January News
SEA LOCK REPORT by Adrian Wills - 11th January 2021
'WORMS AND DRAINS'
This spell of very cold weather has put a temporary (I hope!) halt to rebuilding at Sea Lock. However progress is still being made.
Several years ago, when I was working on rebuilding the lower section of the wharf wall, I laid a length of flexible drainage pipe in a trench across the wharf to carry rainwater away from the pole barn, where I store various bits of equipment and tools, into the canal.
This pipe functioned well for a period but after a while I realised that I hadn’t seen any water flowing out of it for quite some time despite other outfalls running fast. I managed to push drainage rods from the mouth of the pipe right up to the base of the down-pipe from the roof gutters but water still refused to flow out that way.
'WORMS AND DRAINS'
This spell of very cold weather has put a temporary (I hope!) halt to rebuilding at Sea Lock. However progress is still being made.
Several years ago, when I was working on rebuilding the lower section of the wharf wall, I laid a length of flexible drainage pipe in a trench across the wharf to carry rainwater away from the pole barn, where I store various bits of equipment and tools, into the canal.
This pipe functioned well for a period but after a while I realised that I hadn’t seen any water flowing out of it for quite some time despite other outfalls running fast. I managed to push drainage rods from the mouth of the pipe right up to the base of the down-pipe from the roof gutters but water still refused to flow out that way.
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Needless to say that rainwater falling onto the barn roof continued to flow into the gutters and down-pipe, subsequently soaking away somewhere on the wrong side of the wharf wall – not good news for the stability of the wall nor the wharf surface. Over the past few days a contractor has been on site cleaning and levelling the towpath in preparation for top-dressing it with new crushed stone to improve access. Taking advantage of this contractor and his almost brand new 2½ ton tracked excavator (£25,000 worth) I asked him to dig down to the pipe so we could see what was going on. Excavating the pipe was not a straight forward operation since it required locating and avoiding a buried mains power-cable crossing over the top of it. Before long the pipe was exposed and it was obvious why water was not flowing through it. In a number of places it was crushed, ruptured and well out of alignment. It was also partly filled with silt. I imagine this was as a result of ground settlement over time as I had to bring surface levels up in a number of places and I don’t suppose tracking a 28ton Ruston Bucyrus crane across it on many occasions helped either! Anyway, last week having removed the damaged pipe which now lies on the side of the trench like some gigantic, battered worm, I completed laying a new solid drainpipe and carefully back-filled it in. Hopefully this will last for a good few years to come. The moral of this story is, “Don’t use flexible drainage pipe on land susceptible to settlement and don’t drive heavy cranes over where it has been buried!” |
PS. The contractor wouldn’t lend me the keys to his digger when he wasn’t using it. I can’t think why not but still thought that was a bit mean!
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