Western Depot Update Continues
Western Depot Update Continues
by: Steve P.
Significant progress was made last week with Bob A and his team working on the barn extension foundations and Steve P and team measuring and marking out and then starting work on the new security fence.
The barn extension is a 3.5m by 10.7m strip between the current barn and the canal towpath, and having completed the foundations some time ago this week saw the blockwork completed up to floor level.
The team then started to infill the base with rubble from a trench dug at the front of the depot which will be filled with topsoil and planted with a hedge once the new security fence has been installed. Angle iron uprights were added along the canal side to support the new roof which will be 2.5m high at the canal side but 3.5m in the yard to allow fork truck access through larger roller shutter doors. By the end of Wednesday the team had completed the infill and compact this down ready for concreting once some more roof supports and braces have been installed.
Wednesday saw the arrival of a new piece of hire equipment – a powered augur to drill the holes for the security fence posts, all 52 of them! Vince and Mathew took a while to get the hang of the machine, so there wasn’t much to see when Jim W came to check on progress, but the team soon started to get the methodology sorted and some progress made.
The large 12-inch augur was changed for the smaller 8-inch one which made the hole digging much easier, and also meant that we didn’t need 2 or more bags of postcrete per hole when we had only budgeted for one!
By the end of the day around 8 panels had been installed, and work will continue next week to complete the rear fence and then move onto the more visible side and front fences. Hopefully the practice this week will mean that these come out in more of a straight line than some of our initial panels!
