In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of all natural systems always increases.  This is one of those good laws in a sense that you cannot do anything to fight it.  And if you’re a hapless participant in something, well, might as well learn to enjoy it.  In a more grounded sense my house’s entropy is increasing.  My house rotting.  I’m witnessing it progress from orderly arranged wood grain to … dust.  Dust certainly exhibits more entropy than nicely structured wood grain thus empirical proof that my house is subject to the same laws of thermodynamics as the rest of the universe.  And that sort of consistency is comforting, in my humble opinion.

This is Neal inspecting the rotting column on my porch.  He  agrees  that this is an example of a natural system increasing in entropy over time.  In the background my very manly fence is visible.  No one will wag a dogs tail for him 😁😁😁

So what to do?  Well, a smart person would hire someone to replace that wooden post with another wooden post.  But we are differently-abled (fucking retarded is no longer allowed in casual conversation) and we just happen to have laying around and be good at handling pipe.

The goal is to replace that (and all the other) wooden posts with steel pipe.  Hopefully 1.5″ schedule 40 pipe as that’s what I happen to have lots of in stock.  Because I like my house and would prefer for it to remain intact, I want to make sure that whatever I put in place of the wooden post will be just as strong.  How do we determine if a steel pipe column is just as strong as a square hollow wood one?  One approach is hand waving and guessing.  The other approach is math and engineering.  I get plenty off furious hand waving and guessing in my 7 to 3:30 (i.e. real job) so for funsies we’ll take the second approach.

The goal here is to figure out how to apply Eurler’s critical load formula  and to compare that to precalculated load tables available in industry.  Then compare that result to available wood column load table.  And from there see where the results takes us.  Can we use 1.5″NPS pipe in place of existing hollow wood column?  We’ll figure it out.  Anything goes here – this is a party after all.