There’s a lot going on that picture – wet mud in the basement and heavy-timber shoring being the most obvious – but there’s also a truly remarkable piece of weathering. The round column to the right of the timber shoring post is an old-fashioned lally column, which is to say a steel pipe filled with concrete. It’s been sitting in this very damp environment for a long time – at least 15 years but probably longer. It is past “falling apart.” It is “fallen apart.” Here’s a close-up of the bottom:
The pitted dark brown band at the top is severely rusted steel. The rough medium brown band directly below is delamination, as the rust separates from the base metal. The rough light brown band below that is further delimitation, with the base metal pretty much gone. The smooth tan below that is the concrete core, visible because the steel has entirely rusted away. The concrete at the bottom seems to have split with the delimitation of the now-missing steel, so that the concrete surface is a reflection of the steel as it deteriorated. The concrete itself is deteriorating, breaking off in sheets.
That’s something you don’t see every day.
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