Purdueenginerd

Anecdotal, but I have one renovation project in San Antonio so far has been put on hold. For my projects that are under construction, most of the contractors are implementing cleaning regimes, spreading out the workers, and then one project of mine split their workforce into 3rds and put them on day shift, evening shift and night shift.

Yeah, the sign price I actually think sounds about normal for what I would expect fom IAH and HOU Signs. My smirk is more of a, "why spend a million dollars of tax-payer dollars on a sign". I'm being a bit of a debbie downer on this one, sorry.

😕

To be clear, I dont think many architects view those styles with "contempt" and in my opinion its mistaken to state that. The reason "classical" buildings arent built anymore is because thats what owners fundamentally demand. Picking specifically on offices. Many owners and tenants wanted offices with a floor to ceiling windows, maximizing natural light. What does that mean: Glass Curtain walls! As for making buildings look older, generally I see this at the University level. Buildings on campus will typically have architectural guidelines. Many Larger universities employ a university architect to make sure whatever building is being constructed will comply with the standards. I actually do not know how new construction federal buildings deal with architecture, I do know there are building code differences from the structural side of things. Historically, I have worked on two very old (former) federal buildings, both of which are by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Knox_Taylor - I particularily like that he signed both the Architectural and Structural Drawings for my project (1912) Back in 1900's, he was basically the architecture dude of the Federal Government. There used to be an office that handled Federal Building Architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Supervising_Architect_for_the_U.S._Treasury I believe it was cut short due to WWII and ongoing tensions with with private architecture firms and accusations of improper bid awards. After the war, I'm sure the anti-communist fever of centralized buildings helped impede its return. My personal opinion, given the presidents ongoing business connections to architecture and construction firms related to his real estate empire, I'm a uncomfortable with the president diving into another industry wherein he stands to benefit financially from. Feel free to call me "elitist", I also find The Presidents 'tastes' to be tacky, at least architecturally speaking. While I do like older style buildings, I think it wouldnt hurt to let each state nominate or appoint an architect to come up with standards for local jurisdictions. Like I said before, federal building standards already exist, I dont think it would be a significant jump to put in appearance standards. Finally, touching on craft/skilled labor. This is anecdotal, but the two buildings I worked on, while they had ornate components: could easily be replicated today. Unrelated, Ive had a few older buildings with decorative Terra-cotta that needed to be replaced and that had to be specialty ordered from one of the few remaining companies that fabricates them. Why isnt terra-cotta used on buildings anymore? Its heavy as hell, more susceptible to weathering and deterioration. Finally, to create ornate elements: Super expensive... Which as far as taxpayer money goes... a lot of people will raise hell about.

Few of my projects outside of Houston have been office --->hotel conversions. Havent seen it too much in Houston yet.

Yep, 1997 should be designed for 40 to 50 psf live load. At 2.3 you'll be good! If you want to confirm, your house is new enough that you should be able to get the drawings from the City of Houston permitting office. Most of the time the live load rating is listed in the general notes.

Depending on the age of the structure, most single family residential homes are designed for a uniform distributed live load of between 40 and 50 lbs per square foot. The deadload is already accounted for in the capacity of the structural members. That being said, at 48x7x10 is an area of about 23 square feet. This comes out to about 2.3 lbs/sq feet. Even if its heavier than carpet, it will marginally eat into the live-load rating capacity of your floor,. Sructurally that likely wouldn't concern me. If you need more assurances or something in writing you'll want to hire a structural engineer. The only thing for is if the space was attic and then converted into occupy-able space. If it used to be attic space, my answer would differ. Best of luck.

They just play U2's "Where the streets have No Name" on a loop the entire time youre there.

agreed, I rented at Post Midtown in 2009, right after the financial crisis. If I remember correctly the 2 bedrooms (I had a roommate) were running like $1300/mo total at the time. That price point rose precipitously as the years went on.

People forget that when Post-Midtown, Camden Midtown , Ventana at Midtown were built, Midtown was sort of a dump. Rents werent particularily expensive (at least compared to now) back in the early 2000's for those places.

Eh, I think actually the heights has done a rather good job of keeping its well maintained single family homes and leveling homes that have deteriorated beyond reasonable feasibility of repairs. There's a good mix of new and old for many of the residential buildings in the area. As for the families that settled the area. I doubt there are many 100 year old plus families still around from the original housing stock in the area, unless youre referring to the 2nd or 3rd, or 4th generation of people who've lived in the heights now. Business wise, specifically to Shepherd corridor and in the context of 2009. Which buildings were worth saving? You can actually toggle between 2007 and 2017 (in some cases 2019) on Google street view https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7910564,-95.4098949,3a,75y,333h,85.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sPgd-am3oxpOtA1JT57nGFw!2e0!5s20071101T000000!7i3328!8i1664?hl=en&authuser=0 And honestly... yeah theres a few run down houses that have been leveled... and to top it off... The current iterations of Shepherd and durham were constructed in the 1960's and didnt even exist in the 1940's. Ariel photography from December 1944 with 2020 map overlay. The vast majority of the buildings lining Sheperd are 1960/1970+ buildings already, with some exceptions at the east side of the road. I'm with @wilcal on this one, I'm not sure which business on Shepherd qualify

