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England’s concrete crisis could extend to hospitals and courts, experts say
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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The difference between a Victorian bridge and a modern one, is that the Victorian one was built to definitely stay up, while the modern one is built to just stand up.
Because just is all you need, when you can calculate so much of the design, and know the service life.
What's happened here, is a lot of the buildings were built with a service life that was within the bounds of aerated concrete. The buildings were supposed to be replaced by now, but budget constraints have meant that they've been pushed beyond their service life.
Or in analogous terms: You have to stay in a house for a week, you buy some disposable plates and cutlery.
2 months later, you're still there, and all the plastic forks have broken.
According to other articles that I linked to in this thread, the problem was only discovered in the 1990s, that the stuff had a relatively short lifetime.
Couple that with the bidding process for infrastructure contracts, and anything built in the last 40-50 years by government contract is likely to be falling apart before too long.
I've found nothing is more permanent than "temporary".
It's economically and environmentally bad to make things to be temporary and disposable. Stupid short term thinking.
This is true, but it's also more expensive, which means the owners now don't want to spend the extra 25% to make sure their building lasts 500 years instead of 50.