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Notre Dame fire

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Leadfoot J. McCoalroller, Apr 15, 2019.

  1. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Exterior or roof most look original. At least one of the 'Rose windows' is toasted, right? That would be difficult to replace. No idea about the Spire.
     
  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    'billionaires up ante to 700 million' how much will a repro rose window cost?
     
  3. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Speaking of tourist revenue, sell off pieces of oak-timber charcoal. Can't use it for anything else.
     
  4. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    A 'looks about right' stained-glass window is perfectly doable. An all-original one seems impossible. Red glass was made with nanoparticulate gold way back then. A lost art.
     
  5. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Quote from:

    Notre Dame Cathedral fire: why it was so destructive, according to fire engineers - Vox

    “A structure as large and old as this is difficult to protect from fire. The rooms are large and high with tons of exposed wood and flammable roofs,” said Peter Sunderland, a professor of fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland, in an email. “Consequently, there are many exceptions in fire codes for places of worship.”

    This is a big deal, not only for ND but other similar old structures. Fire-sprinkler companies need to get in on the discussion.
     
  6. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    elon musk to the rescue!
     
  7. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Before that step, would any of them be large enough to still have core-able interiors? Can the tree ring folks extract anything useful from the charcoal?

    After such reviews, then sell the remnants for fundraising.
     
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  8. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Core-able but probably not accurately date-able. I appreciate the thought though.

    I don't know that dendroecologists do much at all with charcoal. Archaeologists do, but mostly 14C dating of older things.
     
  9. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    you'd think they'd be self carbon dating
     
  10. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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  11. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Anyway, pop down the road to Chartres Cathedral and see about its attic. Planning sprinklers there could commence today if somebody felt like it.

    As a plain old guess there could be 100 in Europe with similar situations. But Chartres seems to lead top 10 lists.
     
  12. VFerdman

    VFerdman Senior Member

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    It's a terrible tragedy! However, it stood 850 years without sprinklers and not a single fire. We should really focus on how that was achieved and follow that. It's not luck, it's intentional care and precaution. This is low tech, if you will, but much more effective than any kind of wiz-bang tech you could throw at this problem. Someone somewhere got careless in the 21st century. Or it was intentional sabotage, in which case sprinklers wouldn't have helped (where there is a will there is a way).

    I think knee-jerk reaction of throwing technology and money at the problem is not wise and the proof of that is right in front of us. This amazing structure was safe for 850 years with technology that was original to the design. Can't protect from careless, stupid or intentional malice.
     
  13. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I would disagree with most of that. Da Vinci 'sort of' invented fire-suppression sprinkler, but concept did not catch on until 1723 patent. Building codes in many areas require sprinklers in non-residential construction, and rarely in residential (California). They arec onsidered highly effective. As mentioned earlier, some buildings (notably churches) get a pass or are grandfathered.

    It is accurate that ND has escaped fire for a long time, but this seems rare among similar structures. Chartres burned 3 times but survived. Many others have burned down over centuries.

    Still-standing ones with substantial wooden structures ought to be examined in terms of their exemptions from fire-suppression systems. Churches of that era (or somewhat younger) in England have painted wooden ceilings. Probably would be strong opposition to sprinklers in those. So it would be case-by-case.

    What ND ought to have will depend a lot on how they intend to support a reconstructed peaked roof. And details of new spire construction (it was a 19th century replacement).

    ND had a roof water tank between two towers for fire suppression, but unclear how distribution system worked. In retrospect it was not sufficient, but may have helped the towers to survive.
     
  14. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    A note of skepticism might be in order: that twitter thread also mentions the old chestnut (Jennifer Thorp's word, not mine) about the pregrown timbers for New College (link at #17). Another story I really liked, but alas....

    If even that much is known about the technique, how long would it take a motivated contemporary lab to unlose some of the art?
     
    #34 ChapmanF, Apr 16, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2019
  15. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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  16. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    ... and yet, it still burned.

    I'm afraid that that argument is suffering from a post-selection bias. If you started with the universe of similar structures built over the past millennium, and tried to analytically predict which few percent of them don't burn within a set time, I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a common thread that doesn't include a large element of random luck.
     
  17. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    No email reply yet from church-timber dendroecologist in Romania (obscure but relevant). It seems non trivial to count European Gothic-Age cathedrals, those surviving, and causes of others' failure (though I suspect most were in wartime).

    In this case, even a full attic fire would probably (?) not have busted through 2 (?) vaults. Collapsing spire did that. Vaults balance inward thrust from buttresses. Butts and walls they brace took some fire heat and water cold. It will take time to know if that limestone will need some repair, which will much change the rebuild.

    Learning Chartres' attic was redone with metal pushed me away from thinking about wooden rebuilding for ND. It is the 100 (136? N?) other similar still standing with wooden attics that will (ought to) consider more recent, yet effective technology of water-suppression sprinklers.

    ==
    Media has been inconsistent about condition of 3 Rose windows. We shall wait for info.
     
  18. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    With ND offline for tourism, Paris needs to better extol its similar ones. ND history and charcoal on display at least, if they can't bear to sell chunks.
     
  19. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Downloaded Hugo's classic - which heretofore I haven't read.
     
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  20. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    I know what distillers would do with it.

    We still don't know how Damascus or Wootz steel - Wikipedia is made. Some Russian was able to copy it, but died before recorded the process. The best we have now is in copying the finish.