Liquefaction

While on Zephyr tour recently, en route to a new pocket listing in the Arterra, (which a building guy proudly told us was the first LEED certified building in the city) the question of whether we were in the liquefaction zone came up. I looked around and guessed that yes, it was likely, and it got me to wondering how on earth we keep building buildings in the liquefaction zone.

USGS

As discussed here, liquefaction refers to areas of young geologic deposits, and/or fill, in low lying areas, where "soft muds are subject to the phenomenon of saturated soils losing their stiffness and strength during shaking. Young deposits will liquefy, or turn into a sandy liquid due to the strong shaking a big earthquake will produce."

Alex Clark wrote a pretty great post with maps for the Front Steps while back that gives a good sense of liquefaction locations.

The Real Dirt on Liquefaction, has a table: Techniques for Liquefaction Hazard Mitigation on page 20, if you are curious, and of course, the guide below. My curiosity about modern earthquake engineering is not fully slaked, so there will be more on this subject...

Bright Shiny Day

I went to college in the northwest, and I remember the feeling of intense joy when the sun came out and lit the world up. Felt like that today, the city so lit up with gorgeous sparkling low angle September light, I had to take advantage of a free hour and take a walk on Russian Hill. At one point I found myself joining the many language speaking tourists on the twisty part of Lombard. Imagine my environmental history nerd delight at finding this article about building it on Curbed when I returned to the office. I can feel some posts about hills coming on, but in the meantime, Happy Autumn everybody!

San Francisco Library

September Sunshine?

Scott Shealy

Cautiously optimistic that Fogust is over...? It's certainly dark earlier, and we lived in Rainbowlandia for a precious few moments. The season is changing for sure. Kids are mostly back at school, and there is hope for little bit more inventory for home buyers to look at. Weather people are speculating about what winter holds, and the sun is out right now, so I say, time to turn off the computer and go get some vitamin D.