Posted on 11/12/2010 1:01:04 PM PST by Attention Surplus Disorder
As the United States and China battle over the finer points of currency manipulation at the G-20 summit, American negotiators may want to take note of this startling testimonial to the productivity of Chinese workers: A construction crew in the south-central Chinese city of Changsha has completed a 15-story hotel in just six days. If nothing else, this remarkable achievement will stoke further complaints from American economic pundits that China's economy is far more accomplished than ours in tending to such basics as construction.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
From other photographs, you can see that they pulled up some pretty deep pilings, though, clearly, not enough and not deep enough. I knew a guy who was working construction of the first “skyscraper” in Cheasepeake, VA. The soil there is quite soft. They had to drive in a big number of piles until the strike of the hammer resulted in less than some specified motion, which I forget. The site was directly opposite town hall, and the mayor had done something to piss him off, so he always made sure to drive as many strikes as possible when the mayor was in the building.
The building in the photograph was build on soft soil and apparently building inspectors had been paid off, because the pilings were nowhere within shouting distance of local code. One side of the building quickly settled a lot faster than the other (what’s Chinese for “Oh shit!”) and, as they say in Shanghai, disaster ensued.
One of the liberty ships took four days to build from keel laid to launch. Think we could do that today?
>>Yet it has taken the United States, 9 years and counting to build something at ground zero.<<
Actually, that is incorrect. It is missing two words, and in that word is the MAIN problem in the US.
Here it is, with the needed words:
Yet it has taken the United States, 9 years and counting to START TO build something at ground zero.
It’s actually quite impressive and “level 9 earthquake resistant” whatever that means. I would like to know if they used Chinese drywall.
One or two of the tubes protruding are hollow. Pilings usually are much longer, to bedrock if there is bedrock...I wouldn't call these pilings by any stretch of the imagination.
Time release movie - amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps0DSihggio&feature=player_embedded
The whole thing with pilings is that they are driven deep enough that the friction exerted on all surfaces is greater than the load that they support, if there is no bedrock. The float in the substrate and you better hope you dont get much water on them if they are wood.
What’s the deal with that building anyway? Built on land fill or something? Piers don’t seem to have done the trick.
They may have driven a tube down and back filled it with concrete. Whatever they did, I won’t copy them. There was a thread on the building at the time. The builder bypassed local code, bribed the inspectors. IIRC, the building collapsed before it was even finished. The Chinese are inveterate gamblers, the builder was probably cutting corners for decades. I think he may have a found a limit.
Local zoning boards, hysterical commissions, planning agencies, permits, licenses, fees, reviews...........
In Massachusetts a couple of years on a nothing project, with no sure outcome/approval, is common.
Webber Falls bridge on I40 in OK took only two months to rebuild. 600 illegals and chem-crete...
This was right after 9-11 when the bridge was hit by a drunk barge captain...
Kidding about the 600 illegals, but the chem-crete mix played a BIG part..
Its a heapum-big bridge...
That picture is of Riverside Lotus in Minhang, Shanghai. I lived one block away from this location. (See the pink building in the background on the right? Other side of that residential development.)
It’s a residential complex, one building of several. As a rule urban Chinese don’t buy houses they buy apartments.
I was woken up by the sound of it falling over. It sounded more like a long roll of thunder- there had been thunderstorms through the night but this went on way too long which is what caught my ear.
It’s entirely possible that this hotel was built properly in just 6 days. It’s NOT possible that it was built in 6 days using Chinese construction managers, and quite likely that plenty of the actual construction crew was not mainland Chinese.
The deal with the building in the picture above is (among other things):
-They had permission to put up n buildings of m floors on the site, and they actually built n+x buildings of m+y floors on the site.
-Between the time they started the project in late 2006 and when the building fell over car ownership in the area grew at an amazing rate. The peeps in charged realized that more cars = more demand for parking spaces, so why not add parking spaces that could be sold off to meet the demand? They started construction of the underground parking lot AFTER the buildings on top were finished. The dirt was piled “high-side” on the south side of the site.
-This construction site is bordered by a canal to the north. The day before the collapse a barge had crashed into a retaining wall causing soil to “low-side” out into the water.
IIRC a couple of the guys running the company behind this mess got life sentences in prison, which is proof that China actually does some things right. I’d had words with one of them over a separate business transaction and right off I could tell he was as honest as the Pope is Muslim.
Back on topic, as I said above it’s quite possible the hotel was built properly and according to code in under a week. But no way was it done without foreigners having a significant role.
Stayed in an Amish place in Western Maryland once, when an unexpected snowstorm came up while I was on the road. Very peaceful, actually.
I’ll bet it was peaceful, no phone, no TV, no electric light to read by. How about the plumbing, indoors or out? :)
Now that the memory has kicked into gear, I recall they may even have thrown in a stout breakfast to make sure you didn't get hungry on the road. :)
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