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Thread ID: 118737	2011-06-18 12:02:00	Christchurch. Can we fix it?	goodiesguy (15316)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1210368	2011-06-19 02:15:00	As you drive along the streets you can see lots of only three brick high single brick garden fences which have fallen over, the problem is anything that has high inertia, ie bricks, concrete pads, hot water tanks, concrete tile roofs. The concrete blocks with holes in them, where I come from they are called breeze blocks seem on the whole to have handled tremors well if they have steel rods up the holes and concrete as in firewalls. The combination of tanks, concrete pads, concrete tile roof contributing specific motions as well as the general stress exerted on the building have virtually written our house off I'm afraid. Lots of buildings are carrying a 'memory' of the wave-shapes that have distorted the ground they stand on. The ground has sunk and risen all over the town and roads, some places are like BMX tracks instead of flat tarmac roads. Things are pretty bad and even if we have no more big tremors it will take tens of years to fix the city up again.	zqwerty (97)
1210369	2011-06-19 06:42:00	What you are seeing with the bricks is old technology and old mortar. The mortar has degraded over time, so that all it is now is a layer of sand that holds together through habit and gravity. There is no adhesion. The bricks in fences and most of the buildings that have collapsed are not tied into any framing. Bricks nowadays have to be clipped into the building frames. In the first two earthquakes, I couldn't believe how our house stood up to the violent shaking. In the middle of the first shake I was completely certain it would fly apart - nothing rigid like a brick wall could stand it. However, it has since been explained to me that the framing is all tied into the reinforced concrete pad, and the bricks are all tied into the framing. It all moves together. A lot of the buildings that have collapsed even had double brick walls, but the two parallel walls weren't linked to each other. Almost all of the brick churches I have seen have lost either most of their brick cladding, or their gable ends have fallen in - presumably that is where the flexing was the greatest.	John H (8)
1210370	2011-06-19 12:53:00	Yes our bricks are all tied in to the framing but the foundations have dropped where the concrete pads are for the front and back doors on the house and flat and the bricks are now all out of line and de-laminating from the house. Also the firewall in between the house and flat is moving differently to the rest of the house because of its greater inertia and has damaged both the roof and sunk into the ground taking the piles and hence the floors with it. The foundations are badly damaged where the firewall meets them and if they where to be fixed the entire firewall will have to be removed and rebuilt. In addition the walls closest to the firewall have moved outwards two or three centimeters. Most of the doors and windows don't open or close properly anymore and it is not only because the rectangles are now trapezoids but some of them the floors have sunk or risen unevenly and the frames parallel sides are not equal lengths anymore.	zqwerty (97)
1210371	2011-06-19 13:04:00	LMAO: Can we fix it?? Yes we can.	bot (15449)
1210372	2011-06-19 14:14:00	We've had a lot more tremors tonight, no sign of abatement, if this continues people will be leaving by the thousands in very short order. People don't trust the tall buildings anymore even the new modern buildings built within the last 10 years have large pieces of concrete falling out of their corners, I know that staff are refusing to work in these buildings for instance the WINZ building in Sydenham Colombo St is abandoned and it is a relatively new building but large bits are falling off it onto the street. Even if visually no damage is evident the buildings everywhere have been weakened and compromised by the shaking and underground there is a lot of pipes and drains damaged by the tremors. The central city and some suburbs are a war zone and the CBD is a write off.	zqwerty (97)
1210373	2011-06-19 22:21:00	ha nice clip We maybe able to fix it; but, Is it worth fixing it? Can we afford it at this present financial difficulties? The country cannot afford "not" to fix CHCH. With a fairly low sovereign debt NZ can most definitely afford to borrow in the short term, especially if the government gets the current accounts back in the black within a few years of its target.	Battleneter2 (9361)
1210374	2011-06-20 01:51:00	Yes our bricks are all tied in to the framing but the foundations have dropped where the concrete pads are for the front and back doors on the house and flat and the bricks are now all out of line and de-laminating from the house. Also the firewall in between the house and flat is moving differently (snip) Most of the doors and windows don't open or close properly anymore (snip). Only edited your post for space ZQ. Very sad - my comments only apply where the integrity of the land hasn't been too badly compromised. I saw some ratings for foundations and how they performed, but can't find them now. Apparently pile foundations worked pretty well in some areas, and solid concrete pads were terrible unless they had been reinforced by steel (I am staggered that there could be pads without reinforcing, but there you are). If your foundations have gone bad the way you say, then I guess anything tied to them will go bad as well. My commiserations. At least I hope your property is reasonably weather tight through the winter.	John H (8)
1210375	2011-06-20 02:01:00	When I came to Nelson and started work as a builder here, everyone told me that Nelson by-laws said we had to put steel in the concrete pads but if I had gone to Chch instead I would have found the by-laws different as they don't say you have to put steel in the concrete. Coming from England I thought that was plain crazy I had never heard of anyone Not putting steel in the concrete pads before we certainly had to over there	gary67 (56)
1210376	2011-06-20 03:15:00	True. Completely bizarre. The only earthquake damage I am aware of in our subdivision was extensive cracking of a neighbour's concrete drive/parking pad. There was no reinforcing in it (I don't know if this is normal for a parking pad), but there were also no divisions or grooves put in the extensive area of concreting to deal with heating and movement. EQC agreed to replace it (this was between Sept and Feb, but the new pad was laid after Feb 22). The contractor who did the work shook his head in amazement when he saw the 'quality' of his predecessor's work...	John H (8)
1210377	2011-06-20 03:27:00	LMAO: Can we fix it?? Yes we can. "Anything can be fixed with money" Gobe1	Gobe1 (6290)
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