(www.smithsonianmag.com)
1) Quicklime/Slakedlime (Calcium Oxide, CaO)
2) Lime (Calcium Hydroxide, CaOH2)
3) Limestone (Calcium Carbonate, CaCO3)
To keep it simple, typically you start with Quicklime (CaO) and after construction you end up with some mix of all three and after hundreds of years, the masonry transitions to mostly Limestone with microscopic traces of the other two. The slow transition of the lime cycle upon exposure of the masonry to both air and water (rain) ends up making the structure "self healing" and "stronger over time".
Fun fact! Lime putty is anti-mold even in humid conditions because upon exposure to moisture, CaOH2 + H20 becomes too basic for mold to grow on.
Cement/Concrete (based on Portland cement) is water proof but Lime by itself is not. But Roman Concrete, made from Lime and mixing with ash or broken pottery or ceramics makes it water proof [2]. I beleive Roman concrete was used whenever contact with water was expected. Both concrete and Roman concrete have the same underlying chemistry (Pozzolanic reaction) to make them water proof [3].
The fascinating thing is that Lime is everywhere in ancient masonry. Lime is more breathable, workable and sustainable. The only thing is, it requires maintainance, which is why Portland cement has taken over the world.
Modern cement/concrete is amazing for large structures. I hope Lime makes a comeback soon at least partly as putty and for building smaller homes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolanic_activity#Reaction
Can we use this instead of grout in the bathroom somehow?
However I do know that some grout and some paints that say they are anti-mold contain Lime or calcium hydroxide as their primary anti-mold ingredient. I think pure Lime putty can be used as pointing material between bricks in humid basements. Lime plaster (lime mixed with sand) can also be used in bathrooms (with some considerations I am not familiar with). So, my best guess is that some mix of Lime can be used as grout. But I can't say for sure.
Something I plan on doing before this winter is to use Lime Wash. Take Lime (CaOH2 in powder form) and mix with water until it has milk like consistency and brush it on grout or on (white) bathroom walls. If it works, I expect it to be a yearly or quarterly ritual and not a one time solution.
EDIT: A fascinating historical material I recently learned about used in bathrooms is called Tadelakt [1] which uses Lime as one of its ingredients.
Historically (for interior paint) you would use regular limewash in dry spaces and add casein/milk in high traffic/wet spaces. It works in a bathroom but wouldn’t hold up in a shower (for that you would want to use “tadelakt“ - especially if you’re going for that Aman spa look).
The contemporary solution with modern limewashing is to use “mineral shield” - it uses silicone instead of casein - it makes water droplets bead up but still lets water vapor breath through.
It also doesn’t flatten out the nice velvet texture one gets with limewash paint from the calcite crystals.
That said, it’s extremely obvious if one touches up a patch of wall with limewash. No two batches are the same color unless you’re going pure white and even then…
Cement board + roll on or something like kerdi system.
Other shower materials that aren’t absolutely insanely stupid include glass, quartz, and other non-porous materials.
Because biology.
I'm considering applying lime wash between the tiles regularly but not sure what the results will be.
What kind of maintenance and why did roman cement survive without it? Or are we simply looking at ancient survivorship bias where the surviving roman concrete structures survived through the lime cycle without maintenance until it was no longer required?
Lime is also more flexible (these houses have minimal to no foundation and constantly move), it’s breathable (no/less damp) and as such it also improves air quality indoors. It’s annoying to do because drying times are days/weeks not hours, but long run it’s a far superior material for small buildings.
It does burn though if you accidentally get it on your skin!
That's patently untrue. Otherwise we wouldn't need concrete sealants.
I'm not sure why I remember cement to be water proof. Its possible I infered from how its been used around me. I have seen cement very often used where water contact is expected (bathrooms etc). I have also seen brick walls plastered with an extra layer of cement as putty considered to be rain proof and any leaks were thought of as poor workmanship rather than poor material choice.
P.S. I'm not a builder. I've taken an interest in the topic a few months ago.
https://www.quikrete.com/productlines/hydraulicwaterstopceme...
But I wouldn't want to make any sort of building that only relied on it for waterproofing.
Normal cement, concrete .. Is a different story.
'Concrete' is a combination of sand, cement, water and aggregate, that cures together to form.
When the water migrates away from the curing concrete, it leaves open pores behind that future moisture can move through.
It is generally macro-waterproof, however, unless there are large cracks.
Up to 30 days to set, and depending on the type of lime (hydraulic or non-hydraulic) and form/process (putty, hot mix, etc.) up to a year to reach full hardness.
https://www.ce.memphis.edu/1101/notes/concrete/section_3_pro...
