Well somebody keeps Like TH-cam screw up my writings. What Was that I was saying? That mineral in that concrete what's it doing to the infrastructurussia in our country
As I sit here 2 miles away from the quarry central to this issue, in a house with an as-yet-unrepaired foundation that is gradually cracking more with every day...this hits home quite literally.
Sorry to hear about this. I can't see how anything but total a replacement of the foundation slab, and the house sitting atop it, can solve the problem. No simple cosmetic repair is remotely likely to do anything to stop the ongoing deterioration on the affected concrete. I've seen a couple wooden homes being jacked up to fix a subsidence issue, but never to remove a whole slab.
My son after graduating college with a major in biology and a minor in Organic Chemistry got a job at a concrete company testing concrete and he was surprised at the amount of chemistry involved depending on the job. He went back to medical school after working there for a year.
I produced concrete aggregates for 40 years dealing with all the pitfalls particularly changing cement chemistry. Never had a product claim but quite a few intense discussions with customers. Why did my concrete go bad when I changed cement suppliers etc. Stone from a large portion of the North Shore of Lake Huron is prohibited in concrete but they use the sand resulting in roadway slabs turning up at the ends or expanding to the point of shattering against each other. We are rapidly approaching a crisis in concrete aggregates.
We have something similar in Cornwall. Mundic block concrete contains waste materials from mines and quarries. Due to the different waste materials, the concrete gets eaten away or expands when moisture is introduced. It makes the homes uninsurable until all the affected concrete is removed and replaced.
I am in awe of the sheer amount of chemical sleuthing that had to have been undertaken, just to discover each step along the way in that long chain of reactions and recombinations. Thank you for sharing, and big thanks to the chemists who figured it out!
I had no idea that the chemistry for concrete was so complex and its consequences so far reaching. Thank you for the expanded area for topics in your videos.
The first part of the video had me convinced you were going to talk about the Bentonite formations in the western United States. I'm having to deal with that on a daily basis as the ground continues to uplift and "push" in my foundation. The builders knew about the formation and designed foundations to be on piers rather than footings. It keeps the house from uplifting but not the basement walls from bowing in or concrete pads from heaving. Thousands of homes here are affected and yet they keep building. The concrete repair engineers are continuously booked with jobs to solution our issues.
Interesting and unfortunate looking it up this kind of clay it appears to be a weathering byproduct of hydrothermally altered ash beds or salt water intrusion into layers of volcanic ash so if you have this problem then that implies the underlying rock strata are pyroclastic deposits. There are lots of places out west which could meet this criterion given that you have both the fossil arcs the Tertiary ignimbrite flare up associated with the collapse of the Laramide the Yellowstone hotspot and even some explosive basin and range volcanism. Frankly this seems to be the typical consequence of developers unsustainable voracious appetite for building anywhere and everywhere they can to make stock portfolios go up for their likely ultra rich investors. There is a related issue with the building in landslide escarpment debris flow terrains which has seen many casualties over the years with many more people living in ticking time bombs
@@Dragrath1 Let's face facts. Developers are not geologists, scientists, engineers or even remotely technical people, they are money movers and financial gamblers. How is it that we allow people to become licensed developers with absolutely no technical knowledge?? The answer is simple. they have money and can buy the politicians that make the rules. But regardless, the developers screwed up and they and their investors need to pay for this. Yes, they may not have known and that means they probably should not be charged with criminal fraud, but they are still responsible for making it right. Not a one of them should not be able to walk away as a wealthy American unless they pay back every dime of the costs.
Wow, this is wild. My grandmother lives in the affected area and has been staying with my parents while her foundation is being repaired. Definitely did not expect to learn exactly what happened to her foundation today lmao
Lol I appreciate the comedy at the beginning. My initial reaction to "Since it is now October, the month of Halloween, I thought that I would share with my audience something scary in the geologic sense." was lord help us! we spend the rest of the rest of the year talking about volcanos popping out of fields like daisies, earthquakes, lava bombs, pyroclastic flows and super volcanos causing mass extinctions events. Now he is going to show us something even more terrifying! Then the engine fault light appeared and I actually laughed out.
IIRC a bunch of houses in the Santa Cruz, California area were constructed with concrete made using seawater. This is okay in a humid, ocean-side environment for about 30 years. Eventually, enough salt dissolves, .... Concrete is still an open topic for research, and as we get better at controlling substances at micro-scales, I expect we'll get better at engineering concrete for specific uses.
My brothers whole neighborhood in CT is in this mess. Apparently not his house, but all around are houses getting remedial foundation repairs. He was telling me all about it on a recent visit. It reminds me of the LP Siding fiasco a while back. My buddy made a good living just replacing LP Siding that had gone bad.
