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Funny how Hamburger always defended their calculations and said that the Fix was neither complex nor unusual, but is now using complexity as the excuse for being so far off on their rebound calculation! Ha ha ha ha ha! And curious how the DBI and their supposedly expert panel have never admitted...

Milliontown, there may be some truth to the suggestion that it was the Homeowners who asked for the cut back to 18 piles. Not the Homeowners as a whole, but the board of the Millennium Tower Association, the HOA, who had signed off on the Fix and were running out of the money that they got out...

Dik, the settlement agreements provided $100 million for the Fix and certain other repairs and upgrades. Also, Millennium Partners, the original developer, took out bonding / insurance policies on the design team and the contractor. All that to protect the homeowners from future assessments to...

Spsalso, the homeowners who participated in the lawsuits each received approximately $1 million under the settlement agreements. That might have made them happy at the time, but they were also promised a Fix that would work, so I guess that they are now longer so happy. But the $1 million each...

Dik, in answer to your question about the original design: clearly there was an error in it! The design likely may have worked for the original steel-framed structure with 4 or 5 basement levels, but then they switched to a concrete frame and moved the basement parking to the adjacent building...

waross, your thoughts are not too simplistic, but the history of this fiasco is complex! Originally the design team said that after they propped up the north and west sides of the Tower, the south and east sides would continue settling and in something like 8 years the building would be level...

Not just the seismic issues. The tilt is now significantly worse as a result of inappropriate construction procedures and so far the "rebound" that the design team had predicted does not seem to be happening. So, you still can't practice your putting in your multi-million-dollar condo! And...

Hmmm. It is true that the tilt to the north has been very slightly reduced, and the tilt to the west even less, but this appears to be largely because the north-west corner of the mat has been bent up a bit. But the original point of the Fix was to obtain a significant recovery of the tilt and...

Spsalso: the threaded rods are supposed to be very stretchy, and they may not actually break even in a major earthquake. It is possible that the rods would pull out first, as suggested by Josh Porter. But the bigger problem is that no-one knows. As far as I know the design team has a fancy...

Spalso: you said: "What would be nice is to add the pressure readings on the jacks to the Tilt-O-Meter." For some weeks they have been shown on page 24 of the Tilt-O-Meter. Separately, in a presentation developed by the SGH staffer who actually does all the work, developed I assume for the EDRT...

Ha ha! But what do the jacks push against? !8 24-inch diameter pipe piles?

Ha ha ha! The load transfer to the new perimeter piles is applied through hydraulic jacks but that is to limit the loads applied to both the mat and the mat extensions (so they don't crack up) and the piles (so they don't buckle). But the building is far too heavy for the jacks to actually lift...

epoxybot, dik, actually it is both. It is a voluntary seismic upgrade. That is specifically described in the San Francisco regulations. According to Hamburger it is not a seismic upgrade, but San Francisco does not have a category called (laughable) voluntary foundation upgrade. I have heard...

And from the Tip-O-Meter:

Some recent pics.

Oh, and one more thing. The chosen fix was not as far as I know value engineered. Just reviewed by two academics in the context of a mediation proceeding. I have been involved in those and it is like making sausage!

Thank you dik and Mark R. Someone-else noticed that the date is screwed up. I think he meant December 30 because that is the reference to the NYT article. I'll let him know. Guy has a Ph.D., so he likely does not know what day it is!