settle with wealth redistribution. Or, perhaps, if the rich are so much better than us mere mortals, they can play the game with handicaps, the same handicaps mere mortals have.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#65

Post by clon »

jansan wrote: post #61
jandrewrogers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lived in high-rise buildings in Seattle where the walls were effectively soundproof. Your neighbors could be as loud as they wanted to be and you never heard them. It took some heavy crashes on the floors above for you to hear the dull thud. Quality of construction matters a lot. Making apartment buildings highly insulated sound-wise is old science, not magic.

Even dry walls can be made virtually sound proof. If you look at the pdf below (it's in German) on page 49, you can see that noise reduction of almost 80dB is possible. This is impressive. For reference, a very simple drywall has a noise reduction of roughly 45dB. https://www.knauf.de/wmv/?id=1112 (link updated, thanks for pointing this out)

> file:///C:/Users/jansan/Downloads/metallstaenderwaende_w11_20_04_ger.pdf

I literally just now spent some time explaining to a colleague, why the file "does not open for me".

You pasted a path to a local file in your computer.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#66

Post by loup-vaillant »

uxhacker wrote: post #50
choeger wrote: post #40

> Initial findings showed that 73 percent of mechanical, electrical and plumbing components observed failed to conform with the developers’ drawings How is that even legal? Let alone technically possible? How does construction of these monsters work? "Yo, Bert, I need some 5x5 high-elastic steel framing for the 72th floor!" "Sorry man, we ran out of that when we 'redesigned' the elevator shaft, how about you take thi…

I am doing a restoration of an old palace in Poland, the biggest issue is often the contractors do not understand the architect’s drawings. The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site. Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible, leaving it to the constructor to actually make it up on the job. Somebody said to me…

> Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible

If the drawings are indeed for regulators, then architects should be sued when they prove to be impossible impossible. Failing that, we should get rid of architects to begin with (if they draw impossible things, what good are they?), and have actual engineers draw something that can actually be built. (Of course, the engineer should risk a lawsuit if something goes wrong).

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#68

Post by tehwalrus »

BrentOzar wrote: post #33
colordrops wrote: post #20

I don't understand how anyone would want to live in a high rise. Rational or not, if feels dangerous to live high up in a narrow bottlenecked artificial construct.

Quick rundown of the advantages (I usually live in high-rises): High rises usually have spectacular shared amenities: grand pools, exercise rooms, party rooms, theaters, etc. One of mine had outdoor grilling areas that you didn't even have to clean up: the apartment had cleaning staff who would scour the grills every day. High rises usually have 24/7 door staff to sign for & lock up packages, get taxis, handle dry cl…

In the UK, high rises are cheap social housing, and rarely have any of these features.

(it's possible a few nice ones were built here at there, but those are the exception - people here value houses and gardens, and nobody builds high rises with large floorspace.)

C.f. the fallout from the Grenfell Tower fire. Most of our tower blocks are like that, and all the flats are currently impossible to sell because they all have the wrong, dangerously flammable cladding on.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#69

Post by abdullahkhalids »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #66
uxhacker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am doing a restoration of an old palace in Poland, the biggest issue is often the contractors do not understand the architect’s drawings. The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site. Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible, leaving it to the constructor to actually make it up on the job. Somebody said to me…

> Talking to the constructors it is normal for architects to specify the impossible If the drawings are indeed for regulators, then architects should be sued when they prove to be impossible impossible. Failing that, we should get rid of architects to begin with (if they draw impossible things, what good are they?), and have actual engineers draw something that can actually be built. (Of course, the engineer should r…

Let me compare this to physics. We theoretical physicists will publish an experiment that we think is perfectly feasible. When we show it to the experimentalists, they will laugh and implement a very basic version of it with lots of simplifying assumptions, because that is all that is possible within technology and budgetary constraints. They will write a paper about it. The theoreticians will understand things a little better and publish simpler variants of the experiment that are better than what the experimentalists did. This goes back and forth for years, sometimes decades, until both sides have come to an agreement on what is possible and yet useful.

I don't think this back and forth is what happens between architects and contractors. Contractors are not paid to produce knowledge, and they have no incentive to better conform to regulations. So I expect the convergence between architects and contractors is very slow.

I don't think the solution is to regulate architects more, but rather to create a system where contractors actively provide feedback, so that processes can be iterated upon.

Re: The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks

#70

Post by moepstar »

clon wrote: post #65
jansan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even dry walls can be made virtually sound proof. If you look at the pdf below (it's in German) on page 49, you can see that noise reduction of almost 80dB is possible. This is impressive. For reference, a very simple drywall has a noise reduction of roughly 45dB. https://www.knauf.de/wmv/?id=1112 (link updated, thanks for pointing this out)

> file:///C:/Users/jansan/Downloads/metallstaenderwaende_w11_20_04_ger.pdf I literally just now spent some time explaining to a colleague, why the file "does not open for me". You pasted a path to a local file in your computer.

Just in case you're still looking for the file - here it is on a public webserver: https://innenausbau-steiner.at/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/me...
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