What sort of maintenance does it need?
Also- modern concrete is not waterproof... requires sealant
Roman concrete was made lime cement (calcium dioxide); which cures via carbonation (hardens with carbon oxide). And adding pozzolan to lime makes it hydrolic (hardens with water). Is it surprising that it can still carbonate some? Modern concrete has steel which rust and crack concrete. You can use fiberglass rebar for longevity, or build without rebar even, but that is more costly and and less efficient.
Epoxy coated rebar looked promising for a while, but it's on the way out. Water gets in at cuts and joints. So all field joints have to have field patching.
There is a great comparison. Two piers were built in the 1940s, side by side, one with carbon steel rebar, one with stainless steel rebar.[1] Go look.
[1] https://worldstainless.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ref19_...
[1] https://worldstainless.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ref19_...
That's an understatement. Fiberglass (GFRP) tops out at roughly US$ 2.50/foot, while SS can get up to $9:
* https://www.wellcoindustries.com/the-cost-of-rebar-and-the-c...
The low-end of plain steel rebar is $0.40.
I think people are often surprised how little materials cost affects the total cost of a job.
I'm having this argument at work, where I want some more expensive cabling installed in a bunch of offices across Scotland so it doesn't need to be done again in another ten year's time, but "that stuff is so expensive, do we really need it?" is what I'm running up against.
So as it turns out today I'm giving them a breakdown of the cost of the job. Guess what the expensive bits are?
Did you guess "wages for two guys, hotel rooms for two guys, 800 miles of diesel, and a couple of ferry tickets?"
Well, you're way ahead of today's crowd then.
1. (Design) Building floorplate and architectural complexity (i.e., divergence from 'big box')
2. (Construction) Schedule adherence. Almost any one-off expense to stick to the schedule is worth it, but to your point, these are often challenged or delayed. Building and testing equipment on skids off-site is almost always worth it.
3. (Design/Commissioning) Schedule adherence. For commissioning this is typically driven by design choices (did you pick a high-TRL process, or if not, do all the work required to mature it in parallel to construction?) and by building the right commissioning team (knows their job, knows the plant).
If more expensive plant & equipment gets you ahead on any of these 3, 99% of the time that is an overall optimisation.
The net result, we topped out and roofed the big house, then built the small house in its entirety while the owners of the big house chose their windows. Add that in favour of waterfall design...
I've never worked in this field as the GP, but I have family that do and I've heard plenty of stories and made my own observations, but definitely take my two cents with plenty of salt. Maybe GP will reply also.
This is what's interesting with AI pricing at the moment - it has gone from "a fraction of the equivalent labour cost" and so people have tried to cut staff, and is moving to "on par with labour cost" and all the calculations change.
Our house flooded about half a foot a year or two ago. I had to replace all the baseboards. The damage was assessed at $40k. I tried to contact contractors to do the work, but the job was so insignificant compared to other jobs in the area, and we were in the middle of getting our house raised, that it was taking forever.
Including tools I did not have prior, material costs ran about $5k - $7k. I did the work around my job and other obligations, so about one day a week for a couple of months. If I were to honestly guess, it probably took me about two weeks. And that's measuring, cutting, installing, caulking, and painting. And there were some inefficiencies in my process.
Because people don't understand how much compliance and box checking and check the guy who checked the last guy's work there is in a "you need government permission for this and not the easy permission they give a homeowner deck project" sized construction project.
It's because they frankly never did it. Nobody that had to contract something around the house is surprised by cost like that, it often costs more than price of renting equipment + you doing it yourself 3 times slower than an expert would did it, even if you're paid well.
There is reason there is so many DIY channels, labour costs are high and install costs of some stuff can be ridiculous (like 2 hour job to install AC costing more than cheap AC unit).
That's also partly the reason the more expensive materials are used - if they offer savings in labour (say way faster to put in), they might be worth it vs paying someone for more hours
We usually have a few freezes in the winter and some homes' pipes freeze. I was surprised, in speaking to a plumber, to find that pipe clamp installation had come to dominate the repair market (as opposed to repairing/replacing the leaky pipe).
In his first year this plumber had arrived at the plumbing supply house to find all pipe clamp orders backlogged two weeks! He thus determined to, during the warmer months, stockpile a cache of pipe clamps for the coming winter.
Furthermore, as SofTalker states, the fitting is usually left in-place instead of being replaced! Yet one more reason to have a prospective home inspected by someone who is very knowledgeable.
It was 300 quid.
I could not buy the materials for 300 quid.
Two guys showed up with eight slabs, half a tonne of Type 2 and half a tonne of sand, and then the next day the landscaper showed up and did about six hours of work to dig it all out, fill it all in, and put the slabs down.
