Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/22/dangerous-makeshift-swimming-p.html
Reddit folks have estimated that there’s about 5,000 pounds of water in this makeshift wading pool. Will the balcony support it for long?
Will the balcony resist the weight? from WTF
My apt. in Chicago has a huge, lovely balcony. Someone suggested I get one of those inflatable hottubs.
I did some back of the envelope math and decided I’d rather not leave several human shaped splatters on top of the House of Blues.
It looks like he’s on the second floor so he’ll probably survive the fall and just be horribly injured.
Water is a lot heavier than it looks when it’s in a glass.
There doesn’t seem to be any balconies below that one, which is nice. I had a vision of the “pool balcony” collapsing and then taking out all the balconies below it, one after the other.
I am immediately reminded of this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/us/12-die-in-chicago-as-crowded-decks-collapse-at-a-party.html
Holy cow. In my apartment building they just put weight and number of people limit plaques on all the balconies because a group in another building had so many folks it collapsed. I can’t imagine that make shift pool will hold forever.
Hopefully the railings fail first with that much lateral force being applied.
Gene pool > makeshift pool of death
We could make guesses. Maybe even put some money up.
Call it a dead pool.
Well it looks fun to me!
Anyone who’s ever had to move an aquarium and thought they could do it with the water in it has learned this lesson the hard way!
Cannon ball!!!
In soviet Russia, the pool cannonballs you
Y’all think too complicated. German Building codes specify a max load of 400 kg per m^2. A cubic meter of water weighs 1 metric ton or 1,000 kg. So 1 meter = 100 cm, 40% of that equals 40 cm or 16 inches of water. I think he’s still below that, but I don’t know American codes. Can’t image that they are much worse, though.
Let’s do some back of the envelope calculations here… Looks like about 1m x 3m x.5m deep. So that’s 1500 kilos. Of course if it’s actually bigger or deeper that is significantly greater. eg. 1.2m x 3m x .6m yields 2,150 kilos.
Basically anything deeper than ~12 cm exceeds the design strength mandated by building codes (60 lb/sq design load x 1 lb/ft/47.8803 Newtons x 1/.102kg (at normal gravity) So half a meter deep approximates 4x the design strength.
edited to add…somewhere those calculations are off. we can avoid the unit conversion with the simple fact that 1 cubic foot of water is ~62 pounds. So 1 foot deep is just over the design limit and 2 feet would be double the design limit.
People don’t realize just how heavy liquid is, especially water. And it adds up fast. Think about it, would you load that many 2x4s on your deck, because wood is generally less dense than water.
The ultimate water balloon.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but those calculations in imperial make my head hurt and look like a parody to me.
Clever =/= wise.