From the title I thought this was going to be a video about uranium, specifically the radioactive enrichment waste products incorporated into concrete used to build homes in Grand Junction Colorado, leading to a cancer cluster, leading to the demolition of hundreds of homes.
UdeM provided a study to the city sometime in the late 90s or early 00s saying that this was exactly the problem with our pavement and a significant cause for our repeated and frequent road repairs. It fell just shy of accusing the CSD of being aware of the problem.
This is a great topic to cover, since it's a bit easy to forget how the rocks under our feet affect our modern world in more than just earthquakes, volcanos and landlides. A similar thing is still happening in Donegal, here in Ireland, with a decent chunk of houses built in that area for a decade and a half have a risk of mica contamination in the concrete. Might recommend a follow up there if the inquest into it actually goes ahead.
For sure.. it's mined here in Wyoming, and there are local soils with high concentrations... it expands like crazy when wet. I'm in real estate and we always recommend a soil test for prospective buyers in certain areas. It'll destroy a house!
@@davidarundel6187Bentonite is negatively charged so many toxins/chemicals etc. stick to it like charcoal adsorbs chemicals. It also spreads out because it's so fine, ie. large surface area. So it's used internally (Sony 7) to cleanse (used to be some people's favorite ritual before a urine analysis) and as a facial mask etc. It's also used in cat litter to absorb odors and and a slurry lubricant for tunnel boring machines. There's an alunlminum form (grey or tan) and a silica form (white) if I recall correctly.
Fascinating. If the issue is the acid formation, then I wonder if it can be neutralized? For example in Roman era concrete I think they had additional calcium carbonate little plugs in spaces. Maybe there is a way to get some powder down to the concrete and into cracks to slow the process?
How about a video covering the problems caused when concrete used for home construction in western Colorado delivered significant concentrations of radon?
I'm a big fan of geology horror for the month of October. This video reminded me of an issue with gypsum drywall, I believe it was Chinese manufactured and imported. The drywall was either unsafe for human habitation or unstable for the purposes of drywall and it cost a lot of Florida homebuilders and rennovators a lot of money. I think I hear about this in 2018 or so.
The drywall was contaminated with sulfur. Interestingly, enough, gypsum for sheet rock is often a product of coal power plants. But you need to get the sulfur out.
That chemical sequence is like a combination shot that sinks all the balls and then ends with a scratch. It's an insidious kind of thing Walter White would have done for some long-term revenge. Kinda makes one wonder about all the concrete China's poured around the world in the last 30 years and whether in all that building frenzy, suppliers were diligent about their chemistry. If not, we'll start finding out soon.
Well we've seen their tofu briges, highways and skyscrapers right in china so........ Their ports should be interesting, and of course those damned islands are already starting to melt....one good huricane maybe.
Its a good question I would note that China does seem to take a focus on long term development in a way the US doesn't so I would hope they accounted for that. However they have had a number of flaws in past construction projects particularly those done quickly Frankly though its about time Portland cement got retired given its role in climate change and there are a number of alternatives being pursued as efforts are made to reduce the "carbon footprint" of the process, which for Portland cement is close to a even proportion of carbon dioxide gas as the amount of concrete produced.
Make a traditional Halloween Fireballs (Taurids) into the Laurentide Ice Sheet producing the Carolina Bays as secondary impacts of The Younger Dryas Impacts Theory. That should be really scary for Geologists.
The subducting crust carries water down towards/into the mantle where it becomes superheated. Because it highly compressed it's not an issue. But if an opening of low pressure faults or magma becomes availible to it, it will expand and rise with greater and greater speed untill it flashes/expands into superheated gas mixture. It can blow the side/top of a mountain or produce pyroclastic flows that will melt your skin off like a steam explosion.
Yeah my thoughts as well when learning about Bentonite from the comments Bentonite is apparently the product of amorphous silica reacting with an ion rich aqueous solution and amorphous silicates(glass) are a major constituent of tephra and ash which make up a large component of stratovolcanoes.
Hey I work in gravel pits in NE MN. I have access to tons of cool rocks & minerals from up here, including rocks the mesaba iron range. Lmk if you are in need of anything from the area I'd be more than happy to help.
Except it's not true! The EU did away with a lot of national standards testing, preferring to rely on self-regulation of the materials industry. Google on pyrite and mica in concrete blocks.
