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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

#151

Post by Schiendelman »

dathinab wrote: post #149
Schiendelman wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you’re coming from, but the things you are hand waving away don’t just disappear. Two permitting processes really do cost twice as much to administer as one. And I’m not even dealing with the fact that you need twice as much road, twice as much water and sewer pipe, your city becomes slightly lower density meaning walking and driving distances are longer, etc. etc. At the end of the day, higher density is…

> significantly more efficient, which is why cities get dense. But it's not. Look at most cities in the world besides a few which are well know to have a broken/unhealthy local economic... Do most of them have sky scrapers all over the place? Or do they mostly have 5-10 Story buildings with a view ~80m buildings, even less 80-150m buildings, and hardly any building larger then that? Then look at all the large 200+m s…

That’s what I thought, you just don’t like tall buildings. It has nothing to do with economics. You started out your comments untruthfully.

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

#152

Post by jdmichal »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #123
hef19898 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we built, we had both, an architect and a construction engineer. The architect was a necessity to send plans for approval (you need a permission to hand in these plans, and an official stamp, both of which our engineer didn't have anymore since he was retired). Besides that, the architect was a complete waste of money. Unable to properly use his CAD software, made a ton planning mistakes. These mistakes had to b…

> The architect was a necessity to send plans for approval. […] Besides that, the architect was a complete waste of money That's the problem I was trying to point at: you need to pay someone useless for the sake of bureaucracy. How is this not insane? > Both, architects and engineers are liable for their designs so over here. Reason why the stamp is so important and expensive, you need quite a pricey insurance for th…

They are personally liable. That's what their stamp means.

And are you claiming that insurance should not be permitted? If so, that seems... Silly. People make mistakes. If a single mistake has the potential to ruin your entire livelihood, you'll quickly find that you're lacking anyone willing to put on their stamp without putting up enough money to cover all the liability. That is, instead of them pooling together to get liability insurance, each individual will instead have to pass on those costs to their customers.

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

#153

Post by vineyardmike »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #133
pmontra wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they use concrete in those towers or is it all steel?

All of the new thin supertall residential towers in NYC are reinforced concrete. It is incredibly stupid to allow such construction methods.

> It is incredibly stupid to allow such construction methods.

Why? Seems pretty standard construction, and unusual that something so common is "incredibly stupid"

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

#154

Post by vineyardmike »

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 don't know where your friends lived, but I've lived in quite a few high rises (most recently 3 in seattle, built 2015, '17, '19) and the thing that draws me back to them is how I can NEVER hear my neighbors. The '19 has an awful lot of street noise, but the 17 was so silent it was incredible (and has the biggest windows).

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

#155

Post by herendin »

ksec wrote: post #87

I submitted this for just to make another point for my own Reference. Turns out there are enough interest for it to get onto Front page :) For nearly 7 years, I have been asking the same question, Why Tall and Skinny? How far do the building Sway during High Wind? How do sound insulation work etc? And also the same question to Central Park Tower, Steinway Tower. SkyScrapper isn't new. But Tall and Skinny top to botto…

Compare property price to land price. Then consider that apartments need windows, so building footprint is limited

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

#156

Post by Breza »

S53Vflnr4n wrote: post #24
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…

Call me crazy but when I rent a condo, I try google street maps and go back in history and if I am lucky I get to see the construction phase. That will give an idea about how thick the concrete and the overall structure is. Another way is to look at the balconies. The floor will be as thick as balconies. The walls are a hit or miss. But if you knock on them and press your ears you can get some idea. Apartments near t…

That's a neat idea! Although the last three places I've lived have been over eighty years old. I guess when you get that far back in time, you can usually assume that the building is pretty darn solid.

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

#157

Post by Breza »

nemo44x wrote: post #124
yc-kraln wrote: post #111

My first house was a condo in a building which had been built about ~2 years before I moved in; I joined the board as the developer was transitioning out and handing over responsibility to the tenants. This sounds exactly like what happened with us, just on a grander scale. Things like the post-tensioned concrete construction where the steel post-tensioner cables were left exposed to the elements, severe life-safety…

It’s interesting because I’ve heard from numerous people that work in construction that they would never buy into most of the new construction they worked on. Especially expensive condos in popular urban locations. Bare minimum construction that saves on both material and labor costs. Buy old and renovate has been something I’ve been told by various people.

I absolutely love my ninety year old house. It's remarkably solid and there's no sound of settling or anything like that. Although apparently it was in vogue to put broken glass along fence lines during the eighties for security, which makes gardening adventurous...

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

#158

Post by Breza »

asah wrote: post #121

For this reason, I don't buy new and instead buy in places that have been "burned in" and where I can talk with current and previous inhabitant(s) and read complaints online. If you have "that" kind of money, you can always remodel. Flipping it around, that due diligence can also result in amazing deals on places that non-engineers are too afraid to touch.

Agreed all around, especially about due diligence. My wife found a house that had been on the market for months in a market where most houses were going under contract before we could get a tour. Description said it was "cozy and historic." Lots of warning signs. She booked a showing anyway. We dug did our due diligence and we've lived here happily for three years.

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

#159

Post by loup-vaillant »

jdmichal wrote: post #152
loup-vaillant wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The architect was a necessity to send plans for approval. […] Besides that, the architect was a complete waste of money That's the problem I was trying to point at: you need to pay someone useless for the sake of bureaucracy. How is this not insane? > Both, architects and engineers are liable for their designs so over here. Reason why the stamp is so important and expensive, you need quite a pricey insurance for th…

They are personally liable. That's what their stamp means. And are you claiming that insurance should not be permitted? If so, that seems... Silly. People make mistakes. If a single mistake has the potential to ruin your entire livelihood, you'll quickly find that you're lacking anyone willing to put on their stamp without putting up enough money to cover all the liability. That is, instead of them pooling together t…

> And are you claiming that insurance should not be permitted?

I'm saying insurances should probably be limited. So there'd be some cost of doing mistakes. Ideally it wouldn't be crippling if one makes a mistake here and there, but repeated negligence would drive one out of business. I expect this would drive the price of insurance down, and the salary of the engineer up. Hopefully this evens out for the customer.

Alternatively, let the insurances cover everything, but if one makes too many mistakes (or a very serious enough one), then they would lose their right to vet designs at all.

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

#160

Post by pas »

throw0101a wrote: post #119
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…

> The drawings are more for the regulators such as building control than actually for the people working on site. It would also depend on the architect, primary contractor, and what kind of relationship they have. Sometimes plans are just thrown over the wall, but other times there is more collaboration. I watch the YouTube channel of Matt Risinger, a building science focused contractor in Austin, Texas, and he seems…

These high-end high-price high-rises usually use very detailed plans that feed into a building information model.

Sure, that doesn't mean there will be no problems whatsoever. (Plus there's always a difference between the as-planned and as-built plans, but at this size of project most of the differences have to be approved by various domain experts.) ... which again, doesn't mean there will be no problems.

Especially considering that these ultra-skinny super-tall high-rises use new/innovative/different methods and trade offs for some engineering challenges.

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