Councillor Jerry Pearce asked us if we could help Chaddesden Park with a bit of help. The park had been kindly gifted with 4 large (and very heavy!) chainsaw carvings for installation in the park. However having a statue, and safely installing it are two very different things, and funding was not available to put them into the park. Step forward the shedders! –
Fortunately Rob our “concrete expert” was able to provide advice on exactly what we had to do to fix them in place. So, we drew up plans, risk assessments, got approvals and sign-offs for what became a surprisingly involved operation !
The team dug four huge holes in the approved locations for the four statues – a duck, a rabbit, an owl and a hedgehog. An early start saw us trundling wheelbarrows a surprisingly long way to dispose of the dugout soil followed by filling them with over a ton of concrete to provide an absolutely bomb proof stable base. Into this we inserted 3 reinforced steel bars. These had to be exactly aligned so were held in place by four specially made frames while they set. Each hole with projecting steel bars had to have protective fencing while we waited for the concrete to cure.
Next week once the concrete had set and settled we were able to drill corresponding holed in the statues and slide them onto the steel bars, locking them into place with super strong resin glue. The finished result meant you couldn’t see any of the hard work we had put into siting the statues, and that was just the way we had planned it!
