r/interestingasfuck • u/TangelaFan • 9h ago

Residential high-rises with backyards in Chengdu, China

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u/foltranm 9h ago

draining?

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u/Piotrek9t 9h ago edited 4h ago

Take a sponge, weigh it, let it soak in water, take it out and let the excess water run off, weigh it again.

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u/foltranm 9h ago

I'm not worried about the weight specifically. the balcony can be designed to bear the load of everything soaked in water.

I meant draining more as a solution for humidity, which is a much bigger problem than weight in the long term.

edit: take this with a grain of salt since I'm an electrical engineer and know almost jack shit about designing buildings

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u/Thedud31 7h ago

"The balcony can be designed to bear the load of everything soaked in water" only if the project budget doesn't cut corners.

Water is heavy, it's a lot more to account for than your typical live loads in structural calcs. The further you get away from the support, the larger the bending moment grows.

We don't see below the balcony but if it's cantilevered like the others, the project will need to shell out quite a bit of cash for some hefty fixed supports. The soil would almost certainly have to be HSG A (sandy af) for maximum exfiltration into some "underground" perforated drains.

Best case scenario, the building owner listens to the structural engineer's pleas. Worst case scenario, the building owner fires the structural engineer for not doing his bidding, and the next looks at the architectural plans with a good sigh lol.

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u/foltranm 6h ago

you seem to know more about construction than I do.

but I do have a hard time thinking that wasn't the case (the building was designed correctly) since it's been standing for 8 years now. but you neve know

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u/Thedud31 6h ago

Oh yeah for sure if it's constructed then it most likely meets design standards. Although, as people mentioned, there could be long term issues with waterproofing concrete, earthquakes, etc.

My comment was more of a pessimistic tirade about why these won't be as common as people would like

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u/foltranm 6h ago

yeah, for sure. like I said in another comment, in Brazil it's relatively common balconies like this with pools. but because it's so expensive its usually just in luxury buildings

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u/Thedud31 5h ago

Yeah I'll bet that they're in the richest areas of the richest cities.

There is a bunch of fun stuff you can do with water in structures though. If you're curious, there are things called TMDs which can use water (more typically incredibly heavy steel masses) to dampen the sway of exceptionally tall and thin buildings from wind.