WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF BUILDING?

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF BUILDING? 

The following factors can be defined as the most common reasons causes building collapse:

1. Overload… Too many people on a balcony or deck is a common reason for collapse of such structures or when the occupancy of areas are changed without an evaluation.

2. Lack of maintenance… A lack of maintenance will lead to things like not noticing a problem before it becomes catastrophic.

3. Use of inferior materials/chemicals… Such as older (1960s - 1980s) fire retardant treated wood roof assemblies made with cheap ammonium phosphate are prone to collapse after 25 years of service.

4. Bad engineering… Structural engineers make mistakes, everyone does, but in small firms a lack of multiple people checking designs can lead to bad calculations and structural failures.

5. Under-designed… Don’t confuse this with bad engineering, under-designed means you followed the code correctly and performed good calculations but it still was inadequate for the loads.

6. Fire… Fire reduces steel yield strengths, causes concrete to undergo chemical changes that weaken it, causes masonry to spall/crack and will consume wood materials… All of which can result in collapse.

7. Bad construction… The most common reason for an attached and self-supported deck to collapse is the contractor only provided nails between the deck ledger and the structure of the house, resulting in the deck pulling away.

8. Impact damage… Such as someone driving a car into a house, which can result in partial collapses.

9. Storm damage… Winds generally dont result in a collapse as things are lifted away and not falling downwards, but floods can cause buildings/bridges to collapse.

10. Soils… Development of a sinkhole (man made or natural) can obviously cause a building/bridge to collapse.

11. Seismic… Earthquakes can make just about anything collapse if it is not designed for the magnitude of accelerations occurring.