@Subdude Fixed it. Expert photoshop skillz

I found this on the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code#Early_history_and_five-digit_ZIP_Codes The "16" was the number of the postal zone in the specific city. By the early 1960s, a more organized system was needed, and non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide on July 1, 1963. The USPOD issued its Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code on October 1, 1963, with the list of two-letter state abbreviations which are generally written with both letters capitalized.[4] An earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters.[4] According to Publication 59, the two-letter standard was "based on a maximum 23-position line, because this has been found to be the most universally acceptable line capacity basis for major addressing systems",[4] which would be exceeded by a long city name combined with a multi-letter state abbreviation, such as "Sacramento, Calif." along with the ZIP Code. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with the exception of Nebraska, which was changed from NB to NE in 1969 at the request of the Canadian postal administration, to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick.

Man that tower was imposingly large on that side of downtown back in the day.

Yeah, Thats about what I would expect. Touching on structural licencing. I'm registered in about 12 states and I agree with you, I dont like a 3rd party engineer signing and sealing my work and prefer to see my projects end to end. Generally if I have an out-of-state project, I make the effort to get licenced in that state. Even then, My boss has something like 42 states so generally we're covered for out of state projects. We've had projects where a "top dog" structural engineering firm designs really high-level engineering drawings for very unique structures, and then we go through and "finish the design" -- I really am not a fan of that as, similar to the architecture world, the "top dog" structural firm doesnt understand the VE implications or worse, "construct-ability" of a structure. Swinging back to Architecture, Ive been in situations where the "design firm" and Architect of record have butted heads, and its just ugly and difficult to work with at times.

I dont know how it breaks down in the Architecture world specifically from project to project. Ive seen it where the design firm creates renderings, and may do drafting of interior and exterior elevations at the SD level (Schematic Design/drawings for those unfamiliar with the term). Then DD(Design Development/drawings) and CD (Construction Design/Drawings) is handled by the local firm. But the two will work together to make sure the Schematic design, especially with appearances is met in accordance with the over-arching firm. This happens some in the Structural World but it works a little differently.

On a few university project I've worked on. I've seen the design architect is an out-of-country firm, but the project architect/production architect is a local firm. Basically, the Architect of record is a local firm, but the design/appearance of the building is determined by the design architect. It would not surprise me if thats the case here.

I'll volunteer if you need help. I actually volunteered at my office to create a map of all the projects were engineer of record on and your mapping was a bit of inspiration for me haha. I'm still in the 1970's, kind of fun hunting down these old buildings.

They topped out a two story building and put a tree. I love it. 😂

Deep south rigging is lodged in my brain. Was about 200 feet from this disaster when I was still an intern in college. 21 years old at the time. https://www.enr.com/blogs/4-texas-louisiana-stories/post/15448-update-youtube-video-detailing-2-500-ton-crane-s-fatal-collapse-is-authentic

Got them yesterday from my parents!

That's needlessly hostile, especially to the news press, to what will presumably be that guys future neighbors of his property.

I forgot another good example I had where the geotech report was handy. I have a renovation project of a two story building in Dallas. When I was able to recover the structural drawings from the city, the one kind of alarming thing we observed is that it had drilled piers 70 feet down! Which is generally excessive for a 2 story building. The first floor was also called a structural deck, in that its not directly bearing on the soil and is supported by structure. (there was a nice horrifying crawl space I had to get into to make my measurements). As part of the renovation, the owner was creating a large outdoor patio and ordered a geotechnical report to support this structure. The geotechnical engineer found that there was a landfill at the site from 1820-1880 and from 1880 to about 1950 there was cattle slaughter house. There ALSO used to be a small river running through the site which had been filled in in the 19th century. What did this mean? It meant that for about 50'--- the soil was ... actually trash. So when the building was constructed, they drilled piers right through it to native soil to get the engineering values they needed. We could have done that as well, but any soil removed from the site would need to be treated (environmental considerations) and so the owner didn't want 70' piers (lots of soil removed from site). We ended up driving micro-piles which are a different foundation system all together. (they remove less soil). Fundamentally, the geotechnical report altered the engineering of both the original building and our renovation that would not have been predicted if we assumed that soil conditions were identical to adjacent Dallas blocks.

Anyone been to that new BBQ place across from the washington HEB? Saw there was a line out the door this weekend I might check it out. I'm not super into BBQ, but the spot looked interesting. Good location at least.

saw your video on reddit. This sucks for the owner but it sort of cool to see the pavement pushed up like that. Thanks for sharing!