Weak Foundation Concrete Identified, Removed
It may encourage you to know that, when a batch of concrete in the Freedom Tower’s foundation failed some tests, it remained more than twice as strong as anything found in a normal house. Even better: the bad concrete has been taken out.
Granted, the same step was taken when a simple jersey was buried within the new baseball stadium, so it would be shocking if anything improper was left beneath the Freedom Tower. It’s also troubling that less-than-ideal materials ever became involved. But on the whole, the development is almost reassuring.
The scale of the removal - 50 cubic yards out of 22,000 - indicates that any slip-up was small. The removal itself provides evidence that a certain level of perfectionism is being applied to the tower’s construction.
Even the detection of the concrete’s weakness might have a sort of success story behind it; as we’ve noted before, RFID tags are being mixed into the material so that crews can more easily and accurately monitor the hardening process.
All in all, it seems best to hope there are no more “success stories” of this nature. Still, what could have been a real problem has worked out rather well.