Unless you’re a Cornish structural engineer I bet you don’t know what mundic means. It is a Cornish adjective that describes a kind of crumbling concrete. I came across it here, a weekly column in the Guardian that shows interesting property for sale. According to Wikipedia,
Mundic was used from the 1690s to describe a copper ore, which began to be smelted at Bristol and elsewhere in southwestern Britain. Smelting was carried out in cupolas, that is, reverberatory furnaces, using mineral coal …
The thing is, as every architect and engineer kno, concrete and copper cannot come in contact, because galvanic action occurs (a bad thing like rusting). Nowadays “mundic” refers to what happens to Cornish stones that have been used as aggregate in concrete:
The mundic problem
The Cornish word mundic is now used to describe a cause of deterioration in concrete due to the decomposition of mineral constituents within the aggregate. A typical source of such aggregates is metalliferous [in this case, copper-] mine waste. Current professional guidance notes describe all of Cornwall and an area within 15km of Tavistock as being areas where routine testing for mundic is required. The notes go on to state that testing should be confined to buildings which contain concrete elements (blocks or insitu) and that were built in or prior to 1950. However, the notes contain advice that testing may be required where there are visual or other signs of mundic decay. Testing leads to a classification of A, A/B, B and C. A is sound and C is unsound. Classifications A/B, B & C may make properties un-mortgagable.
The next time you’re on a seven-hour flight, tell your neighbour all about the mundic problem; it may have consequences if they apply for a mortgage in Cornwall.
A Bad Guide 
I’m not a Cornish structural engineer, so I didn’t know about mundic, but what a stupid thing to use mine waste as aggregates when building your house. Each one of the three little pigs were more clever.
I’m not a Cornish structural engineer, so I didn’t know about mundic, but what a stupid thing to use mine waste as aggregates when building your house. Each one of the three little pigs was more clever.
Oops, sorry, I thought the first one didn’t have time to go. Maybe you could feed it to the goats.
sic transit gloria mundic
Neither am I and neither did I.
Of course the best place to pass on information to structural engineers would be a language blog. That’s where they go in winter.
The problem is that it is always winter somewhere, just as it is always 16 hours.
I agree that it’s an unbelievably stupid pickle for the Cornwallers, Corns, Cornishfolk to have got themselves into in the first place. The county is made of flint; you’d think they would kno a few things about aggregates.
I see you subscribe to the TimeCube model of the Earth (:deftly ignores the poles:).
As a (failed) inorganic chemist I’m embarrassed that I did not know that such a thing could happen to concrete. Now I’ll have to look up its structure.
Isn’t that what happened to the Parthenon? When I was there they had it all taken apart, and I only got to see the pieces.
The Parthenon met with an accident in 16-something after someone decided it was a convenient place to store gunpowder. The middle was blown away. It may even have had a roof until then, I’m not sure.
Yes, it had a roof and all mod cons (having been converted first to a cathedral and then to a mosque); the Venetians certainly did a number on it, but I believe what Nijma is referring to is the botch that early restorers made when inserting reinforcing bars that started wrecking the columns.
An accident in 16-something, no, I’m not that old. It had something to do with metal reacting with the marble in the presence of acid rain, I think.
Ah, here it is:
Source:
http://brexmother3.blogspot.com/2009/06/restoration-of-parthenon.html
I was there in the winter of 1988-89. The museum was there, but not a column was standing.
I think there was originally a statue of Athena inside.
Or maybe it was a different year. It was the year the Berlin wall came down. I was in London when that happened, then I decided London was too cold and it was time to move south.
I found a web site that says
The Parthenon had been kept in relatively good condition right up until the 19th century.
and later in the same paragraph
In 1687 the Venetians, under Francesco Morosini, attacked the Ottomans in Athens. The Acropolis had been fortified by the Ottomans (as well as the Athenians over a century before). The building was also used as a gunpowder store and when the Parthenon took a direct hit from a mortar fired by the Venetians from the Hill of Philopappus, the gunpowder exploded and destroyed a large part of the building.
Yeah, well it was an accident, wasn’t it. Doesn’t count.
But who shot off the nose of the sphinx? According to this, it wasn’t Napoleon at all.
http://www.napoleon-series.org/faq/c_sphinx.html
It’s been known for more than 40 years.
I should have known. If that’s what learning French is like, I want to study it.
Napoleon brought a huge retinue of scholars and engineers with him in order to have them study the Pyramids and other monuments, so he would not have let his soldiers deface them. There are pictures of the Pyramids and the Sphinx antedating Napoleon, and none of them show an intact face for the Sphinx.