Finally the gates are installed

After a lot of preparatory work the new gates to the Turnditch orchard have been installed at the roadside entrance.

While the gates are level there is a couple of inches height difference between the two gate posts. The posts installed by the management team are of course correctly aligned. The other post installed using the volunteer team, whilst being perfectly vertical, is slightly height deficient.;-)

Some work remains to add a small wooden gate to the stile. This will allow free access to people using the public footpath, but will prevent animals straying on to the road through the stile stone gap.

Keys to the Orchard

One of the consequences of the cutting the gate chain by persons unknown is the secondary padlocks, which were on the original chain, have been lost. Combined with the installation of new gates I'll need to have a few duplicate keys cut for the single padlock for the gate. 

I've continued the historic  informal licence of access across the land to the neighbouring farmer (the White family at Postern Gate Farm) and also to the local angling club who have fishing rights downstream from the orchard site. The farmer has already had a couple of keys provided free by me, but those have been lost. The angling club used to have their own lock daisy-chained in the old gate chain so they could gain access with their own key.

Having duplicate keys cut is not as simple as it might seem. The padlock is reasonably high quality and the keys need to be accurate. I've had keys cut at two different shoe repair shops and in each case the reproduction was not accurate. It was a waste of money for the keys, fuel and parking fees to visit the shop. I've found the only reliable way is to visit establishments who advertise locksmith skills and also to hand them the padlock to check their results.

A visit yesterday to the nearest Timpson store has produced some suitable duplicate keys. I now have the joys of getting the keys to the farmer and also to the fishing baliff. This time I'll absorb the cost, but if they need replacements for lost keys it will cost a minimum of £10 per key.

Good progress on the roadside gate

Yesterday we completed the installation of the metal gate posts for the roadside gates at the Turnditch Orchard. We'd already dug the hole for the right hand side post and lined the bottom with a pad of concrete, but this was to be the acid test of whether we'd got everything in the right position. The gateway is at the top of a sloping ramp leading from the field to the road. At the gateway the ground slopes in two different directions. As we have two gate leaves meeting in the middle it is essential their support posts are accurately aligned in terms of height of the hinges and the vertical aspect of the posts.

When we came to complete the work it was clear that all of the careful pre-preparation has paid off. The volunteer team lifted the heavy metal post into the hole and we commenced the check measurements. After a couple of sideways shuffles of the post we had exactly 12 feet between the posts and they were perfectly level and aligned. The volunteers had not seen the magic of postcrete in action before this installation. We (the volunteers' leader sent a pensioner down the ladder to the river) grabbed a couple of buckets of water from the river and filled the post hole approximately quarter deep with water then poured four bags of postcrete powder in the hole around the post. Using a scrap piece of timber we tamped down the concrete making sure the concrete mix was thoroughly dampened as we poured. Within ten minutes the post was held firmly in place and accurately positioned.

We'll leave the gate post concrete to harden for a couple of days before we mount the gates on their hinges.

We've now turned out thoughts to where we should build the barbecue. I'll be double checking to see whether I need planning permission. The intention is to allow local people to come on to the orchard and make use of the barbecue.

We are currently planning to locate it at the foot of the embankment approximately half way along the orchard. The soil at this location seems to be quite poor and fruit trees and other vegetation does not thrive.

New gates at the orchard

We took delivery yesterday of the new gates for the orchard. It is a pair of galvanised steel  gates, their fittings and the steel hinge posts. One gate is four feet wide and the other is eight feet wide. Together they'll be wide enough to span the gateway at the roadside near the river bridge. 

We'll need to dig some post holes and mount the gate posts in concrete, though for the small gate side the majority of concrete was laid in December 2015 as a reinforced concrete beam which presently hidden underground. We've chosen to have a smaller gate on the right hand side near the stile so we can enable access for dog walkers to the public footpath without opening the main gate. We'll have some type of gate closing arrangement which will prevent people from leaving the small gate open after they've left. Certain features will be added to the gate to provide enhanced security in addition to the covert camera system.

We were going to build wooden gates bespoke to the old gateway, but recent vandalism and crime at the site has convinced us that a timber gate may be open to abuse and damage. We'll preserve the existing old sandstone gateposts in place, but they will be redundant. Work on the installation is planned to commence soon. The new gates will be reinforced to prevent future "accidental" damage.

Edit: 21st May

Thank heavens for the internet! The steel square section gate posts were supplied with matching ground socket tubes and cap plates. I've been trying to work out the most appropriate way of installing the socket tubes. Unfortunately the square base plate at the end of the socket is too wide to fit through the existing 160 mm round hole I've already cast for a wooden post in the concrete beam back in December. 

I was thinking I'd have to angle-grind the baseplate to a 150 mm circle to allow the socket tube to fit through the beam. The steel is about 8 mm thick so this would have taken a while to complete. Fortunately it started raining just as I was setting up the 110v AC generator for the angle grinder so I had to stop. I used the time to do some research on the Internet as to the best way to undertake the installation of the post sockets. Eventually, after almost an hour of search, I came across a single reference to field gate post sockets. It seems you only use the sockets if you want removable gate posts. This is not essential for our purposes. We can just directly and permanently concrete them in position. It makes life a lot more simple for the installation.

Civil engineering in the orchard?