Interesting video and I am shocked to know that this happened in Connecticut and Massachusetts because they usually do not have things like this happen. My nephew loves rocks, minerals, gems, and fossils too. I went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington D.C. and it was a lot of fun. Have you been there before? If not, I hope that you will go sometime because they have an extensive collection dinosaurs, fossils, rocks and minerals, and other really neat stuff. Did you hear about the earthquake near the Campi Flegri volcano in Italy? It was small compared to a major one, but there was still some damage and no fatalities. I hope that the people will stay safe and careful out there. I wouldn't be surprised if it erupted anytime soon, but what can people expect if Campi Flegri erupts and what about its brother Mt. Vesuvius? I hope the people of Italy will stay safe.
Alkali Silica reactivity is a big issue in concrete, and most construction specs for public works require the aggregates ti be tested during the mix design process. You should do a video why this is such a big deal in certain locations (I.e. concrete is only economically feasible to produce with local aggregates, but what happens when those local aggregates are unsuitable, but the only option? Hawai’i is a great case here- no basaltic aggregates will pass ASR for concrete, but it is the only economic option. For certain special cases, aggregate can be shipped in from BC or WA, typically sand from Orcas Island for some reason) Separately, licensed professional engineers familiar with local materials will write specifications for aggregate characteristics, and this isn’t generally determined by law. The acceptable levels should be determined by a professional engineer, so be careful making the statements you did in this video. There may be special cases or conditions where it may be acceptable, such as for non-structural concrete backfill, abandonment of underground structures, etc…
We use basaltic traprock for aggregate all the time for concrete in Connecticut. It seems the difference is that the Connecticut quarries are in thick flows or dikes where the melt cooled slowly, ensuring complete crystal formation, and then were weathered for 10's of millions of years to remove any excess reactive silica(which is then deposited in vugs or faults as agate or zeolite minerals). The Hawaiian basalts are naturally much younger, and still partially vitrified. To the point, the Becker Quarry was originally a traprock quarry mining the buttress dolerite formation, a diabase dike. There were no issues with concrete quality during this time. Eventually, the quarry operator apparently ran out of traprock to mine on their property, and began mining the neighboring Brimfield schist, which contains the pyrrhotite, and thats when the problems started.
It's naturally occurring in nature as an element, but tends to bond with many other elements. Thats why high voltage furnaces and flourine (as a flux) are needed to produce it. Flourine unfortunately is THE most chemically toxic and reactive substances of the periodic table due to being the only element with 7 free electrons to bond with other elements. It exists naturally in a gaseous state and will cause the element asbestos to burst into flames.
Fluorides are not fluorine gas! Like table salt is a chloride not chlorine gas. The aluminium comes from the shales used in cement making.@@dananorth895
It comes from a type of shale used to make high-alumina cement, which weakens over a period of time. Shale is a low-grade metamorphic rock derived from clay deposits. All clay minerals are silicates of aluminium, calcium, magnesium and perhaps sodium or potassium too.
Mind doing a video on Mount Ōkueyama of Kyushu, Japan? It (and possibly several other nearby volcanoes) supposedly produced a VEI 8.0 eruption 13.7 million years ago even though it looks like a typical stratovolcano rather than a giant caldera that is usually associated with volcanoes of that intensity. At least according to Wikipedia.
As a Quality Control & Assurance worker, I would guess this is a case of testers saying " NO GOOD' & old timer/boss saying 'Don't Worry About It"--Ugh!
Lack of quality control and monitoring by state agencies. If the manufacturer of the blocks uses aggregate with a high content of pyrite, pyrrhotite or mica, then the blocks will be inferior and decompose over time. National Standards agencies used to do lab testing but they closed down the labs and now rely on self-regulation and documents now, a big mistake. Using high-alumina cement in Spain caused problems in the 60s and 70s as building collapsed 10+ years later when the concrete beams weakened.
The old man who owned the quarry realized the problem and stopped using the quarry in the late 1960s or early 1970s. In the 1980s, under new management, the quarry was reopened. For some reason, CT has protected those owners.
This is all very disconcerting. Especially feeling badly for those suffering from deteriorating structure damages from what is described here. And from what I gather (as an 100% lay person) the future is bleaker when including all the other slowly but surely eroding infrastructures in roads, bridges, etc. And the correct sand for glass is disappearing..eek! Now I wonder, thinking again about this concrete nightmare: the work done on the Notre Dame Cathedral... Maybe someone could answer this: when earthquakes upheave and contort highways,are these problematic concretes part of the cause for worse than necessary damages??
Years ago heard about a series of concrete structures that were crumbling for unknown reasons. The investigation lead to contamination of the aggregate by aluminum oxide from the trucks that transported the material to the construction sites
If you are doing Halloween-themed geology videos and there still is time to make them, a video on the Black Canyon of the Gunnison would be cool since it is fascinating and - in a way - spooky.
