Need for permits

[Charlie Velasquez]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...pses/84497482/

DES MOINES, Ia.— A 13-year-old girl died Saturday when a brick pillar collapsed onto the hammock she and her sister were sharing outside their Des Moines home, according to a police report.

Peri Sagun, 13, had set up the hammock with her 16-year-old sister outside their house, tying one end to a tree and the other end to a 5-foot-tall brick light post, the report states.

Peri jumped in the hammock while her sister was sitting on it, and the brick light post collapsed on top of her head.

When my neighbor said he only needed to get a permit if the city finds out about his work, I cringed.

A tragic case of someone not getting the work inspected. No idea if it was the home owner, previous owner or a handyman.


Des Moines code requires a permit for almost anything, in this case any structure higher than 30” above grade.

[Pat Barry]

So your neighbor thinks they needed a permit for a hammock?

[Greg R Bradley]

It's hard to fix stupid. The parents should have educated the kids to not tie a hammock to a brick light post. A permit for a 5 foot tall light post seems stupid to me. if you think you can legislate out the possibility of stupid people doing stupid things, well you must work the government........

[Tom M King]

I'm not sure that an inspector would have not allowed it to pass every time.

[Mike Jungers]

It's a tragedy for sure. Unfortunately there's not much an inspection could have done, short of the inspector trying to pull the post over, if I understand the OP correctly.

[Jason Roehl]

Sounds like a freak accident to me. Tragic, but a greater tragedy would be trying to use the heavy hand of government to prevent it from ever occurring again.

[Dan Friedrichs]

What odd replies from some of you.

I think I'm a reasonably smart and prudent guy - and I'm also a licensed engineer - I understand brick and mortar is best in compressive applications, etc - but I wouldn't have thought twice about ~150lbs of load pulling it sideways (assuming this lamp post is as "beefy" as I'm imagining it in my head).

I think most reasonable people would not expect a post to fall over in those situations. I'm astounded anyone thinks the parents were at fault for not knowing that.

FWIW, last time I got a permit, it was fast, efficient, and inexpensive. The inspector came out at my convenience, was prompt, professional, and provided me with some suggested improvements. Since they were relatively benign issues, he trusted me to make a few little changes and didn't require it to be re-inspected.

Perhaps those of you railing against "big government" really should be upset with your "bad government".

[Matt Day]

Sounds like a freak accident to me. Tragic, but a greater tragedy would be trying to use the heavy hand of government to prevent it from ever occurring again.

+1
.........

[Mel Fulks]

When I applied for a permit to build a five foot retaining wall I was told I didn't need one for landscape projects! I knew they were nutty and insisted on one. BTW Our inspection and permit office is housed in a tall building covered with stone slabs that were attached with a new glue that did not work. Started falling off right away and for years were held up by retro fitted bungee cords.

[Malcolm McLeod]

Just some quick and dirty calculations based on some (hopefully) reasonable assumptions:

If the hammock spanned 12ft with a 3ft 'sag' and the girls' combined weight was 200#, then the tension at the end of the hammock was ~223# with ~200# of that in the horizontal plane. For a 5ft post, that's ~1000ft-lbs of torque at the base of the post.

Increase the span to 20ft with a 3ft 'sag' and the girls' combined weight was 200#, then the tension at the end of the hammock was ~471# with ~461# of that in the horizontal plane. For a 5ft post, that's ~2303ft-lbs of torque at the base of the post.

I am not an authority on concrete construction, but anyone trying this better have a deep footing and rebar to unify the brick and footing. Cable loads like this get BIG quick.

Want to self-rescue a car in the mud? Tie a rope taut between the car and a tree 150' away. Then have a helper pull sideways on the rope.

[Greg R Bradley]

One of my businesses does mostly concrete construction but this is brick and mortar!

I don't have to do engineering calcs to know it wouldn't work. I've knocked down a 35 year old 6' tall cement block wall without using tools. I could have brought home a Demo Hammer to do it but it is just too easy to bother.

[Steve Peterson]

Sounds like a freak accident to me. Tragic, but a greater tragedy would be trying to use the heavy hand of government to prevent it from ever occurring again.

Agree completely. A permit for a lamp post would ensure that it is built strongly enough to hold itself up, which is typically only downward loading. Bricks do this very easily. What the girls did was change it to side loading. I would not want every single item on my property to be engineered to survive every possible permutation of alternate usage models.

I already have a useless 400 page owners manual for my car with almost half of the pages telling me not to close the door on my hand. That is what the heavy hand of government regulation does for us.

Steve

[Shawn Pachlhofer]

it's a freak accident.

and the engineers that have responded to this accident with any sort of engineering analysis are doing nothing but proving the "stereotype" that engineers are know-it-all jerks.

and yes, I'm a PE as well.

[Pat Barry]

Just some quick and dirty calculations based on some (hopefully) reasonable assumptions:

If the hammock spanned 12ft with a 3ft 'sag' and the girls' combined weight was 200#, then the tension at the end of the hammock was ~223# with ~200# of that in the horizontal plane. For a 5ft post, that's ~1000ft-lbs of torque at the base of the post.

Increase the span to 20ft with a 3ft 'sag' and the girls' combined weight was 200#, then the tension at the end of the hammock was ~471# with ~461# of that in the horizontal plane. For a 5ft post, that's ~2303ft-lbs of torque at the base of the post.

I am not an authority on concrete construction, but anyone trying this better have a deep footing and rebar to unify the brick and footing. Cable loads like this get BIG quick.

Want to self-rescue a car in the mud? Tie a rope taut between the car and a tree 150' away. Then have a helper pull sideways on the rope.

I don't follow the math here Malcolm. Not seeing how the force vectors are adding up as you suggest. What are you figuring is the horizontal load force without the girls?

Just another jerky know it all engineer asking questions - LOL

[Dan Friedrichs]

and the engineers that have responded to this accident with any sort of engineering analysis are doing nothing but proving the "stereotype" that engineers are know-it-all jerks.

I'm not qualified to do the calculations, but my point was that my intuition would be that a brick lamp post (which I'm imagining to be at least a few bricks wide - say 1 square foot, total) would not collapse under those conditions. I was expressing surprise that anyone would expect a lay person to "know better".