Woodhayes: Lean-To erected and electricity supply installed

Woodhayes: Lean-To erected and electricity supply installed: We had good start to this week with some excellent sunny weather helping to dry up the quagmire of mud and clay, it is now very cold but at ...

Lean-To erected and electricity supply installed

We had good start to this week with some excellent sunny weather helping to dry up the quagmire of mud and clay, it is now very cold but at least it is not raining !

This is a view from the western end of the new building showing the partially erected lean-to element of the building. The white steel beams will be exposed inside the building.

Another view taken from the North eastern end of the building showing the lean-to, this end will be the entrance to the building.

This is one of the Western Power team,  finishing off the connection of the 3 phase electricity supply, rubber boots and very thick rubber gloves were used to make the connection !  

Another view, this time from the Eastern end  of the building showing the lean-to being erected.

Basement block work , curved beams and block and beam floor starts to be installed.

View of the basement that will be located under the gallery floor at the far westerly end.

Another view taken from the North western end showing the basement in relation to the rest of the main building.

View of the door opening for the basement.

Interior of the Basement.

Block work walls which will support block and beam floor.

Curved steel beams put in place today, coloured white as part of the beam will be exposed internally.

Another angel taken from the south westerly end showing curved beams in place.

A view showing the block and beam floor being assembled all done on the same day, excellent progress.

First Part of the Steel Structure goes Up

Hardwills from Beaminster have been hard at it, since Monday  three men have erected the main superstructure of the main building , just the ground and first floors so far. You will see we have decided to have the steel work painted in dark black to imitate the colour scheme of the original Dutch Barn.  The south facing stanchions will be exposed in front of the cladding.

This shot shows the extra long stanchions that start from the basement level, you are looking at the westerly gable end and you will see the house in the far distance beyond the eastern gable end.

This is the basement end, these two bays including the basement will form the basis of the new gallery.

This view is taken from the eastern end showing the side that the lean to will attach to. You can see that the mid has been an irritant to the steeple jacks. They have done very well considering.

This angle taken from the westerly gable end shows the ground floor beams which will carry the block and beam concrete floor. David Cloud will be building the block and beam basement and the block work walls 

and supports under the outer beams and the central parts of the floor beams in the coming week.

This is the view looking North west, showing the tubular supports that knit the whole structure together, they are included to help support the building from strong south westerly winds !

Footings and Stanchions Pads are in.

This is a photo showing the footings and stanchion pads which will take the steel I beam stanchions, the superstructure of the building. This photograph shows the run for the north side of the lean to building. A total of 7 cement lorries delivered cement from 1.30 pm until 6.30 pm, the last 2 hours we had to make do with the headlights of the swing shovel digger to help with the positioning of the pads which were positioned with plumb lines. Its all in now , we have been lucky with the weather during this part of the operation.

A View showing the pads and footings for the underground basement for the art gallery, note the 45% grading back of the sides, this will mean there is no need for tanking as water will drain away using the natural gradient of the plot.

Demolition, Ground Work and Footings

This is a shot of the Dutch Barn which has been at Woodhayes since the late 1930's. The barn has 4 bays, 2 of which contained hay harvested more than 20 years ago.We decided to salvage the bales of hay with string and use them for bedding for livestock overwinter. many of the hay bales had broken string gnawed through by rats.

This photo shows the collapsed Dutch barn, David and his team used angle grinders to cut through the I beam supports and then it was a case of using the digger and back bucket to pull the Dutch barn down, the leg cutting and pulling down took 3 hours.  We managed to sell all the iron and corrugated iron for scrap, there was approximately 5 tons, proceeds from the scrap metal merchant paid for the dismantling and cutting up of the barn.

The 20 year old hay left overs is burnt.

Once the steel and corrugated iron was cut up and cleared the site top soil was removed and banked up, to be used for landscaping at the end of the project.

The site was leveled, we came across a lot of green sand and were pleased to see hard clay where the pads and footings will be going, in the foreground we have dumped hardcore for building materials to be unloaded onto a firm and stable surface.  Part of this area will become the entrance and 2 car parking spaces for the building.

We have excavated down just under 3 meters which will become a basement storage area that will be located at the far westerly gable end of the new building.

This shot shows you the height in relation to the trees beyond.

This shot shows the 15 ton swing shovel digger creating a platform for the building to stand on. We were originally looking at a small Ford digger and a dump truck to do the earth moving, however it seemed to make sense to have a beast of a digger in to do 2 jobs in one and saving time and money at the same time.

A sea of bluebells in Crownall Wood



Taking our chances between showers, we went for a walk through the parkland to Crownall Wood perched below Dumpdon Hill. We have marked the trees ready for a path to be made into the wood to extract the timber and maintain the wood. The idea is to fell the dead trees to stop them from falling and taking out their healthy neighbours.

We found the bluebells under the dappled shade of the trees as we tramped through the heady whiff of wild garlic. We also spotted a pair of rare pink orchids hiding behind a tree stump.