My foundation was one of many made with pyrrhotite contaminated aggregate In 2019 my entire foundation was removed and replaced with fiberglass panels Our neighbor is going through the process right now There are an estimated 35000 structures built with this faulty aggregate Its unconscionable that aggregate containing pyrrhotite is used for anything other than fill
and this is why you don't use washing up liquid as a plasticiser when making mortar! because it contains sulphur. Maybe not as damaging as this pyrrhotite but you just are making problems for the future regardless.
Not as a plastisizer, but we'd use diluted liquid tide detergent sprayed on the forms. They popped right off after curing, but all the guys smelled like a french........
No one approved the concrete mixture, no engineering firm or government agency? I find that hard to believe as core samples are required and this mineral is banned in a lot of construction projects here in the US so what truth is this video? Im all ears
There are also alot of exceptions to the rules as well. Particularly in gov. projects, not saying concrete but in noncriticle projects you'll find welded rebar etc. I'm guessing you haven't heard about military projects........😂 P.S. In comercial construction if contracts are signed, lives are at stake and people/companies can be sued then yes everyones much more cautious. But then there's always corruption as well.
Hadn't heard about this mineral! How terrible for the homeowners! I've found one dashboard light scarier than check engine: turtle. Not something to experience late on a Sautrday night with young kids. Something to do with the battery. Hadn't seen it before and, of course, no battery means no light to check what it means! 😁
High alumia was used in concrete slab houses in UK. It rots the metal rebars and makes the house unmortgagable. I had a Cornish Unit house. It didnt use that concrete, but got tarred with that brush. I eventually managed a cash buyer sale. It went for half the price of a brick house. Dont go near these odd constructions stick to good brick ones!
I drive mountain beaters because of my job, so that light is just the send it until you end it symbol for me. Seen it consistently for a decade now. Lol
I hope that you enjoyed today’s video. I wanted to experiment in occasionally covering slightly different geologic fields.
Well somebody keeps Like TH-cam screw up my writings. What Was that I was saying? That mineral in that concrete what's it doing to the infrastructurussia in our country
Thanks!
informative, thought provoking, involving geochemistry....works for me.
Agreed - it's always good to experiment, sign of a lively mind.
Personally, I love it that you touch other related subjects as well. Let's hope enough of us enjoy this for you to consider doing this again.
As I sit here 2 miles away from the quarry central to this issue, in a house with an as-yet-unrepaired foundation that is gradually cracking more with every day...this hits home quite literally.
"cracks me up" said the concrete
@@moos5221oof.. too soon
The insurance payouts must be massive.
Sorry to hear that you've got a problem.
Sorry to hear about this. I can't see how anything but total a replacement of the foundation slab, and the house sitting atop it, can solve the problem. No simple cosmetic repair is remotely likely to do anything to stop the ongoing deterioration on the affected concrete. I've seen a couple wooden homes being jacked up to fix a subsidence issue, but never to remove a whole slab.
My son after graduating college with a major in biology and a minor in Organic Chemistry got a job at a concrete company testing concrete and he was surprised at the amount of chemistry involved depending on the job. He went back to medical school after working there for a year.
I produced concrete aggregates for 40 years dealing with all the pitfalls particularly changing cement chemistry. Never had a product claim but quite a few intense discussions with customers. Why did my concrete go bad when I changed cement suppliers etc. Stone from a large portion of the North Shore of Lake Huron is prohibited in concrete but they use the sand resulting in roadway slabs turning up at the ends or expanding to the point of shattering against each other. We are rapidly approaching a crisis in concrete aggregates.
Someof us have heard of the impending sand shortage
We have something similar in Cornwall. Mundic block concrete contains waste materials from mines and quarries. Due to the different waste materials, the concrete gets eaten away or expands when moisture is introduced. It makes the homes uninsurable until all the affected concrete is removed and replaced.
I am in awe of the sheer amount of chemical sleuthing that had to have been undertaken, just to discover each step along the way in that long chain of reactions and recombinations. Thank you for sharing, and big thanks to the chemists who figured it out!
we had a similar problem with pyrite in Ireland many houses have become structurally unstable
I had no idea that the chemistry for concrete was so complex and its consequences so far reaching. Thank you for the expanded area for topics in your videos.
