There's a good one in today's Metro:
The 358-year-old Taj Mahal will collapse in less than five years unless the Indian government acts to prevent a growing environmental catastrophe, campaigners have warned.
The historic mausoleum’s foundations are rotting because they have dried out, a group of historians, environmentalists and politicians claimed. The tomb, one of the architectural wonders of the world, is built on a foundation of mahogany posts sunk into wells fed by the Yamuna river. But the river, in Agra, northern India, is running dry as a result of pollution, industry and deforestation – meaning the foundations have become brittle and are disintegrating...
Can this be true or are they 'talking rot'? I always thought that damp was bad for timber, so while it's bad for soil itself to become wetter (or drier), becoming either softer (or shrinking), both of which are bad for buildings, does their argument make sense? And if it does make sense, 'wood' it not be enough just to pump a bit of water into the wells?
UPDATE: Panic over: Experts deny Taj Mahal 'collapse' claims
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Health Scare Story Du Jour
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12 comments:
Would it not be wider to stop wrecking the planet around it?
Root cause of this planet wrecking we both know is private property in land.
Its the simple way.
It is quite amazing to see how resilient some pieces of wood are that we have dredged up.
Timber that has been been underwater for hundreds, if not a thousand years, is almost unbreakable.
Yet I have been up in some lofts of older houses where the untreated eaves are almost crumbling at one's touch.
I think if it is kept continually wet it is okay, it's the wetting then drying out cycle that does the rotting trick.
BB has it right. Old Amsterdam was built on wooden piles. They have stayed wet, because the ground is permanently waterlogged, and are still doing fine.
I don't reckon I'd get a generous price from Billy Hills on the Taj Mahal still being here in 10 years time, do you? ;)
Moisture, oxygen and a moderate tempurature are required for timber fungal decay.
Often timbers buried underground do not decay, because whilst wet, they have little to no oxygen. Often timber piers or posts in ground will decay at just below and at the water/ground level, but timbers completely submerged will not decay.
If I had to guess I would say termite damage could be a cause (no longer flooded = now suitable environment), or that the foundations are somehow exposed to air underground (like props in a mine), and are no longer submerged but still damp.
RS, no, the issue in hand is to do with timber drying out.
BB, VFTS, agreed, it appears that dry wood lasts for ever, as does wood that is under water (i.e. old shipwrecks). What's very bad is dampness, getting wet and then drying out again. So can't they just line the wells and fill 'em with water?
DP, go and ask them what odds they'll give on it falling down. A hundred to one against, perhaps?
MW, Ah yes, the art of doing every little counts.
Perhaps they should consult Venice.
How does pollution cause the river to run dry?
Indeed, BE. The same could be asked of industrialisation and deforestation.I smell a rat. The most likely culprit is agriculture taking the water for irrigation.
I c\n believe that the change in humidity would start a rot.. The obvious answer wiuld, as in most cases, be an engineering one - divert or pump water into the ground around the Taj and put some sort of dam (possiblt just a sheet of plastic into the ground around it. Cost in the 10s of thousnads. As normal the ecofascists get far richer by screaming "catastrophe" than by allowing others to do anything.
Also "is running dry as a result of pollution, industry and deforestation" seems to be rounding up the usual suspects. Deforestation will do this. Industry barely at all and pollution not at all.
"and put some sort of dam (possiblt just a sheet of plastic into the ground around it."
Yeah, I thought of that, too, but the problemm seems to be that the water table has gone down and a ring dam won't solve that as al the water would simply seep away under the dam. More to the point would be to put a weir across the Yamuna, so raising the water table locally, upstream of the weir, unless the river dries up completely, in which case they will have to do what was done to Winchester Cathedral, replace the wooden piles with concrete.
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