Following two test holes drilled the preceeding Wednesday, volunteers set to work on Saturday installing the rail fixings along the sides of our new inspection / ash pit.
Drilling a 24mm (almost an inch) hole 200mm (8 inches) deep into reinforced concrete is a slow, difficult process which is hard on both the equipment and the volunteer operating it!
A couple of holes were resisting the drill bit as we got deeper so a cold chisel was put to work to break up what we think was steel rebar to help the drill make progress.
Regular use was made of the shop vacuum cleaner with it’s special water hose extension to clear the dust as we progressed and then thoroughly once the hole was at depth.
With the hole prepared a chemical resin was inserted then the steel stud pushed home over our usual nibless track clips. This part of the process has to be fairly quck as the resin started to set quite quickly in the warm weather.
By the end of the day we had drilled 11 holes and filled 13 with the studs, quite an achievement but there is much more to do, I estimate we need 48 fixings along both sides of the pit.
I’ve just noticed that the sump cover is visible in my second picture, kindly made for us by volunteer Dave North. This metal grill means we no longer have to fear “falling in the water”. I wonder how many of you just read that Goon Show style?
Richard Stone
* apologies for the re-use of the double meaning of boring from previous blog posts but it’s too good not to when the drills have been put to hard use!