Purdueenginerd

looking forward to the opening, but man, I wish those contractors would wear PPE. Put on a hard hat! You got crane loads over your head!

I believe I saw a for sale sign a few weeks back at the old steel facility on the corner of 11th and Ella

The center is probably going to have the shear wall and central lateral system for the building. This is normally going also hold the elevator banks. So consider the weight of the shear wall, your matt foundation might need more thickness to handle the shear loads. You're also going to need a depressed area (though not that much) for the elevator banks. Theres a couple of other reasons but without really getting into the weeds, i'll just explain, more loads, more concrete.

Thanks!

Is there a HAIF thread on the bottled blond? been trying to find some info on that project.

Fun Fact: JFKs, "We Choose to go to the moon" Speech was given right in the middle of Rice Stadium

Ah, perfect I stand corrected.

So I was curious, I tried looking up the parking minumums in NYC and I found this https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2016/03/17/parking-requirements-will-be-reduced-in-a-huge-chunk-of-nyc/ it seems that there is, but only for publicly subsided housing, which is a far cry from Houston which has parking minimums for a broad spectrum of retail and multi-family residential requirements. I could be incorrect regarding NYC, so feel free to interject. I dont think NYC is a fair comparison however. Atlanta is similar to houston in terms of sprawl and recent growth in the late 20th century. It would appear they, among other US cities have parking minimums and are undergoing debate to reduce or remove them: https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2019/02/11/atlanta-zoning-update-addresses-parking-adus-missing-middle Looking at my googling, it appears that many US cities have (or had) parking minimums that were enacted in the 50s and 60's which likely coincides with the transportation engineering movement of the era: Sprawl.

Yeah thats an elegant product. Youre right though, even on the structural engineering side we normally punt the guard rails to a 3rd party and its not even looked at until construction is well underway. Ive done handrails for industrial sites, but theres a few times here and there where I've had to design custom guardrails for architects, but surprisingly its difficult to get the look they want and comply with code requirements.

Cool seeing the lateral deflection of the crane as they load up the counterweights. Kudos to the general contractor on this job, that rebar, formwork, and housekeeping seem quite good

I believe there are code requirements on guardrails that prevent a 4" sphere from passing through the vertical posts. Often times you'll see the glass guard rails on these buildings but those are expensive. Perhaps they got value-engineered out?

That lot is already mostly parking lot. Is this project a renovation or a brand new building? I cant quite tell.

This is unfortunate. Really thought they brought interesting articles and projects to the forefront. Great way to learn about the City of Houston and its history. Kind of wish the owners sold the website.

WilCal, I dont think its in bad taste. I was pretty upset by that fatality on 8th street as I ride on heights blvd quite a bit. My personal opinion is that the 11th street bike path is a good infrastructure development. My personal way of advocating for additional biking infrastructure is to remind my fellow neighbors that cyclists are people too and building things like protected bike lines might be a way to mitigate fatalities and injuries for pedestrians and cyclists.

Thanks @Luminare for the call out! Everything you stated is correct Just to add, like many things it depends on the location of the crack, size of the crack and the type of crack. All concrete cracks. The curing process causes a volumetric shrinkage of concrete (more specifically the cement crack). There's ways to mitigate it. The rebar/steel is one way. Your concrete mix design is another. For large placements like a matt foundation controlling temperature might also be part of the plan. The reinforcement in a foundation for a high rise is so dense that its unlikely to get significant cracking, at least discernible cracking to the human eye. When I get called out to look at cracks in a structure, the crack pattern, location, if its planar or faulted, and its width can tell me a lot about the cause and what to do as an engineer. But to answer your question. not often will a crack force the engineer, architect, and owner to ask(or demand) the GC to start over, if the problem can be solved within reasonable engineering judgement. But lets say that Matt Foundation is just absolutely covered in cracks, 1 foot apart, all relatively wide. This would be alarming. And after a lot testing, finger pointing, analysis, and probably litigation, the contractor might have to start over. On the other hand if there was 1 small crack, 30 feet long, not faulted in that entire foundation. I'd say epoxy inject it and move on. Funny enough I had a project a couple of years ago where the contractor cast a lot of non-structural decorative concrete for some area paving; and it cracked quite a bit. It didnt comply with the architects contract documents so the contractor had to tear it out and start over. So... the answer is : it depends!