Crane and Concrete.....

And the crane arrives! It had to be big enough to carry anything from Bennetts playground to anywhere on the site! It even stretches over some locals back gardens! It will ferry all the materials (concrete, steel reinforcements, bricks, beams etc) from lorries to where they are needed. Eventually it will lift the bathroom "Pods" into each of the single rooms..... so each new room in the Building will be en-suite with toilet, basin and shower. I'll try to get a full scale map & plans to post here... assuming that it's all right with the Architects. They are a pretty friendly bunch. We had a full meeting with them answering all the questions from last years Boarders and taking on board their suggestions. It was pretty impressive.

Nice colours!

It's quite a tight squeeze getting it in.

Sliding it into position.

This is a picture of the crane at night out of my top floor window. It just goes on and on! There will be more pictures later of what it looks like from further off.

There's no guy up at the top of the crane. It's all controlled from a little remote control box. Kids have toys like this.... but who wouldn't want to have a go with a real one! The ROK guys are pretty skilled to say the least.

The concrete is delivered in those huge great tumbling lorries that you see on the road but never know where they are going and then....

....poured into a giant orange steel bucket....

....lifted off the ground....

....hoisted across the entire site....

....pulled into position....

....... and gets poured into the trench.

Steel reinforcements for the concrete. These are pretty huge!

ROK Site Manager Alan Randall.

"Yup.... this drain is definately blocked!" Our Groundstaff try to sort out the flooded path that Matron has to negociate to get off site.

View from the back of Bennetts. Notice the added ramp. There should be a path going round to the left linking the two halves of the site by the end of February. It will be very welcome.

As you can see... the crane is very visible from Steyning High Street.














It's important to get everything in the right place!














More huge steel reinforcements awaiting concrete.

Footings well under way now.

Larger footings are poured in via a huge tube.

This video is in two parts.... (Second part will be uploaded onto the next Blog all on its own... the thing won't load here.... it's been trying to load for 2 hours now,,, and it's 2 minutes long!) due to having to move camera positions. It is the actual first pouring of the concrete into one of the footing trenches. I saw the Cement Truck arriving and had to run upstairs to grab my camera.... and just in time!