There was a similar issue with a lot of properties built during the boom in Ireland. Many remain empty. It was a big scandal
The first part of the video had me convinced you were going to talk about the Bentonite formations in the western United States. I'm having to deal with that on a daily basis as the ground continues to uplift and "push" in my foundation. The builders knew about the formation and designed foundations to be on piers rather than footings. It keeps the house from uplifting but not the basement walls from bowing in or concrete pads from heaving. Thousands of homes here are affected and yet they keep building. The concrete repair engineers are continuously booked with jobs to solution our issues.
@stevefritz5182 What town or city do you live in?
Interesting and unfortunate looking it up this kind of clay it appears to be a weathering byproduct of hydrothermally altered ash beds or salt water intrusion into layers of volcanic ash so if you have this problem then that implies the underlying rock strata are pyroclastic deposits. There are lots of places out west which could meet this criterion given that you have both the fossil arcs the Tertiary ignimbrite flare up associated with the collapse of the Laramide the Yellowstone hotspot and even some explosive basin and range volcanism.
Frankly this seems to be the typical consequence of developers unsustainable voracious appetite for building anywhere and everywhere they can to make stock portfolios go up for their likely ultra rich investors. There is a related issue with the building in landslide escarpment debris flow terrains which has seen many casualties over the years with many more people living in ticking time bombs
@@Dragrath1 Let's face facts. Developers are not geologists, scientists, engineers or even remotely technical people, they are money movers and financial gamblers. How is it that we allow people to become
licensed developers with absolutely no technical knowledge??
The answer is simple. they have money and can buy the politicians that make the rules. But regardless, the developers screwed up and they and their investors need to pay for this. Yes, they may not have known and that means they probably should not be charged with criminal fraud, but they are still responsible for making it right. Not a one of them should not be able to walk away as a wealthy American unless they pay back every dime of the costs.
Wow, this was fascinating, thank you!
Your informative video certainly points out the importance of geology and mineralogy. Thank you
Informative and well presented. A nice diversion from true geology.
Wow, this is wild. My grandmother lives in the affected area and has been staying with my parents while her foundation is being repaired. Definitely did not expect to learn exactly what happened to her foundation today lmao
Lol I appreciate the comedy at the beginning.
My initial reaction to "Since it is now October, the month of Halloween, I thought that I would share with my audience something scary in the geologic sense." was lord help us! we spend the rest of the rest of the year talking about volcanos popping out of fields like daisies, earthquakes, lava bombs, pyroclastic flows and super volcanos causing mass extinctions events. Now he is going to show us something even more terrifying! Then the engine fault light appeared and I actually laughed out.
In germany we have basically no geothermal energy because of a bad anhydrite accident in the city of staufen. Maybe worth a video aswell :)
"Staufen darf nicht zerbrechen!"
Also, less energy because USA decided to destroy Nordstream then lie about it & create a proxy war with Russia...
IIRC a bunch of houses in the Santa Cruz, California area were constructed with concrete made using seawater. This is okay in a humid, ocean-side environment for about 30 years. Eventually, enough salt dissolves, ....
Concrete is still an open topic for research, and as we get better at controlling substances at micro-scales, I expect we'll get better at engineering concrete for specific uses.
This one was an interesting geology related digression. Do more.
My brothers whole neighborhood in CT is in this mess. Apparently not his house, but all around are houses getting remedial foundation repairs. He was telling me all about it on a recent visit. It reminds me of the LP Siding fiasco a while back. My buddy made a good living just replacing LP Siding that had gone bad.
Who else's been subbed to this channel since the La Palma volcano eruption?
Facinating topic! Thank you for making it an actual video instead of a poor quality short.
From the title I thought this was going to be a video about uranium, specifically the radioactive enrichment waste products incorporated into concrete used to build homes in Grand Junction Colorado, leading to a cancer cluster, leading to the demolition of hundreds of homes.
This subject is very interesting....nicely done.
It happened also in a region in province of Quebec.
UdeM provided a study to the city sometime in the late 90s or early 00s saying that this was exactly the problem with our pavement and a significant cause for our repeated and frequent road repairs.
It fell just shy of accusing the CSD of being aware of the problem.
Chambly/Beloeil area, right?
Thanks! Sometimes, things that cause damage are very subtle, such as pyrrhotite...
Takes me back to my school days. Well done.
This is a great topic to cover, since it's a bit easy to forget how the rocks under our feet affect our modern world in more than just earthquakes, volcanos and landlides.
A similar thing is still happening in Donegal, here in Ireland, with a decent chunk of houses built in that area for a decade and a half have a risk of mica contamination in the concrete. Might recommend a follow up there if the inquest into it actually goes ahead.
Geologist here that is deathly scared of things lighting up on the dashboard... you hit both nails on the head.
That answered a big question I had about a concrete failure exactly as described.
