Reinforced concrete is easier to maintain indefinitely than wood, because it's easier to seal against moisture, especially in harsh environments. Just because there are plenty of poorly built/maintained reinforced concrete structures, doesn't mean that it can't be built for longevity.
Maintenance of steel reinforced concrete is an all-or-nothing affair. You either get it right and seal everything perfectly and monitor everything perfectly and repair tiny cracks before they allow moisture to get in, or you're sunk. If surveillance is lax for a few years you can easily end up with damage that can't be repaired.
Wood construction, on the other hand, is extremely easy to repair. You can cut away sections and replace them piecemeal, essentially forever.
Wood gives you the ability to continuously build a Ship of Theseus, while structurally compromised concrete structures often require you to tear them down and build them again from scratch.
It's relatively straightforward to overengineer concrete to the point where it will take many decades, not just years, of neglect for damage to become unrepairable.
A lot of this discussion is comparing apples to oranges. Reinforced concrete often serves applications that wood is simply unable to perform in (bridges, heavy duty foundations, dams, retaining walls). And yes, poorly maintained, especially prestressed concrete in those applications will deteriorate and fail - but the structure would be impossible with wood in the first place. In more light duty applications wood and concrete can both serve well, but good luck protecting a foundation made of wood from water intrusion. For light duty applications there is no argument that concrete can be overkill and wood can be very appealing.
> A lot of this discussion is comparing apples to oranges.
I agree that wooden houses are not comparable to reinforced concrete bridges. But the part I'm trying to highlight is that being able to easily inspect a structure is a critically important aspect of maintenance, and that most reinforced concrete is inherently difficult or impossible to inspect. The fact that exterior waterproofing is relatively cheap is only incidental.
It's not enough to overengineer a bridge and say it'll last a hundred years if you don't have a reliable way to determine when the bridge is no longer safe beyond year 70. Kicking the can down the road is not a viable long-term strategy. We're about 100 years into widespread use of reinforced concrete and are now starting to see the occasional catastrophic results.
Potting steel in concrete is done because it's cheap and easy, not because it's particularly maintainable. It's inherently difficult to inspect the structure when you build things this way.
> especially prestressed concrete
Agree. Unbonded, post-tensioned concrete (where you can replace individual strands) seems like the only reasonable approach to me, but building this way and doing all of the inspection and maintenance is way more expensive than the "do almost nothing" approach for rebar concrete. But the benefits are only realized after 100 years, so nobody has the incentive to design this way.
> you don't have a reliable way to determine when the bridge is no longer safe
I have a hard time believing this. Despite the ridiculous claims of another poster in this thread (that rebar just spontaneously and completely turns into rust) properly formulated and surfaced concrete and steel don't just rot on the inside with no external signs of decay. If you have repeated water intrusion, you will see seeping and cracks. If you have increasing stress, you'll see spalling. You can core concrete, drill out and patch rebar if you have spot damage.
In general I find the sentiments in this thread bizarre since the vast majority of long-lasting buildings now and in the past century are made of concrete (many of the more modern ones have a concrete foundation and wood or steel superstructure). You don't see many old wood structures because most of them decayed and were torn down - there's a reason why you don't see many wooden bridges standing. Concrete is the closest thing that we have structurally to something that can last forever, and we're learning more about how to make it last longer all the time.
Let me know if you have links that discuss maintainability of concrete in this context. Would be glad to learn more.
I believe there is a very unfortunate example of this in Miami in the recent condominium collapse.
A bridge recently collapsed in Italy.
Etc.
So the problem of failing concrete structures is not 'theoretical' but a very real issue. Even though most concrete construction does seem to last pretty well.
Sure - my main point was that reinforced concrete will fail concretely and not only theoretically unless maintained. I was not suggesting it could be replaces.
Why is reinforced concrete easier to seal? Why couldn't you apply the same sealant to wood? And why wouldn't you have the same issues, such as when you punch a hole in the exterior to mount something, or run wires, etc, you now have to make sure that sealant stays in good shape? Or expansion joints?
I wonder if wood construction is more forgiving than concrete once you get to a point where it was neglected for some time. Wood will rot and need replacing, but if your concrete is ignored and the rebar starts crumbling, you can’t just slap fresh concrete over it and call it a day, right?
Rust isn’t load baring, it’s effectively replacing steel with a powder which is a huge issue if you needed the steel in the first place. Cracks from expansion make both this worse and make it obvious, but even without that it would still be a critical failure.
Not for reinforced concrete, the rusted rebar is still rusted after repointing. Which causes ever increasing internal stress and lower strength over time.
The only way to fix it is to remove existing rebar and replace it which isn’t viable on most structures.
