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How Painted Bricks Could Have Contributed to the Recent Iowa Building Collapse
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a44128093/what-caused-iowa-apartment-collapse/ [popularmechanics.com]
The exterior center section of a 100-year-old, six-story building in Davenport, Iowa collapsed on May 29, leaving its apartment interiors exposed to the elements and three people dead. In its previous life, the Renaissance Revival-style brick-and-steel structure was listed [nps.gov] on the National Register of Historic Places.
[...] Some residents said [apnews.com] they had been experiencing water damage [popularmechanics.com], and several tenants were afraid of the building collapsing. One resident said her bathroom caved in last December.
[...] Inspectors and a private-sector structural engineer discovered on May 23 that the brick façade, painted scarlet red in recent years, was separated from the interior wall and appeared “ready to fall imminently,” according to a CNN [kadn.com] article about the report. The interior wall was losing stability and causing deformation. A beam possibly bearing down on the affected wall needed a steel column for extra support, the structural engineer recommended [kadn.com]. City inspectors took photos on May 25 showing a void between the façade and interior wall; the gap contained crumbled bricks.
Bricks were falling off the building’s facade as early as August 2020 [qctimes.com], so the sidewalk around this area was closed, according to an analysis by The Architect’s Newspaper [archpaper.com].
“The collapsed wall is the only wall that was painted, and while the brick was clearly damaged prior to this painting, many types of paint that are not breathable can trap moisture in brick,” the newspaper reported.
Moisture normally passes through a building’s walls. Bricks are like sponges; their porous structure is great at both absorbing water and drying out completely. However, if moisture beneath the brick surface is unable to evaporate—say, because it hits a layer of paint [popularmechanics.com]—then the water builds up. Eventually, water erodes brick over a period of years. “Painting over brick is essentially a death sentence for brick,” according to McGill Restoration [mcgillrestoration.com], a repair and restoration company based in Nebraska.
