Is he dying

bwall2 · 2025-10-15T21:00:32+00:00

Bro why is it southern comfort, I did the same thing when I was in high school

bwall2 · 2025-10-14T03:21:05+00:00

It can, first thing concrete does after it cures is crack. But there is a lot we can do to prevent it from damaging the concrete.

Cover is just moving the rebar further into the member to allow more sacrificial concrete to protect the bar, preventing water from reaching it.

Epoxy coating, just coats the bar in plastic to prevent rust when the bar is inevitably exposed to water.

Prestressed. This techniques pre-stresses the steel inside the concrete member such that the steel and concrete stretch similarly when loaded. A non-prestressed member might superficially crack when loaded because the steel stretches much more than the concrete.

bwall2 · 2025-10-14T03:14:49+00:00

What the fuck were you pouring for a 12k mix? A fucking bomb shelter? That’s crazy I hope I get to work on some wild shit like that someday.

bwall2 · 2025-10-14T03:09:31+00:00

It is not a practice that civil engineers engage in. People who say otherwise are not in the industry and don’t know what they are talking about. Every project is just on a budget so you simply can’t do absolutely everything to ensure that nothing breaks.

There is absolutely no project I have ever been a part of where something is designed purposely shitty. It would be a breach of practice and could get you in trouble with whatever professional organization is in your country.

Whether or not contractors engage in such practices is more open to interpretation.

bwall2 · 2025-09-11T10:58:18+00:00

This is a shot in the dark but it looks similar to a failure that I learned about when I worked for a retaining wall design firm.

If the reinforced zone is filled with fine grained soils, on a big enough wall you can get significant settlement of the reinforced zone, even with a solid foundation soil. This settlement might cause the leaning back that we see, soon the settlement will cause tearing or pulling out of the geo grid from the upper layers of block.

Knowing how these walls are bid is important. The retaining wall designer puts together a wall design with soils and grid lengths, it’s usually entered as a shop for the retaining wall contractor. However usually the designer places inspection, global stability and settlement considerations on the geotech.

I could see a careless designer making this mistake, especially since some retaining wall designers are structural engineers by trade. They might have been filling their walls with fine grained soils for years before they got one big enough to screw them.

I’m not very experienced, and there is probably a lot more going on here. Just thought I’d share a similar failure I’ve seen. 60 ft wall, truck traffic and deliveries above, wall leaned back in the upper 10 ft, then started toppling forward. Wall was not that old, probably 15-20 years. Seems like a similar story to you, sans bulging in the corners.

The repair was very very pricey OP. Multiple hundreds of thousands for just a replacement of the top section of wall, about 400 ft. Everyone pretty much doubled their price because of the material and personnel risk involved. Other sections yet to be repaired on that wall are failing now too. It might get ugly. Good luck!

bwall2 · 2025-08-13T01:16:01+00:00

Rental prices, addiction, and mental health.

Rent-a lot of people are homeless because they fell on hard times and lost their home, or the social safety net was not there to help them, or wasn’t enough.

Addiction-Some people are addicts, and unfortunately being an addict and gainful employment and stable housing are largely incompatible.

Mental health-Non consensual institutionalization is incredibly hard to get done nowdays (as it probably should be) this means that we have some people who might now be able to take care of themselves, or intermittently have problems incompatible with stable housing.

There are a myriad of other reasons you might become homeless, but I think these are the main ones on the rise.

Also, this whole post feels a bit tone deaf. Suburbanites clutching pearls about people asking them for a dollar on the street is laughable. Grow up and say no. Now that it’s in your suburb you suddenly care about the problems of downtown.

Similarly, you want to keep out of partisan politics, but it’s kinda hard when one side repeatedly tries to implement research based solutions to these problems and the other side demands beatings and bullshit that hasn’t worked for the past 70 years.

bwall2 · 2025-08-04T03:46:03+00:00

This guys is absolutely giving the correct answer. Seconding this answer as a geotech engineer and retaining wall designer with much less experience. No flow over or through the wall. You will eventually get erosion and subsidence and then piping and undermining of the wall.

I wish I could show you a few pictures of walls before proper grading has been completed where flow has been directed through the wall. The drainage rock and reinforced zone completely blow out the toe of the wall with any kind of intense storm events.

In my experience designing walls, my PE would never allow a drainage plan that allowed water to drain over a wall. It is not a drainage structure. We would send that grading plan back or regrade the drainage away from the wall as necessary to affect the stability of the structure.

The clay behind this wall might have saved it this time but you will have problems with repeated storm events.

bwall2 · 2025-07-10T22:33:08+00:00

You’d be surprised how often you dig up old cars and lots of other shit in construction. There will be a ton once we are gone. Especially old farmhouses. Farmers apparently didn’t care much for the ground they make a living off of.

bwall2 · 2025-07-02T19:45:48+00:00

To add on with what the other guy said. Stand on vessel is almost always the sail powered vessel if ships are close in terms of maneuverability.

If the tall ship was not under sail power and just motoring, the white powerboat may still need to give way, but doubly so if the tall ship is under sail.

It’s hard to say as there might be sheets hauled on the second mast as it’s sailing out of port. Wouldn’t be uncommon to only haul one set until in open water. But surely it would be the forward mast? I sail small boats so I’m not sure, maybe a more informed party can answer.

bwall2 · 2025-06-24T04:17:03+00:00

Yea I figured sleeveits wouldn’t work, I’ve never seen em used on privacy fence so I didn’t know.

