We've got two new buckets!
It's sometimes the simplest of things that give the
greatest pleasure!
We have been struggling for several weeks now with one bucket having a dodgy
handle and another bucket with a split halfway up.
Consequently with our two brand new water buckets we mixed probably the
largest amount of concrete at old lock 24 (with the mixer) certainly that I have
ever helped to mix in one day
Around 7.5 cubic metres (that's around 50 bags or a tonne of cement, plus over
6 tonnes of aggregate) have gone into the walls and the two buttress piers. It
took us all day to do and we have used most of the cement again. The new
south wall is definitely taking shape though.
Slow progress earlier in the month at The Narrows (nee Lock 24) Firstly the impact of the national shortage of building materials has started to impact on us, as we are struggling to get cement deliveries - we've been let down twice this week so far. Therefore, several of us reverted to cleaning bricks this week. Special thanks go to the people who responded to our 'bucket appeal' last week. With your kind donations we have purchased a couple of scutch hammers, bolster chisels and lump hammers - as we have still got several thousand old bricks to clean. Oh, how could I forget the bucket? We now have a third water bucket! A spare!
Mike Babb
25th August.
Work carried out to both extend the new North wall and support
the old wall today.
We had already backfilled the first two piers with cement. As the first (i.e. right
hand) pier goes under the old lock cill, it is well supported, so we created the
first of the buttress steps on the left hand pier. We will fill this with more cement
and then repeat the process - thus creating a series of steps back towards the
old wall.
We also exposed more of the pipe, dug out and cast the foundation - to extend
the new North wall (left) and also start to create the third buttress pier.
You should be able to see the rebar mesh for this third pier extending up the wall
on the latter photos.
Boats will be coming through 2.5 metres lower, i.e. level with pound 25. This is all to stop the lock wall and wing wall (on the cottage side) collapsing into the canal 2.5 metres lower than its original level.
We managed to mix several cubic metres of concrete for the new wall and old wall buttress piers, thanks to Steve getting us a load of aggregate from one of our dormant sites. We couldn't get too carried away as we needed to leave a few bags of cement for the brickies to progress with the brickwork. So we have now started the backfill for the towpath edging. Oh, and cleaned a few bricks of course!
Note the change of construction detail in the foreground of the first picture. Instead of excavating a conventional wide channel for a double wall with concrete in-fill, we have now started digging a slit trench to continue the front wall at depth and then levelling it up with concrete in-fill. More environmentally friendly to make use of the local sub stratum and as it's sandstone at this level, it is a good hard foundation - no point digging it out.
4th August.
This is what you do when you have a dilemma - in that, you
can't build a new canal wall with a pipe in the way and you can't remove the
pipe until you've built the canal (wall).
So you turn it into a feature!
Cast a concrete pier between the old wall and the pipe. Build a short (but
toothed) section of the new wall, fill the space between the new wall and the
pipe with concrete and then build a supporting buttress (still to be built) back
to support the old wall.
Simple eh!
Mike Babb
