Tag
#building maintenance
Every article tagged “building maintenance”.
3 articles
Civil Engineering
The cracks run in straight lines that follow the steel inside the concrete. That is not settlement, and it gets worse by itself
Concrete does not protect reinforcing steel by keeping water out. It protects it chemically, and when that chemistry is lost the corrosion that follows cracks the concrete from within and then accelerates. Here is how to read the cracks, why cover depth matters more than concrete grade, and why patch repairs so often make the next failure worse.
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Environmental Science
The old paint on your walls is probably harmless. Sanding it off is the dangerous part
India capped lead in household paint at 90 ppm in 2016. Anything painted before that may be far above it — and the exposure route is not the intact film on the wall, it is the dust released when somebody prepares the surface for repainting. Here is why the paint was leaded, who is actually at risk, and why leaving it in place is often the better answer.
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Materials Science
The building was painted two years ago and it is already peeling. Almost none of that is the paint's fault
Coating failures are overwhelmingly application failures, and the causes are specific enough to name: a wall painted before it cured, a film half the thickness it was specified at, a recoat window missed in either direction. Here is what actually goes wrong between the can and the surface, and why the monsoon makes all of it worse.
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