Posted on 06/11/2023 10:35:32 PM PDT by lowbridge
The Bay Area’s Millennium Tower has only continued to tilt further and sink deeper west in spite of architects’ best efforts to steady the ritzy building.
The multimillion-dollar-per-unit tower is now leaning more than 29 inches at the corner of Fremont and Mission streets — a slant over half an inch deeper than previously revealed, according to monitoring data reviewed by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit.
The half-inch tilt was reportedly gained while engineers dug beneath the sinking condominium earlier this year to support the weight of the tower — which was built atop a former landfill — along its two sides.
Fix engineers saw progress in stabilizing the Millenium Tower’s north side along Mission Street after implementing six concrete-filled steel piles along its base in January, but it may have come at a cost to the tower’s west side, the data shows.
Rooftop-based monitoring data — which is based on rooftop measurements and foundation-based determinations — indicates the tower shifted nearly an inch to the west compared to its tilt before it was supported on the north side.
Engineers in charge claim the data may not be reliable, despite pointing it to as proof of success earlier in the first phase of the project.
Project engineer Ron Hamburger told NBC in a statement that the rooftop figures are prone to weather fluctuations and said purely foundation-based data is more reliable.
The foundation-based digits also show that the tower is tilting more toward the west than ever, but only by about a quarter of an inch — a lean Hamburger claimed was “negligible.”
“We are fully confident that following transfer of the remaining design load to the piles,’’ Hamburger said, adding that “there will be no further … movement of the roof to the west.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
It’s built on a landfill. A garbage dump. The tallest and probably the most massive building in San Francisco is built on top of a garbage dump. They built it on top of a garbage dump. I can’t get my head around it.
I’ve been to a few garbage dumps. They take truckloads of household garbage plus all sorts of junk and put it in a huge hole and drive bulldozers all over it to squash it down. I can imagine forty feet of plastic garbage bags full of dirty diapers, milk cartons, metal cans, and paper towels. Coffee grounds. Rice, bacon grease, egg shells. This stuff decays at different rates. Metal rusts away and the space inside the can fills with water. There must be at least 15% of the volume as trapped air. Then water seeps in from runoff and percolating down into the soil. Methane is a byproduct of dumps as the garbage decomposes. Wood, paper and food are all mostly cellulose which is carbohydrates. The carbohydrates decay into water and methane.
I don’t see how this could be considered stable by any stretch of the imagination. They would have had to sink pilings deep into the ground all the way through garbage and well into any bedrock below. That’s a lot of pilings to support the building and they would have to have supported the entire structure above the garbage knowing that the garbage would not support any weight.
If it doesn’t fall over it will be a miracle. If an earthquake happens before they get it fixed up they could be screwed.
How far can it lean before it must be evacuated and the area cleared?
Rotflmao
Engineers in charge claim the data may not be reliable, despite pointing it to as proof of success earlier in the first phase of the project.
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What will they say when it falls? Don’t believe the data your lying eyes feeds your brain?
Project engineer Ron Hamburger
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There’s the problem right there.
They did the same with the Embarcadero center buildings (4 office towers) back in the 80s, and those have been standing for 40 years. And 1 California, the weird Hilton hotel at the end of Market St., etc.
There are quite a lot of South of Market high rise developments that are on the same soma landfill.
None were as extreme as this one though.
There are several videos on the topic.
“Engineers in charge claim the data may not be reliable...”
The engineers at the Three Mile Island reactor made the same claim.
I want to see them forced to resort to a blocks-wide flying buttress right out of the middle-ages so their ineptitude will be visible so long as the building stands.
Building on a foundation of garbage is so perfectly west coast, left wing.
One sign that the building should be cleared and condemned is that the
elevators will stop working as the tilt increases. Also utilities such as water
and sewer lines will start to fail.
One sign that the building should be cleared and condemned is that the
elevators will stop working as the tilt increases. Also utilities such as water
and sewer lines will start to fail.
How appropriate. Built on a garbage dump within a much larger garbage dump of a city.
>>How far can it lean before it must be evacuated and the area cleared?
The only goal of the engineers at this point is to keep in standing long enough to figure out how to get taxpayers to foot the entire bill for the eventual dismantling and reimbursement of the investors.
They don’t care if it falls down, or has to be taken down - they just don’t want to be on the hook for the cost.
Mark my words, sooner or later the taxpayers will end up paying for this and reimbursing the wealthy investors and owners who financed this thing.
In completely unrelated news, the construction of the adjacent High Speed Rail Terminal to Nowhere proceeds apace.
Well, the Tower of Pisa leans over 13 feet and that’s after they straighten it. Of course, nobody lives in it.
Put a Humpty Dumpty facade on it. The Dump city Should get on their knees and pray.Put Colin Kapernick on the restoration crew along with Paul Hammer Pelosi.
Lally columns and jacks?
I am half serious. I suppose they could drive new piles between the existing ones and place something like this (only much bigger) between the pile and structure, at least as a temporary measure, then drive the existing piles deeper, and restore the previous configuration, more or less.
Plan B
But is there any bedrock under all the landfill or just sand ?
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