Concrete Planet

This is one of the most important books I've ever read, because our lives are utterly dependent on the vast concrete infrastructure of our society, and it's all falling apart -- airports, roads and bridges (essential for delivering food and other goods), sewage treatment plants, water treatment plants, concrete pipes, buildings, homes, and so on.The Romans built concrete that lasted for 2 thousand years.Courland writes that the buildings and monuments we build may only last only a century -- or less --yet the engineers who built them are proud of that! Worse yet, they know the shortcomings of steel and concrete, yet continue to build structures that will deteriorate.The problem isn't the concrete; it's the iron and steel rebar reinforcement. Cracks can be fixed, but when air, moisture, and chemicals seep into reinforced concrete, the rebar rusts, expanding in diameter four or five-fold, which destroys the surrounding concrete, and ultimately destroys the building, road, or bridge.Courland says that engineers and architects have known about this problem a long time, yet refuse to admit it, or if they do, think it doesn't matter. This books main theme is that this does matter. Here are three excerpts where Courland tries to explain why this is so important:1) The lifespan of concrete is not only shorter than masonry, it "is probably less than that of wood...We have built a disposable world using a short-lived material, the manufacture of which generates millions of tons of greenhouse gases." Cement is the third largest source of CO2 after autos and coal-fueled power plants.2) "Even more troubling is that all this steel-reinforced concrete that we use for building our roads, buildings, bridges, sewer pipes, and sidewalks is ultimately expendable, so we will have to keep rebuilding them every couple of generations, adding more pollution and expense for our descendants to bear. Most of the concrete structures built at the beginning of the 20th century have begun falling apart, and most will be, or already have been, demolished".3) The world we have built over the last century is decaying at an alarming rate. Our infrastructure is especially terrible: -- 1 in 4 bridges are either structurally deficient or structurally obsolete -- The service life of most reinforced concrete highway bridges is 50 years, and their average age is 42 years.... -- Besides our crumbling highway system, the reinforced concrete used for our water conduits, sewer pipes, water-treatment plants, and pumping stations is also disintegrating. The chemicals and bacteria in sewage make it almost as corrosive as seawater, reducing the life span of the reinforced concrete used in these systems to 50 years of less."I'm sure the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) would agree. Below is their 2009 report card for America's infrastructure. C+ Solid Waste C Bridges C- Public Parks and Recreation, Rail D+ Energy D Aviation, Dams, Hazardous Waste, Schools, Transit D- Drinking Water, Inland Waterways, Levees, Roads, WastewaterTheir 2013 report card will state we need over 3 trillion to fix this. But ASCE says nothing about the cement deterioration issue anywhere on their website, let alone demand that future (cement) projects be built to last. Their 2013 report card will come out March 19. I'll be watching to see if they even mention that we need to build millennia-long lasting concrete buildings, roads, bridges, dams, schools, drinking water pipes and facilities, and levees in the future.This is even more critical than Courland realizes, since we're at peak oil and coal. It will take a tremendous amount of energy to replace and/or fix our concrete infrastructure. Why waste our remaining energy on concrete, unless it will be built to last thousands of years like Roman Concrete?Perhaps we should consider DE-paving and restoring ecosystems, creating more farmland, or converting concrete roads to railways rather than build projects with short-term concrete we KNOW will only last for decades.We know there's a problem, we know how to fix it (the last chapter explains how to make long-lasting concrete), and yet there's no pressure to do it, because it's cheaper to do it the wrong way, especially in a time of tight credit. To do it right, it costs a bit more up front, but the payback is tens of trillions of dollars in saved future costs. I predict Capitalism's' short-term focus will prevent long-lasting concrete projects from coming to fruition.On top of that, there's no demand from the public, journalists, engineers, or architects. There has not been any outcry since this book was published to build with long-lasting concrete in the future that I can find. So let's not spend the precious energy we have left on short-lived concrete. Future generations won't able to build, let alone repair and maintain what we construct.Why? Consider all the wood it used to take for a limestone kiln to make 1 cubic yard of lime: a dozen cords of wood (a cord is 4' x 4' x 8).Another example Courland cites (page 139): Since the Mayans "used 20 full-grown pine trees to create just 1 cubic meter of lime, the amount of deforestation caused by the need for farmland, plaster, and stucco probably tipped the environmental balance deep in the red".I wonder how many trees would be needed to build the 27.1 million cubic meter Three Gorges Dam in China? I suspect even deforesting the earth wouldn't be enough.And those of you downstream from the Hoover and other large dams might be interested to know that these are still "undergoing the curing process, thus forestalling corrosion. It will be interesting for our descendants to discover whether the tremendous weight of these dams will continue to put off the rebar's corrosion expansion" (page 327).I think the tragedy of failing dams is doubly bad, since electricity from hydro-power will be especially valuable as one of the few (reliable) energy sources in the future.It appears there's very little oversight or testing of projects later on to see how they stood up to wear and tear. It wasn't until 1987 that it was discovered the so-called "high strength" concrete used since 1931 was far worse than the concrete before then!How does concrete erode? Even though the steel (99% iron) is encased in concrete, nature finds a way in via: Annual freeze and thaw cycle Vibrations and loads on bridges Wind pressure sways and oscillates concrete buildings - cracks result Deterioration by surface wear: Abrasion, Erosion, and Cavitation Cracking:from crystallization of salts in pores, drying shrinkage, thermal contraction Deterioration by Frost Action Fire Chemical: Corrosion of steel, Alkali-silica reaction, Sulfate attack, Acid attackConcrete statistics--40 tons of concrete for every person on the planet, plus 1 tone per person per year added--100 million years from now, crushed and recrystallized concrete will leave a rust-colored layer of sediment--First skyscraper 1891 Monadnock Building in Chicago, the tallest brick masonry structure and commercial building, the first to use aluminum for staircases. 17 stories, 214 feet high. The word skyscraper comes from the name for the tallest sail on clipper ships (page 228).--1891 also first concrete street (in Bellefontaine, Ohio).--American Interstate Highway System (1956-1992) largest use of concrete in any civil engineering project until then.--We might all be living in concrete homes now if Edison hadn't messed up so badly (chapter 7)Concrete and Earthquakes "Concrete lobbyists twisted the data [after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire] to prove that reinforced concrete had stood up well...because of this deception, many people around the world would die in the course of the following century to buildings that they thought were immune to collapse from the violent movements of the earth". Page 305, more details on pages 313-317. Brick on the other hand, had a bad reputation, but recent research has shown that well-built brick structures did well in the 1906 earthquake (page 315).Concrete and Fire Concrete is not fireproof, but you're less likely to be injured than in a wood structure, and have more time to escape Brick, on the other hand, is born in fire, and immune to all but "insanely high temperatures", this is why bred and pizza ovens are made of brick - if they were concrete they'd fall apart.A world without concrete: Smaller and shorter buildings, more brick buildings, dams made of earth or huge blocks of stone, road surfaces rough except after recently applied newt layer of asphalt, lots of potholesFurther readingIf you're interested in what a wood based society is like and what it's capable of, read John Perlin's outstanding A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization

I'm neither a civil engineer nor a construction man, but I've always liked the looks and durability of concrete items. This book is simply wonderful.The author does an excellent job of describing technical aspects of concrete's manufacture and use for the non-technician and reveals some absorbing facts. By and large this is a history of mankind's use of concrete and cement illustrated with mini-biographies of the major players ranging from hypothetical neolithic shamans through Herod, Frank Lloyd Wright, and LeCorbusier. Along the way are stories of a number of fascinating characters you have probably never heard of. It is also a summary of the technical changes in concrete over that time.Also, there are surprises. The author makes a good case that concrete is less fireproof, earthquake resistant, and long-lasting than we might imagine. Although such Roman constructions as the Pantheon have lasted without much repair for almost two millenia, most of the modern reinforced concrete constructions will be lucky to last a hundred years. The author gives a very persuasive explanation for this state of affairs.If I have any criticisms at all, they are two-fold. First, the amount of space devoted to certain personalities does not seem that correlated to their importance. As mentioned by another reviewer, the Frank Lloyd Wright section is pretty long. Second, while the author disclaims any technical expertise, he is downright polemic regarding the ways in which the concrete industry has gone wrong, and sometimes right. I think the jury is still out on some of these issues, and there are reasonable disagreements among the experts.Nevertheless, if you have any interest in concrete as a material for anything from birdbaths to skyscrapers, you should find this book a smooth and fascinating read.

We tend to see concrete as one of the commonplaces of our modern world; we seldom give this dull white substance a second thought. Many recall that the Romans used it. But its basic ingredient, lime, came into use far earlier. In fact, like the fire which creates it, lime's time of first use is lost in prehistory.Buildings using lime in construction were found at the Fertile Crescent sites of Göbekli Tepe, Nevali Çori, Çayönyü, and Çatal Höyük — the first two being temples, the last two the world's oldest known towns. To those ancient peoples, lime would have seemed magical, releasing heat when mixed with water and turning into hard rock.The Romans learned to mix it with sand and gravel to form concrete, and later to add clay to the mixture. Some buildings built from the resulting "Roman concrete" have lasted through more than twenty centuries, enduring far longer than anything we have today. The secret of making concrete was lost after that, and rediscovered only in the nineteenth century.Robert Courland's history demonstrates a scholar's dedication to research and a raconteur's gift for storytelling. His tale is filled with heroes and villains, commercial successes and failures, brilliant achievements and abysmal tragedies — right up to the present, when Frank Lloyd Wright revolutionized architecture by making use of reinforced concrete's tensile strength.I expected a rather boring book, but I found this one a genuine page-turner. Who knew that mundane concrete was in use so long ago, or had such an illustrious history?

Le béton, c'est très important, c'est aussi très risqué puisqu'en définitive c'est un matériau pas si durable.`Le livre n'est pas très bien fait, il y a beaucoup trop de choses sur le béton romain, beaucoup trop de termes techniques, mais il est quand même utile.

Interesting though technically suspect on some issues

Great book!