Restoration Blog

Mon Dec 17^th

by: Andy P.

Wow what a day.  Very frosty but 10 people on site with standing room only.

A very early morning 2 tonne delivery of 12 sheet piles was the first job.  Slide them of the back was the cry.  They never budged a mm.  Oh. So slightly bigger digger (SBD), back on hire for the day, fired up and swiftly lifted them into a neat pile to await their next move across the canal.

Leader Bob , on SBD, set about digging out a 10 m long and 2 m deep trench to fit in another 6m section of bypass pipe.  Digger Duncan, on temporary loan to the dumper, moved the soil away to the offside of the canal where Ron on big digger (BD) fed Jason on mini digger(MD), who shifted soil to the slope.  Monday Maurice, Mathew and Julian spent all day shovelling, raking, digging and moving soil.  Back breaking but logistical symmetry in motion.  Slope now ready for planting with the trees set aside.  Steve had brought the MD from WD and stayed all day and was a great help.

The 6m pipe and collar were lowered and pushed into place by SBD.  Trench depth being controlled by calibration Kay using the precision measuring device. SBD became confused with the 4 different bottoms on its seat as the trench box was lifted, widened and reluctantly refitted at the end of the new pipe section. Several hand diggers then dug down to find the pipe and the end joint ready for another section.

2 mini disasters did occur however.  Due to the quantities of tea being made, the generator ran out of diesel and we ran out of tea bags.  Rose, whose garden we were fixing, gave us mince pies and some wine to share for all the work we had been doing.  Thank you.  The wine being donated to the Xmas raffle. 

In the garden we moved and levelled more soil, levelled and refitted the heavy concrete table and chairs, moved the washing machine (don’t ask), mangle, scales and replaced the many pots and cherubs.  The broken otter was taken away for suitable burial.

SBD worked well into darkness to back fill the hole and restore some semblance of order back to the site. 

What a day.