It has been fascinating to watch the speed with which our civil engineers and contractors, Suttle, have been able to undertake the work. With a '360' excavator and a dumper truck, you can turn a seemingly solid structure into a hole in a matter of days. Astonishing.
But first, I mentioned before the need to repair the weir, and to include fish and eel ladders.
The bulk of the repairs are now complete (
above, week 3, with the concrete beam half-cast), the fish and eel ladders in place, and the concrete beam which raises the river height a little has now been poured (
week 4, below):
I'd say it's a work of modernist beauty - and it's not often I compliment concrete. It was clear to see that the site manager was proud of the result too, which is always a good sign I think. Here it is with water flowing over it:
Because the team is now into the phase of construction where they will repair the mill leet, they have shuttered the river such that the weir is now taking the full flow. And doesn't it look spectacular?
And at the downstream level, work has commenced to create the hole for the enormous trough for the archimedean screw (replacing the former eel trap seeing in the last update's images). Aggregate was brought in to offer a slipway down to the river, and downstream shuttering now holds back the waters. Here is the 360 about to drive, with earth-shuddering power, a shuttering pile straight through the gravel, into the river bed. Thankfully there are very few rocks in the river here, so it's fairly easy going (if you are an excavator that is).
And now, the eel trap has been ripped out, and we just have a large hole developing, into which the concrete trough will be cast.
It is proving to be as intriguing and exciting as we had hoped.
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