Another problematic mineral when it comes to soil types that can potentially damage foundations is a type of aluminum silicate clay called bentonite.
For sure.. it's mined here in Wyoming, and there are local soils with high concentrations... it expands like crazy when wet. I'm in real estate and we always recommend a soil test for prospective buyers in certain areas. It'll destroy a house!
@@mar83161 OMG! The things you really need to be aware of just to put a roof over your head. 🫢
I didn't realize how many bentonite clay are there.
Strangely , Bentonite , is used medicinaly .
@@davidarundel6187Bentonite is negatively charged so many toxins/chemicals etc. stick to it like charcoal adsorbs chemicals. It also spreads out because it's so fine, ie. large surface area. So it's used internally (Sony 7) to cleanse (used to be some people's favorite ritual before a urine analysis) and as a facial mask etc.
It's also used in cat litter to absorb odors and and a slurry lubricant for tunnel boring machines.
There's an alunlminum form (grey or tan) and a silica form (white) if I recall correctly.
My first minerology class, 1973, I was most impressed by the sulfides.
Sulfides interfere with many epoxies, so anchor bolts for seizmic upgrades might not even adhere properly.
Fascinating. If the issue is the acid formation, then I wonder if it can be neutralized? For example in Roman era concrete I think they had additional calcium carbonate little plugs in spaces.
Maybe there is a way to get some powder down to the concrete and into cracks to slow the process?
Thanks for the chemistry lesson in concrete. It just goes to show how careful you need to be when sourcing concrete matetials .
Great info ! ! !
How about a video covering the problems caused when concrete used for home construction in western Colorado delivered significant concentrations of radon?
@0:27 why did the plumber do such a bad job with the cement, how is the tile guy going to fix that?
What you don't know CAN HURT YOU, or at least hurt your concrete.
Pyrite also causes damage to concret foundations.
I'm a big fan of geology horror for the month of October. This video reminded me of an issue with gypsum drywall, I believe it was Chinese manufactured and imported. The drywall was either unsafe for human habitation or unstable for the purposes of drywall and it cost a lot of Florida homebuilders and rennovators a lot of money. I think I hear about this in 2018 or so.
That was recent, inferior gypsum board was shipped all over the states.
The drywall was contaminated with sulfur.
Interestingly, enough, gypsum for sheet rock is often a product of coal power plants. But you need to get the sulfur out.
I was fully expecting to hear a long story about asbestos, but what i got was some really interesting chemistry!
Very interesting, thank you👍 for the information.👏
That chemical sequence is like a combination shot that sinks all the balls and then ends with a scratch. It's an insidious kind of thing Walter White would have done for some long-term revenge. Kinda makes one wonder about all the concrete China's poured around the world in the last 30 years and whether in all that building frenzy, suppliers were diligent about their chemistry. If not, we'll start finding out soon.
Well we've seen their tofu briges, highways and skyscrapers right in china so........
Their ports should be interesting, and of course those damned islands are already starting to melt....one good huricane maybe.
Its a good question I would note that China does seem to take a focus on long term development in a way the US doesn't so I would hope they accounted for that. However they have had a number of flaws in past construction projects particularly those done quickly
Frankly though its about time Portland cement got retired given its role in climate change and there are a number of alternatives being pursued as efforts are made to reduce the "carbon footprint" of the process, which for Portland cement is close to a even proportion of carbon dioxide gas as the amount of concrete produced.
AFTER 2:04 IS JUST A CYCLE OF HORRORS.... geez
I grew up just outside the affected area, luckily my father didn't get concrete for the house from that area.
The student union builsing of our local university had this issue. Only it was the floor of like a million square feet building🙄
Make a traditional Halloween Fireballs (Taurids) into the Laurentide Ice Sheet producing the Carolina Bays as secondary impacts of The Younger Dryas Impacts Theory. That should be really scary for Geologists.
Isn't this a bit like what happened with that slide at Mt. St. Helen's. They said hydrothermal alternation from hot springs weakened the upper rock.
It is a volcano, lol. The rock is going to be weak because it is essentially layers of compacted powder.
The subducting crust carries water down towards/into the mantle where it becomes superheated. Because it highly compressed it's not an issue. But if an opening of low pressure faults or magma becomes availible to it, it will expand and rise with greater and greater speed untill it flashes/expands into superheated gas mixture.
It can blow the side/top of a mountain or produce pyroclastic flows that will melt your skin off like a steam explosion.
Yeah my thoughts as well when learning about Bentonite from the comments Bentonite is apparently the product of amorphous silica reacting with an ion rich aqueous solution and amorphous silicates(glass) are a major constituent of tephra and ash which make up a large component of stratovolcanoes.
