[rant]
Oh look, another one in the USA...........what a surprise[not].
Ok, so I am a US citizen now, and I live in the US, I also spent 50 years living in other places where for the better part of 20 years was involved in property development. I had to learn UK building Reg's, was fortunate to be able to observe construction on mainland europe regularly, became an advanced plumber & CORGI registered gas engineer, and passed the water regulations course along with a few others.
In the US I regularly see, or notice, construction projects just waiting for a visit from the Emperor. A fortune is wasted on having to redo projects more frequently than they would need attention, or remediation, in europe. In Texarrse you are lucky to find house and small building footings that will be over 23" - 24" in depth - compared to a minimum of 40" in the UK. The result is cracking caused by failure of the footings - by failure I mean that the concrete footings snap.
I watched the construction of a new urban railway station over the last 18 months with platform walkways at a level of around 4 feet over the track level. The foundation for the platform was down around 3 feet, concrete simply poured onto flattened dirt with some re-inforcing bars laid out - eventually the concrete will slowly sink into the dirt when the annual monsoon type rains hit loosening up the clay and dirt. The thing that really gripped my fascination was when they were laying the water and drainage pipes, I even spoke with the site engineer about it asking him why they do it like that. The actually laid all the water and drainage pipe inside the platform walls and then buried them all under hardcore infill and topped it all off with 6 inches of concrete. When I spoke with the site engineer the question I asked was "How would you know if there is ever a leak, and how would you fix it"? I got a blank look.
They do the same with pipes during house construction. As a UK plumber and gas engineer I now that pipes need to be visible, or at least accessible, to easily trace leaks and repair them. In the US I see natural gas pipes being hidden in the cavity of houses when they build - don't want those scruffy pipes showing. Most water and drainage pipes are buried under the concrete floor slab so you don't know there is a leak until your floor starts to get wet.............oh yeah, in many States here they do not know what a damp proof membrane is, and a damp proof course in brickwork is something they have never heard of, seriously, not joking.
Roads: Roads in Texarrse look like they were built in the 18th century, yet most are not even ten years old. They clear the path of the road, level the ground and then put down those grids of re-inforcing steel. Then to top it off they pour somewhere around 10 to 12 inches of concrete. No hardcore, no sub layers, no gradual build up. The Romans used to build better roads than the Texans, I know this for a fact as I used to run along a section of the original Roman Watling Street.
I have had this conversation with engineers and site managers in Texarrse and all I ever get back is, "they are built to code (building regs)", then they go on to agree with me that their code is shite and it should be tougher. Yesterday I was chatting with the heads of school at a college for construction management and mechanical services. They were asking me about the differences between US and UK building reg's and both told me that the US has a long way to go to catch up with europe.
The house I live in costs around a $1million. I look at it with my knowledge of UK plumbing and construction regulations and I know that if I transplanted the house to the UK it would fail a building reg's inspection on everything from: Footings to roofing, plumbing to drainage, and energy efficiency is a joke, the windows are piss poor and the insulation leaves much to be desired - oh and the road at the end of my driveway is collapsing because there is a drain there and water pools and is getting under the 10" - 12" of concrete washing away the sub-soil. Those problems carry across to engineering projects too.
[/rant]
aerospaceengineeringblog.com