It's absolutely perfect, exactly how I wanted it, and it would have taken me a couple of days and cost far more - and I'm quite good at that kind of stuff, it's just not what I do all day every day so the landscaper will be far better at it.
As far as I can tell, only one pier was built (using stainless steel rebar) and the presentation is comparing it to a hypothetical alternative as a theoretical exercise: "What if the Progreso Pier was built using carbon steel rebar?"
Progreso - great pier and a great kiteboarding spot.
But it turns out that's pretty inconvenient; we really like doing dozens of feet of span for highway overpasses, building floors, and everything else. So we put rebar in all the concrete and just acknowledge that that means it has an absolute maximum lifespan of a century or two, and will certainly not last for millennia the way pure concrete in pure compression can.
Looking it up on archive.org shows it was generated this year.
Until an earthquake occurs, and then all of those mostly-down forces turn into side-to-side forces.
You have a few mistakes here. I’m not trying to demean you, but I’m going to number them just for clarity, as it can get confusing when there are many misunderstandings.
1. You are intending to ask about tension (which the rebar helps with), not traction (the force your tires exert against a road).
2. Tension is not only experienced at the bottom of beams, the location with the most tension will depend on the geometry. For a vertical beam, I think tension will probably be pretty even through the whole beam in most “normal” designs and loading configurations. But it will really depend on the geometry and on the loads being applied.
3. I think when you say concrete beams you’re meaning columns (apologies if I’m wrong about this). Concrete columns are remarkably good at holding up without rebar, because they experience almost exclusively compression! And indeed, ancient Roman designs did not use rebar at all :). It’s certainly possible.
I don’t know if it is the case here, but it is a common mistake for some non-native English speakers. In some languages traction is a false friend.
Tension, as you say, is indeed the term used in physics and engineering for the force on an object pulling it from either end.
No, steel is better in both ways, ten times over. It's just more expensive, concrete is a "filler" to cheap out construction.
If you think about it, all engineering is about cheaping out things. It's pretty easy to build awesome projects having unlimited budget.
Basically the rebar works itself loose over time and creates micro-fractures in the concrete that then get moisture in them and can cause expansion damage— all without the rebar itself ever rusting or "failing".
Maybe this is the clue as to why our concrete crumbles after 100 years: it's not economically efficient to make it last longer?
Tastes change and so do other requirements.
but, if we actually built for longevity in use, we could build a very durable shell of a house and then use more perishable but easier to modify methods for inside. Build a nice durable brick and concrete shell then use wood and plasterboard for room walls and floors
Housing tastes don't really change that much. Yes over the years we've had to fit things like double glazing and better insulation but that's a whole lot cheaper (and better for the environment) than building a whole new building.
- older houses tend to be a lot more inefficient in their use of square footage
- the rooms inside tend to be a lot less open, and one man's "fun/quirky layout" is another man's "why do I have to go down a step then immediately go up a step to cross a hallway"
- and, I begrudgingly admit (as I don't like how they wreck house aesthetics) people really like big, attached garages
My overall suspicion is that when a lot of people say they like old houses, what they really mean is that they like buildings that look beautiful on the outside and, to a lesser extent, have a sense of being rooted in some kind of context.
Why do most people prefer older houses?
Character and history - they tend to be more individual and different, and have more character than the cookie cutter modern mass builds.
Solidity - they tend to be more stone and brick, instead of the timber framed buildings that are more common in new builds.
In fact in most of the western US that’s the norm…
> then use wood and plasterboard for room walls and floor
One of the things I LIKE about older houses is that the interior walls are more solid than plasterboard. There is zero plasterboard in my house and brick gives far better noise insulation than anything timber framed.
It was also common to build lathe and plaster covered interior partitions in the past. Way before plasterboard.
A modern one off house may well have concrete block downstairs walls to hold the floor up. Albeit, they may get covered with plasterboard 'dabbed on' anyway, to reduce drying time
Or the designer can get too creative :
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/15/style/432-park-avenue-sky...
Inside the concrete, Ca(OH)₂, which is generated by the hydration of cement,
creates a strongly alkaline environment, with a pH value of more than 12.7.
In this environment, a passivation film forms on the surface of the rebar to
prevent corrosion. However, the pH of the concrete decreases as micro-cracks
develops and chloride from the outside infiltrates the rebar. Eventually, as
the environment inside the concrete becomes neutralized, the corrosion of the
rebar accelerates, which reduces the overall durability and stability of the
reinforced concrete structure.