Meanwhile Roman concrete is still intact, 2000 years later.
Thanks for the info !!!
Hey I work in gravel pits in NE MN. I have access to tons of cool rocks & minerals from up here, including rocks the mesaba iron range. Lmk if you are in need of anything from the area I'd be more than happy to help.
Its great how Europe is always the measuring stick for good qualities in industry 👍
Except it's not true! The EU did away with a lot of national standards testing, preferring to rely on self-regulation of the materials industry. Google on pyrite and mica in concrete blocks.
Interesting video and I am shocked to know that this happened in Connecticut and Massachusetts because they usually do not have things like this happen. My nephew loves rocks, minerals, gems, and fossils too. I went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington D.C. and it was a lot of fun. Have you been there before? If not, I hope that you will go sometime because they have an extensive collection dinosaurs, fossils, rocks and minerals, and other really neat stuff.
Did you hear about the earthquake near the Campi Flegri volcano in Italy? It was small compared to a major one, but there was still some damage and no fatalities. I hope that the people will stay safe and careful out there. I wouldn't be surprised if it erupted anytime soon, but what can people expect if Campi Flegri erupts and what about its brother Mt. Vesuvius? I hope the people of Italy will stay safe.
Nice little pivot. An interesting issue.
Alkali Silica reactivity is a big issue in concrete, and most construction specs for public works require the aggregates ti be tested during the mix design process. You should do a video why this is such a big deal in certain locations (I.e. concrete is only economically feasible to produce with local aggregates, but what happens when those local aggregates are unsuitable, but the only option? Hawai’i is a great case here- no basaltic aggregates will pass ASR for concrete, but it is the only economic option. For certain special cases, aggregate can be shipped in from BC or WA, typically sand from Orcas Island for some reason)
Separately, licensed professional engineers familiar with local materials will write specifications for aggregate characteristics, and this isn’t generally determined by law. The acceptable levels should be determined by a professional engineer, so be careful making the statements you did in this video. There may be special cases or conditions where it may be acceptable, such as for non-structural concrete backfill, abandonment of underground structures, etc…
We use basaltic traprock for aggregate all the time for concrete in Connecticut. It seems the difference is that the Connecticut quarries are in thick flows or dikes where the melt cooled slowly, ensuring complete crystal formation, and then were weathered for 10's of millions of years to remove any excess reactive silica(which is then deposited in vugs or faults as agate or zeolite minerals). The Hawaiian basalts are naturally much younger, and still partially vitrified. To the point, the Becker Quarry was originally a traprock quarry mining the buttress dolerite formation, a diabase dike. There were no issues with concrete quality during this time. Eventually, the quarry operator apparently ran out of traprock to mine on their property, and began mining the neighboring Brimfield schist, which contains the pyrrhotite, and thats when the problems started.
Well, today I learned something really scary!
This reminds me the Mica scandal in the concrete of buildings in Co. Donegal (Ireland)
where did the aluminum come from to form tricalcium aluminate?
It's naturally occurring in nature as an element, but tends to bond with many other elements. Thats why high voltage furnaces and flourine (as a flux) are needed to produce it. Flourine unfortunately is THE most chemically toxic and reactive substances of the periodic table due to being the only element with 7 free electrons to bond with other elements. It exists naturally in a gaseous state and will cause the element asbestos to burst into flames.
Fluorides are not fluorine gas! Like table salt is a chloride not chlorine gas. The aluminium comes from the shales used in cement making.@@dananorth895
It comes from a type of shale used to make high-alumina cement, which weakens over a period of time. Shale is a low-grade metamorphic rock derived from clay deposits. All clay minerals are silicates of aluminium, calcium, magnesium and perhaps sodium or potassium too.
Mind doing a video on Mount Ōkueyama of Kyushu, Japan? It (and possibly several other nearby volcanoes) supposedly produced a VEI 8.0 eruption 13.7 million years ago even though it looks like a typical stratovolcano rather than a giant caldera that is usually associated with volcanoes of that intensity. At least according to Wikipedia.
Learn something new every day. Very interesting
Interesting, I have seen this in concrete foundations and also wondered why. It looks like salt crystals.
Most likely calcium and not this
Even if everything else is perfect - the chemistry will always find the way to get you.
Wow! That is scary! Any reports of this problem in Illinois?
Having mineralogy final flashbacks.
Facinating! Thank you.
As a Quality Control & Assurance worker, I would guess this is a case of testers saying " NO GOOD' & old timer/boss saying 'Don't Worry About It"--Ugh!
Can you comment or do a video on Naples?
