A trip to Pompeii made me rethink how we pour foundations

Last year, I took a vacation to Italy and visited Pompeii. Walking through those ruins, I saw concrete walls that have stood for thousands of years. It hit me that our modern mixes might not last as long. They used volcanic ash and lime, no rebar. Now I'm trying out adding pozzolans to my jobs. It's not just about strength, but how long it holds up. Seeing that old work made me respect the craft more. I've been looking into old ways to make my pours better.

4 comments

4 Comments

evan4891mo ago

The Pantheon's dome in Rome used a similar concrete mix and shows almost zero corrosion. Researchers found it actually heals itself when cracks form, because the lime clasts in the mix react with water to create new minerals. That self-repair idea is what modern material science is trying to copy now with engineered bacteria or capsules.

sandra_lane61mo ago

Yeah that ancient Roman concrete is wild, they really figured stuff out by accident lol. Modern self-healing mixes with bacteria or capsules are promising, but they're crazy expensive and finicky to use on a big site. Sometimes the old way is still the best way, and we're just now catching up to what they knew back then. Makes you wonder what other building tricks we've lost over the centuries.

olivercraig26d ago

Wait, not quite by accident. @williamw75 is right about Vitruvius. They wrote down the recipes. They knew what they were doing. Modern science just figured out why it worked so well.

williamw751mo ago

Vitruvius wrote about volcanic ash concrete lasting ages before modern science caught on.