A sighting of preserved steel reinforcing bars sticking out of old concrete
rubble piqued the curiosity of our company founder, Albert C. Bean, Sr. After
investigating this finding, his company, Armor Oil & Chemical Company, began
producing a patented cement-filled coating formulation that, in its updated
form, still protects structures from corrosion today.
(Sorry, I'm a bit of a nerd. But I am sure you can cope with that.)
And since nobody complained it sounds wasteful, I suppose it should be able to be just scraps.
May your next camping trip or picnic be wasp free!
Ultimately most tall structures as a reinforced concrete skeleton with glass hung on the sides.
It seems to me that as you're going to replace it with another basically identical concrete skeleton it makes sense to have that skeleton last as long as possible. And then refit that skeleton.
There are also coated and non-metallic rebars.
> The miracle of modern chemistry has given us a wide variety of admixtures like superplasticizers to improve the characteristics of concrete beyond a Roman engineer’s wildest dreams. So why does it seem that our concrete doesn’t last nearly as long as it should? It’s a complicated question, but one answer is economics. There’s a famous quote that says “Anyone can design a bridge that stands. It takes an engineer to build one that barely stands.” Just like the sculptors job is to chip away all the parts of the marble that don’t look like the subject, a structural engineer’s job is to take away all the extraneous parts of a structure that aren’t necessary to meet the design requirements. And lifespan is just one of the many criteria engineers must consider when designing concrete structures. Most infrastructure is paid for by taxes, and the cost of building to Roman standards is rarely impossible, but often beyond what the public would consider reasonable.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/3/9/was-roman-concre...
A large part of why Roman concrete lasted longer than ours tends to is that we suffer from a shortage of narcissistic emperors with the means to wield entire economies towards their own immortality.
The answer is no. What is true is that some Roman concrete structures (but far from all of them) are extremely durable because they were optimized for a different set of requirements than modern buildings usually have, notably "needs to last forever as a symbol of the emperor's power". From the 19th century on that has very rarely been a design constraint, so we optimize for other things instead.
Would you pay 10x more to have something that lasts 100x or even 1000x longer? The upfront cost is higher, but the TCO is ultimately lower. IMHO it's ultimately a form of planned obsolescence. This becomes even more obvious when plenty of expense is spent just on "engineering" to deliberately reduce lifespan.
First, we can’t summon infinite money to pay for things. Paying 10X more per bridge means we can build 1/10th as many bridges or we have to start stealing from other budgets.
Second, we don’t know what the needs will be for the bridge in that location 100 or 1000 years from now. It could need to be torn down to be widened. Maybe we’re all riding around in electric vehicles that coordinate perfectly with each other and the bridge isn’t needed for cross traffic any more. We don’t know.
In which case you spent a bunch more than you needed to on a building that didn't last any longer than it would have if you'd chosen a practical end date for it.
What's covered in the article is also a great example of material resource that could be used, but short term profiting primes.
Truth is it's often just a bit cheaper so we trend that way under capitalism, we change styles faster and have come to subconsciously accept shorter lifespans and the kind of things you can build more practical for cars, large overhangs, etc
You can't simply add a second story to a mall or walmart or modern school, none of its main structural pillars or beams could hold it. But with an overbuilt structure from 500+ years ago you likely could add another floor or two with minimal improvements to the base structure.
not recently
Turns out algae is hard to kill, especially when you feed the reflecting pool from a tidal basin.
Why not? A well-build bridge from 500 years ago is perfectly functional today [1]
This hasn't even been true for 200 years lol
With roman buildings that last 2000 thousand years we are looking at survivor bias. Near me there are some roman ruins from a (cheap and small) public bath that are barely distiguishable from a pile of bricks. The are some nearby pre-roman ruins in better shape.
You need to actually reduce draft a bit (often old houses like mine tend to accumulate flaws that the elderly living there before didn't fix anymore.) and use a heating sources that matches.
Having a fireplace is fine. It could overheat the house whilst also keeping air dryer and it's essentially renewable (compared to the alternatives and houses made of more plastic insulation than anything else) if you don't mind air quality dip in winter.
That said i can see how that's no longer an option in places that have drastically increased their population
I love the heat and smell of a good fire as much as the next guy, I'm just not sure it's worth the risk of cancer and respiratory diseases.
Alternatly you could just use an outdoor stove that merely heat exchanges to the inside.
In the UK, within living memory electricity has become widely available, TV has, gas, internet etc etc. and yet we still build houses without the assumption that some cable isn't going to be modified in the wall some how.
There's fairly modern houses that didnt have the 2 courses of brick added to the loft to allow 300mm of insulation to be installed.
We are now building houses with gas boilers, knowing that they will have to be swapped out probably before the life of the boiler runs out. And I bet the radiators and piping aren't sized to make that possible. That the circuit isn't sized for that.