Lack of quality control and monitoring by state agencies. If the manufacturer of the blocks uses aggregate with a high content of pyrite, pyrrhotite or mica, then the blocks will be inferior and decompose over time. National Standards agencies used to do lab testing but they closed down the labs and now rely on self-regulation and documents now, a big mistake. Using high-alumina cement in Spain caused problems in the 60s and 70s as building collapsed 10+ years later when the concrete beams weakened.
The old man who owned the quarry realized the problem and stopped using the quarry in the late 1960s or early 1970s. In the 1980s, under new management, the quarry was reopened. For some reason, CT has protected those owners.
Why it’s important to pay attention in high school chemistry and geology class.
This is all very disconcerting. Especially feeling badly for those suffering from deteriorating structure damages from what is described here. And from what I gather (as an 100% lay person) the future is bleaker when including all the other slowly but surely eroding infrastructures in roads, bridges, etc. And the correct sand for glass is disappearing..eek! Now I wonder, thinking again about this concrete nightmare: the work done on the Notre Dame Cathedral...
Maybe someone could answer this: when earthquakes upheave and contort highways,are these problematic concretes part of the cause for worse than necessary damages??
How does this mineral react in the Potential Reacticity test?
great topic, thanks
You display concrete slabs though does the problem exist in elevated concrete structures?
early 2000s,many thousands of homes in Quebec (and i think Ontario) have the same problem.
Really interesting, and unfortunate for those homeowners. Hopefully insurance can cover, but who knows.
Years ago heard about a series of concrete structures that were crumbling for unknown reasons. The investigation lead to contamination of the aggregate by aluminum oxide from the trucks that transported the material to the construction sites
If you are doing Halloween-themed geology videos and there still is time to make them, a video on the Black Canyon of the Gunnison would be cool since it is fascinating and - in a way - spooky.
Very interesting!
My foundation was one of many made with pyrrhotite contaminated aggregate
In 2019 my entire foundation was removed and replaced with fiberglass panels
Our neighbor is going through the process right now
There are an estimated 35000 structures built with this faulty aggregate
Its unconscionable that aggregate containing pyrrhotite is used for anything other than fill
A spooky geology story. :) Thank you.
and this is why you don't use washing up liquid as a plasticiser when making mortar! because it contains sulphur. Maybe not as damaging as this pyrrhotite but you just are making problems for the future regardless.
Not as a plastisizer, but we'd use diluted liquid tide detergent sprayed on the forms. They popped right off after curing, but all the guys smelled like a french........
No one approved the concrete mixture, no engineering firm or government agency? I find that hard to believe as core samples are required and this mineral is banned in a lot of construction projects here in the US so what truth is this video? Im all ears
Probably not because it was private home construction (residential). No submittals, mix design approval, etc… unless it’s public/commercial
There are also alot of exceptions to the rules as well. Particularly in gov. projects, not saying concrete but in noncriticle projects you'll find welded rebar etc.
I'm guessing you haven't heard about military projects........😂
P.S. In comercial construction if contracts are signed, lives are at stake and people/companies can be sued then yes everyones much more cautious. But then there's always corruption as well.
I remember when that was in the local news not all that long ago
This video is dope!
I think something similar happened in Ireland but on a larger scale
Fascinating.
Hadn't heard about this mineral! How terrible for the homeowners! I've found one dashboard light scarier than check engine: turtle. Not something to experience late on a Sautrday night with young kids. Something to do with the battery. Hadn't seen it before and, of course, no battery means no light to check what it means! 😁
NOOOOO!!! Not the Pyrrhotite....! Halloween is no longer scary after this.
Pyrrhotite is rarer than pyrite, which is also an iron sulfide. Doesn't pyrite in aggregate cause the same problem?
I would like more videos æike this
I thought it was going to be people digging at gold looking spots in the foundations.
High alumia was used in concrete slab houses in UK. It rots the metal rebars and makes the house unmortgagable. I had a Cornish Unit house. It didnt use that concrete, but got tarred with that brush. I eventually managed a cash buyer sale. It went for half the price of a brick house. Dont go near these odd constructions stick to good brick ones!
Thanks.
I drive mountain beaters because of my job, so that light is just the send it until you end it symbol for me. Seen it consistently for a decade now. Lol
Well you made me look THE FOOL! I told my Wife it must be Asbestos. I can go to bed now, I learned something new…
The federal government wastes 10 times that amount everyday.
Can I hire you when I build my Yirt of rammed dirt?
I never knew concrete was so complicated. 🤣
Who thinks this is accidental or done to make more money through repairs
This is not a unique situation