First and foremost the Post Office isn’t allowed to turn a profit. Or at least any excess money received by the Post Office can not be dispersed as profit income or similar corporate tools. It must be held in trust by the Post Office to cover future expenses as defined by the US Congress which controls their budget.

The bulk of modern day post office buildings started being built in the mid 1930s tapered off from the mid 1970s into the 1980s. Most of these buildings was assumed to have an operational lifespan of 70–100 years. As time ground on a series of bookkeeping tricks employed due the increasing rules being handed down by Congress every few years as the political make of Congress changed. Government contractors tend to have fewer rules to abide by government employees, and typically that boils down to cheaper to operate. So, the government looks for a buyer of the facility they inhabit with a guarantee of tenancy for the foreseeable future. The terms allow for the building to purchased at a reduced price, and the maintenance of the building is calculated at a price which ends up below the estimated future costs of the labor. This ends up with free rent and services for a decade or so and lower future costs in running and maintaining the building than the Post Office was already committed to paying.

So on paper it shows that the Post Office has saved the taxpayers a lot of money.

Yes. Most jurisdictions allow you to proceed provided the following:

• You are doing the same use. Such as the previous tenant did manufacturing in the facility and also wish to do so. You will need to check with the city about local definitions of use.
• You are not making structural changes to the building.
• You are not changing the appearance of the exterior short of general maintenance. Such as painting, which generally would be fine.
• Things like new building signs will require permits, but they are lesser than building permits.

I understand that the question asker is really asking that since virtually all beam scenarios require designing for the moment condition why bother to do shear at all.

But, if you start with that premise I would ask do you know under which conditions shear forces overtake moment forces? How about when 5 forces are applied? How about 25?

As that number increases so does the difficulty of the answer. Sure, it’s likely the moment, but do you really want to find out you were wrong?

And, it’s ethically irresponsible to not determine the actual conditions.

At least where I practice, California, civil engineers can design any type of building expect for hospitals. But, just like architects, while they are allowed to design these their design will be questioned with a mind that this is allowable but unusual behavior for that license.

As an architect, I face similar problems when I supply my own structural design and calculations. Very few architects do that on projects more complex than a house, but if you are competent in your engineering most jurisdictions will allow you to proceed.

Practical tests and empirical data have shown that deformed bars (rebar) hold very well in concrete to the point that the concrete or rebar itself fractures and breaks off before movement occurs. The point of the overlap is to prevent a weak spot along the member. Overlap is usually defined as 36–48 diamaters of the rebar in question. This gives a large factor of safety in the design.

Welding requires additional equipment and personal present to perform. Typically, this is done due to gap requirements (allowing aggregate to pass between rebar pieces), special coatings on the rebar, or deployment in case of nested cages. I have come across a few industries that choose to always weld, but that usually ends up being for other considerations such as the amount of rebar used in a project.

Type II structures tend towards larger structures or hazard limited structures. Type IIA is more restrictive than Type IIB, but allows for larger areas as a trade-off.

Firstly, all bearing elements (columns, beams, shearwalls, bearing walls…) must be non-combustible. Type IIA also requires that all bearing elements be 1-hour fire-rated in addition to being non-combustible.

Just for the record, non-combustible refers to an element’s resistance to catching fire. Fire-rated refers to amount of time it takes for a full fire (around 1,000 degrees F applied to a sqft or more of the wall surface) to set combustible material (think paper) on fire due to the transfer of heat. This is measured in 1 hour increments up to 4 hours, and some scenarios also use smaller increments.

In most cases using Type IIA will allow between 30%-50% more square footage before requiring separation walls and barriers, but to be honest, the inclusion of fire sprinklers makes a bigger difference.

Asbestos.

For the best results, you need to be working on bare wood. If there is any kind of finish present on the wood then yes you should strip the finish off before staining.

You, the earth (including earth’s atmosphere), and the thing making noise are basically a closed system. In other words, all these items feel forces together. In this case since you are all moving at a 1,000 mph your perception is that you aren’t moving.

In the case of sound, it is simply moving through that medium, the earth’s atmosphere, at 700 mph.

No.

There isn’t enough energy in a stick of dynamite.

Even a several kiloton nuclear weapon denoted on the surface probably wouldn’t be enough. Too much of the energy would be lost to the air.

It might be if it was buried several hundred to serval thousand feet below the surface where the soil and rock would actually absorb the shockwave.

For a surface denotation you would need a weapon of several megatons.

Keep in mind that any of these would only result in a local event. I doubt a several megaton warhead buried thousands of feet would result in much more than a local seismic event. It just requires so much energy.