Yes none of this is easier in a 250 year old house, but it isn't harder and 250 year old houses hadn't really changed appreciably for a few centuries so it isn't as if there would be an expectation that you would be installing new things in the wall every decade.
This type of concrete does not give us any more flexibility in the future to rebuild or upgrade because doing anything to it could turn it into an environmental and public health hazard
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-conversation/keepin...
Autoclaved aerated concrete is worth a mention as well - it's also a decent insulator and somewhat environmentally friendly, while additionally being, light, easy to cut, and somewhat usable as a structural element.
As for beauty, you never know, take the Eiffel tower for instance, when it was built, people found it ugly, and it was to be a temporary structure. Now it is the symbol of Paris, more popular than the Paris Pantheon, which much better fits the classical standards of beauty.
The Eiffel tower is also more historically significant, more representative of its time. The Paris Pantheon, is an imitation of the Roman style, beautiful, but probably not as interesting for future historians. If both building survive that is, which won't happen without continuous maintenance, at least for the Eiffel tower.
For those who don't know, Centre Pompidou is built "inside out", with all the technical parts like ducts, framing, elevators, etc... fully visible from the outside. There is some beauty from function here, like looking at an old locomotive. For people in the future, it would be an insight into what a 20th century building is made of.
Problem is: for a form-from-function design it is not very functional. Because the technical parts are also part of the aesthetics, it makes maintenance problematic. Every single pipe you change has to be of the same model or you would ruin the façade, which is crazy. Unfortunately (for me), it is one of the least likely building to stand the test of time, from a technical perspective.
Other than that, the Louvres pyramid is starting to gain some acceptance, even though it was almost universally hated when it was built, who knows how it will be seen a few hundred years from now, if it still stands.
I do think a lot of new building hideous. Looking at St Paul's in London from the west so you see the hideous backdrop to its east is depressing.
You can make sand by crushing rock, we don't because it is cheaper to extract natural sand. Should we run out of suitable natural sand, we will just have to go with the more expensive option, not a big deal.
I propose the communal brain rot is less to do with short form video, and more to do with the everyday experience of trying to read something enlightening, tickle your curiosity - and be just absolutely fucking hammered with autoplay interstitials and 720x90 and 300x250 bullshit.
I'm sure hidden in the links is a link to the paper, which you can pay to get the no-nonsense study.
This is the third or fourth degree of scientific reporting; first is the paper, second is a news report, third is adult pop sci magazines, fourth is youth pop sci magazines. Pick your poison / preference.
In fact, that institution is non profit and publicly funded, so what gives...
Anyhow reading the piece with Brave showed me no ads whatsoever.
Roman concrete (pozollanic material, quicklime, seawater) is the only one that resists all failure modes and will sit in the ocean happily for millennia. The main downsides are it's not very strong, it takes a long time to cure, and volcanic ash is hard to come by. The specific of ash you use changes the result, ash is not always that easy to get, and Neapolitan Volcanic ash just happens to be extremely effective at this application.
There are alternatives you can make today. You can make Roman concrete today, but it's still kind of tricky and has the aforementioned downsides. Fly-ash concrete is like volcanic ash concrete but still not as good, and we're gonna run out of fly-ash as coal mines close. High-slag concrete works well but will degrade over time. Alkali-activated concrete is really promising as a Roman concrete alternative but doesn't have long-term test data. Ultra-high-performance concrete is brittle and won't self-heal.
So in truth we still don't know everything about Roman concrete and we still can't make its equivalent without traveling to southern Italy.
we don't know how ancient megaliths were built
centuries old cathedrals and holy places have more intricate masonry and carvings than anything built today (with allegedly more primitive tech)
are historians retarded? what's going on here? time is flowing backwards and civilization is declining, but humanity is under a collective trance and can't even see it.
Why do you think civilization is declining?
The folk of the 1930s were entirely capable of making poor quality concrete that barely lasted 30 years (source, my father, born 1935, still alive despite having mixed many a batch of concrete and having laboured).
The reason you don't see that walking about is that poor quality 1930s concrete was replace 50+ years ago.
But that's socialism / liberalism and apparently that's terrorism now.
[1] - https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-go...
The top 1% of earners pay about 38% of all federal individual income taxes, while making up roughly 20% of the nation's total Adjusted Gross Income.
Edit: if you were an expert in this field and that link saved you from typing, and you mentioned you could confirm every word, that’d make sense - I think those Flash models were tested as being as reliable as a coin flip in some hallucination test scenarios, so linking it’s like… eh do I wanna read potentially-only-plausible history?