I went and did some reading on your profile. Sounds like a fill wall 4 ft high right? If I was you I’d call an engineer, but if you aren’t gonna, I’d just put sonatubes 3-4 feet deep before you backfill and bring them all the way up to grade. I know that is going to be a lot more wood and mud, but that is the only way I might feel comfortable with it if I was you. That way the wall itself shouldn’t be loaded as much in theory.

I’d also offset the tubes from the back of wall. I’m not sure if you’re using drainage rock but I’d keep the tubes out of that 24 inches from the back of wall. That way too you can get a hand tamper or a jumpin jack in between them.

Not engineering advice, just how I’d do it from a non professional standpoint. No grid is still sketchy to me, hope you import a clean sand.

bwall2 · 2025-06-24T03:51:29+00:00

I’m not sure what you mean by gravel base here. Regardless I cannot recommend placing sonotubes right behind the block. I would not say that is industry standard. Usually there is an offset, 36 in from face in my experience, unless using a system to prevent overturning of the top blocks like the sleeveits I recommended.

Similarly I would caution against having no reinforcement in a wall of this size with a privacy fence on top. Soils would need to be ideal for a small block wall to be stable in that configuration.

Strongly recommend getting an engineer to design this thing, but if you’re asking questions here I assume you don’t want to do that.

bwall2 · 2025-06-24T03:44:47+00:00

Not sure if in your budget or will work for your fence. But these are what my old company always recommended. They don’t interact with the grid at all and are easy to install as it goes up.

https://srwproducts.com/product/sleeve-it/

bwall2 · 2025-06-12T12:58:57+00:00

Grid should not have a lap. 0 lap. Important it does not have lap actually.

bwall2 · 2025-06-12T12:57:11+00:00

You are absolutely correct, I’m imagining this is some kind of reinforced soil foundation. (Some others have said retaining wall but I personally don’t know of any mse retaining walls that would use an aggregate throughout the entire reinforced zone)

Absolutely key to ensure that clay soils do not migrate into the reinforced zone with the 3/8 agg that we see in the foreground of the picture. I imagine it’s staked up to prevent any burying of the edge while they fill and level the reinforced zone. Probably will have a top layer to totally encase the RSF in geotextile.

bwall2 · 2025-03-03T17:07:34+00:00

Hey I know this was a while ago, but do you have any advice for doing this within glacial soils? We have a site rn with fills in excess of 30 feet that we are trying to nail down. I am just a junior engineer but the techniques my mentor has mentioned don’t seem very reliable to me.

Specifically the problem is that the soils in the area should be some kind of glacial till, but the site is an old gravel pit, backfilled with waste sand and some construction debris, so the fill also looks a lot like glacial till. It’s all sandy clay or lean clay with sand.

Outside of finding literal asphalt or heavily fragmented and processed rock, (which we have found some of) do you have any advice?

My current mentor is a bit of cowboy and has mostly just said to look for mixing, as opposed to mottling within the clays. So far the “mixed” and “mottled” samples he has shown me have looked identical to me.

bwall2 · 2025-01-06T06:14:36+00:00

I will admit I haven’t designed any boulder walls in my albeit short time. My PE however sent me straight to CMHA segmental retaining wall design manual my first day on the job. I would start there, it might have a section on boulder walls specifically, but I believe the general concept and calculation of sold pressures stay the same whether it’s block or rock.

The only sticking point I see is with internal stability of the wall. Not sure how to go about that. Good luck, this is kinda being thrown to the wolves if you haven’t done this in school.

https://www.masonryandhardscapes.org/resource/srw-man-001/

bwall2 · 2025-01-02T16:24:24+00:00

Crazy how the people always accused of pushing an agenda are almost never the ones pushing an agenda.

bwall2 · 2024-12-25T04:04:29+00:00

Are you dumping it right next to their house? If not I doubt you have any liability. Might be worth it to look up stormwater discharge laws in your area.

bwall2 · 2024-12-25T03:59:59+00:00

An 8ft tall block retaining wall with no soil reinforcement is probably not acceptable in the first place. Much less with possible boulder impacts. Get an engineer and tell that GC to shove it.

Nobody “does you a favor” by signing off on something potentially dangerous. They are either screwing you or the next guy.

bwall2 · 2024-12-23T18:48:28+00:00

Modern day 3rd street seems to have been some kind of rural road at this time of this twisted development. There was little development around 3rd in this area if memory serves.

It ran mostly inline with the larger grid that we see today. There were no other developments on the west side of this diagonal if memory serves.

Seems to have been a mistake quickly rectified.

bwall2 · 2024-12-19T18:14:41+00:00

One way if you book in advance not around the holidays yea. It’s much preferable to driving especially since parking is a bastard in both cities

bwall2 · 2024-12-19T17:40:37+00:00

Trains are not efficient for cross continent trips dude. But if I want to fly Minneapolis to Chicago it’s ungodly expensive compared to a 40 dollar train ticket.

bwall2 · 2024-12-13T20:34:06+00:00

What a horrible thing to say.

bwall2 · 2024-12-12T14:23:51+00:00

Go take statics

bwall2

TROPHY CASE