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Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 14 41

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SFCharlie

SFCharlie

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A continuation of our discussion of this failure. Best to read the other threads first to avoid rehashing things already discussed.
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 02
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 03
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 04
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 05
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 06
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 07
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 08
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 09
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 10
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 11
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 12
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 13

SF Charlie
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Sad to read of human remains still outstanding from the recovery effort. Astonished to read of $750,000 in loose cash - not counting the 17 safes yet to be opened.
 
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I'm not s USA Today subscriber so I can't read te story they linked to from last week at the ned o the article: "Left to rot: Collapsed condo born of botched construction and evidence of money laundering"

That would be a good story to be able to read. The article linked to above was basically non-article by USA Today whose purpose is to dangle the carrot in front of us, then pay for the "Real" article. We are seeing more of this type of stories now.
 
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CBS Miami has uploaded its human interest special Bonded by Tragedy. I am listening to it for new or clarified witness statements, but doubt there will be any engineering content.

>>>>>Edit:
Several details that were new to me have to do with what Mike Stratton says about the call he got from his late wife Cassie in 410. At 6:39, Mike Stratton says, “The shaking woke her up.” Cassie thought it was an earthquake, and that she was looking at a sinkhole. At this point in the video, they inserted a nice POV animation of the view of the collapsed deck from the perspective of unit 410.

This statement was interesting to me: “She saw that water was flowing from the sinkhole into the garage, which is underneath the plaza.” Could the water she saw have been from the saturation of the delaminated deck layers? If the deck was that saturated, could the water weight have been the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Another interesting detail. He says, “Then she said, ‘Oh my god, the building is shaking again.’…Then she screamed and that was it.” Could this imply that there was a pause in the shaking between what woke Cassie Stratton up and the shaking that occurred just as the building collapsed? It almost sounds like the building momentarily regained its balance but couldn’t maintain it.

 
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Ampaire said:
Jeff,

Is this the article you wanted to see?

Quote (MaudSTL)

USA Today investigates construction project corruption in 1980s Miami.
>>>>>Edit: The same story picked up by Yahoo News retains the embedded content better than the archived version.
Click to expand...

FWIW if I post an article, it doesn’t require a subscription, because I don’t subscribe to anything anyone here has ever heard of. I use an archiving tool, check aggregators like Yahoo!, and receive YouTube notifications. I never link to something I haven’t read or seen.
 
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MaudSTL (Computer) said:
Could the water she saw have been from the saturation of the delaminated deck layers?
Click to expand...


Hmm. Are you suggesting the spaces between the layers trapped a volume of water that was free to flow when the deck collapsed? Otherwise I don't quite understand how soggy concrete released volumes of water that would flow just because it fractured.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that it's not completely plausible.
 
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Zebraso said:
Are you suggesting the spaces between the layers trapped a volume of water that was free to flow when the deck collapsed?
Click to expand...

I am asking if that’s even possible. What Mike Stratton is saying is second-hand, so we can’t assume it’s accurate. But if it is accurate, I wonder what it could have been. Severed fire sprinkler lines? Rainwater under the pavers or trapped in the delaminated slab layers by the garage ceiling epoxy? Something else? Or is this second-hand statement so odd that it should be discounted?
 
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That was one of my initial thoughts, especially considering the heavy rain in the days leading up. Close to 2.6" of rain I think. Especially with failed drains, layering between layers, failed waterproofing, incorrect deck sloping, and planters known to fill up, there was a lot of extra weight on that deck.

Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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Demented (Industrial) said:
failed waterproofing, incorrect deck sloping,
Click to expand...

How about incorrect or misapplied waterproofing? It was mentioned (I think) way back that misapplied water proofing can trap moisture. I understand that on a certain level. But what if it was beyond an accumulation of moisture within the pores of concrete? If they were trying to seal it from below, could that have created a damming effect? what about the hydraulic pressure within the layers? Could that have opened up more void space to hold more water over time? Just dumb questions.
 
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Waterproofing that has been installed incorrectly can definitely trap moisture.

Whatever waterproofing system seals the bottom of the assembly is also only part of a systematic approach; if water comes in above the in-ground waterproofing, and there's a drain issue, that water has no path out of the structure; you can easily have a serious water problem even if your waterproofing is perfect.
 
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zebraso said:
How about incorrect or misapplied waterproofing? It was mentioned (I think) way back that misapplied water proofing can trap moisture. I understand that on a certain level. But what if it was beyond an accumulation of moisture within the pores of concrete? If they were trying to seal it from below, could that have created a damming effect? what about the hydraulic pressure within the layers? Could that have opened up more void space to hold more water over time? Just dumb questions.
Click to expand...

It probably would. I agree most of the repair work done on the deck and building was short term mitigation stuff with little consideration for the long term or root cause of the issues.

The leaky deck philosophy was: "We can't let water leak into the garage, cars might get wet. Lets waterproof the ceiling and trap it in the slab. What could go wrong?"








 
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From my distance (far away on the other coast) it seems simpler that the recent rain accumulated in the sand and space between the pavers. What is the pipe the water is coming out of?
edit (I suppose water could have accumulated in the delamination between the stamped concrete cover coat and the structural slab...?)

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@zebraso
Thank you! I was having a brain fart this morning with hydraulicing. Of course hydraulicing did happen, wasn't the phrase I knew was right. I have no doubt in my mind that could have helped delaminate the layers even further, and allow highly chlorinated water deeper and deeper into the structure. The vibrations of never ending construction, especially in a lot of wet times, probably didn't help any.
Probably was some damming, but that concrete seemed to just crack and open up more paths for water leaking through it seems. Water intrusion in that building began almost instantly which is what lead to the first major concrete repair project in 96, and almost every 2-4 years they were doing the same work over and over in the same spots.

The waterproofing applied in most of the work was rolled on, latex based, paint or sealant. It was known on the building to flake off, trap bubbles of moisture, and create channels that drained down to the perimeter of the main building where it sat on the deck. Just like water down in the parking garage, it was said that water would just sit there and then just drain away to no-one knows where. The planter waterproofing likely wasn't much of an issue. Past work permits involved patching exterior holes drilled into the sides of some planters, and this happened a few times. It wouldn't really surprise me if the building maintenance would occasionally run a concrete drill through the walls of the planters to allow flooded ones to drain out onto the deck. 2 or 3 times the drains were replaced because they were cracked, damaged, or clogged with root systems.

@ReverseBias
5 times they painted that ceiling with BM Latex based to stop that leaking issue. Genius idea. *shakes head*
 
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Demented (Industrial) said:
almost every 2-4 years they were doing the same work over and over in the same spots.
Click to expand...

Would this type of damage accelerate in what is already the structurally weakest part of the deck span? I am going back to the catenary action in slow motion among other things. Could the concentration of the problem have made it the focus of inappropriate remediation which would be particularly damning (and damming).
 
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Was it raining that day? Water could just have been on the surface. Otherwise yeah I can believe that the sand under the pavers was saturated and as the slab lost integrity and flexed, that water was able to flow down into the hole.

> if water comes in above the in-ground waterproofing, and there's a drain issue, that water has no path out of the structure; you can easily have a serious water problem even if your waterproofing is perfect.

Given that we know they 'repaired' the slab from below, and there doesn't seem to have even been a waterproof membrane near the top (from the cores and the bits of the slab we can see in the post collapse-pics), that seems pretty likely.
 
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