Monday 10th December
Over the last six months of more all the subsoil generated by volunteer work on the site has been stckpiled on site. Today we had a push to tidy the site and remove unwanted subsoil from the site.
Previous digger days have beem planned around one mini-digger and one dumper. With the focus on removal of previously excavated soil we had one 3T digger and two 1.5T dumpers on hire for today and three 20 cubic yard skips to fill.
The first skip had been delivered on the previous Friday and the plant was delivered at 7:20 in the morning so we were able to start work at about 7:45. Given the short winter days it was important to make the most of all daylight hours.
The frozen ground make a good running surface and the stockpiles nearest the gate were the first to be taken to the skip, which was full by 9:00. A few phones brought the time for the first changeover forward by 30 minutes. Meanwhile material from the wharf end of the site was stockpiled near the gate in anticipation. There was also time to create a ramp down to the pedestrian gate to the wharf.
With the arrival of the second skip we could focus once again on filling the skip before the next changeover at 1:00.
The third and final skip was filled by 2:30 and unfortunately we were unable to arrange an extra changeover before 3:00 to we finished comfortably before running out of daylight. We used the bonus daylight time to tidy, make safe and clean up.
Thanks to the whole team for their efforts:
- John - plant hire arrangements and digger operator
- Chris - digger and dumper operator
- John (common name) - dumper operator
- Hilary - muck spreader in the skip, general tidying, skip phone calls
- Howard - muck spreader in the skip, general tudying and dumper driver
- Hilda - teas, coffees, extra diesel and keeping the car park free from mud
- Peter - dumper driver and general "gofer"
- Colin - skip hire arrangements
