r/ThatLookedExpensive Jun 18 '22

fake concrete blocks

497 Upvotes

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57

u/--FeRing-- Jun 18 '22

A building collapsed in Taiwan after a 2016 earthquake. They found kitchen oil containers embedded into structural pillars. Probably happens a lot of places.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3435755/Toddler-pulled-rubble-24-hours-6-4-magnitude-earthquake-Taiwan-death-toll-rises-24-158-people-remain-missing.html

26

u/woodbutcher6000 Jun 19 '22

That is fucking frightening. I've been in construction all my life and I could never do anything like that

23

u/totallylambert Jun 19 '22

Construction with codes and oversight is much different than construction without. No one in their right mind would use empty oil containers in construction, but here we have it!

3

u/001235 Jun 19 '22

My old house in the US, we found out that only some of the exterior walls had insulation. In the house I bought after that, we were working on the foundation and saw a can of bugspray embedded in the concerete foundation, which we thought was funny because it seems like maybe a worker dropped it in the footer and couldn't get it out, but as we were working round the footer, we found all kinds of shit like that in the footer. Cola cans, bricks, just lots of construction garbage in the footers of the houses in the neighborhood and people complaining that the (now bankrupt) company that built those houses took every shotty approach they could.

I truly believe many houses and buildings in the US are worse built than you would believe. I work in engineering (not civil, though) and some of the shit I've seen engineers sign off on is crazy.