As we work through the plans for the gates to the orchard site it is beginning to sound like a civil engineering project. We've worked out we'll need about half a cubic metre of medium strength concrete to cast the beam required to support the riverside gate/fence posts. We've phoned around various suppliers to discuss the options and it seems a mix-to-order truck which mixes the concrete on site is the best option. A local company J C Balls provides a suitable service at a reasonable price. 

Fortunately where we are working is close to the roadside so delivery is not a problem. We'll just need a robust wheel barrow to move the concrete to the place we need to pour. The truck is charged in half-hour timeslots.

We're going for a concrete ST4 mix with polyester reinforcing fibres. We've now received the re-bar for the steel reinforcement of the beam for Twiggs, so all that remains for us to do is to dig out the trench for the beam and install some 18mm plywood shuttering to create a form for the concrete. We'll then position the re-bar and wire tie it in place before pouring the concrete. We need a 7 day period to allow the concrete to cure and gain strength, prior to installing the gate/fence posts.

The rebar awaiting installation, and wire tie equipment.

All this effort is necessary so we can set the gate post and the fence post in such a way that it will provide sufficient strength of support without creating risk of damage to the slope down from the road. The gate post will be exposed to frequent use by the public as they open/close the gate for their dogs as they make use of the public footpath. A gate post just driven or dug into the limestone chippings of the slope will inevitably fail within a few years. We mentioned in an earlier blog posting that we'll leave the historic stone gate posts and stile in place.

Once we have the gateposts installed we'll build a pair of wooden gates to match the distance between the posts. It will not be a standard gate size and we have to allow for footpath access, so using "off the shelf" gates is not an option..

Bending steel

After some spraying of blue marker paint on the ground and lots of measuring, we've specified the steel reinforcing bar for the concrete beam to support the gate posts of the field gate. In an earlier post on here we mentioned the reasoning for constructing a concrete beam. Now we've taken a view on the likely forces that will be imposed on the concrete. We've also considered how the posts will be replaced in future if significant repairs are required.

Some research on YouTube has made us instant experts on how to set out rebar (Steel reinforcing bar) and to create shuttering to hold the concrete used to form the beam. We've had to understand the British Standards for common rebar shapes used in the construction industry. This allowed us to produce specifications for the amount and shape of rebar required for the concrete beam to support the orchard field gate. It is a cantilevered design to prevent the gates from sagging in use. We requested a quotation from a local steel supply firm Twiggs for rebar bent to our custom requirements. The price was so reasonable I actually rechecked they'd included the cost of bending within their price. We've placed the order and await delivery.

The beam will be approximately 200 cm long by 90 cm wide with a depth of approximately 40 cm. It will be capable of withstanding the weight of heavy agricultural machinery which might pass through the gateway. It will be buried from view once the posts are installed.

The reinforced beam will provide reinforced sockets for the gate post (200 mm diameter) and a fence post (100mm). When we're casting the beam we'll mount the gate and fence post in position in the beam. We'll pre-wrap the end of the posts in plastic bubble wrap so we can lift them out once the concrete has hardened. The sockets are also designed to prevent the accumulation of water under the base of the posts. After removing the bubble wrap we'll re-install the posts in the beam using sand to pack the gap between the beam sockets and the posts. This installation method allows the post to be securely mounted, free from rocking/tilt, but allowing for easy removal for future maintenance. If you just mount the posts directly in the concrete when it is poured subsequent maintenance of post removal is difficult.

We are also practising the art of wire tying to fix the rebar in place before pouring concrete. Youtube helps again.  All that remains now is to trick the volunteer team into agreeing to, dig the trench and to mix the concrete when the management team are ready to construct the beam. We'll be incorporating reinforcement fibre into the concrete mix to provide extended life.

Little did we realise when we started the orchard project that we'd become involved in civil engineering and reinforced concrete design.

The Orchard - We've started clearance work.

Yesterday we started the process of clearing the plot in preparation for planning the orchard. The picture below is the strip of land next to the River Ecclesbourne. One of the local farmers has a right of access to his fields through this strip. We managed to to clear back about 80% over the undergrowth in the available time.

Given the uncertainty of what is hidden under the grass and brush we only using hand held tools to clear the ground during this first pass. We were using a Kawasaki KBH27 brush cutter and managed to burn through two tanks full of petrol in the clearing process. We're raking up the felled vegetation and will be hot composting it later. The brush was mostly grass, nettles and some Himalayan Balsam. The Himalayan Balsam is an invasive species and will take a few years of repeated strimming to eradicate.  Given the proximity of the river spraying with chemicals is not an option.

We'll be relaying the hedge on the left hand side of the picture at some point soon. It looks like there's been no proper hedge maintenance for a good few years.  I was pleased to note there is some healthy looking English Elm saplings forming part of the old hedge. We'll do what we can to preserve this species of tree. The question is should we lay Derbyshire Style or Midlands style, I was raised in Buckinghamshire so I prefer the Midlands or Southern Style hedging. 

We also need to have a missing gate post installed in the entrance to the main field to enable us to rehang the steel gate which we found laying on the ground.

New owners on site

We officially visited the site for the first time yesterday as the new owners and changed the locks on the gates. The gates are iron farm gates and not mounted. There are two gates to the plot, on the road gate the sandstone hinge post is broken and needs repair. The inner gate is totally missing the hinge post so we'll need to install a new post fairly soon. It gave us a chance to try out the 4-wheel drive on the old Freelander we bought last month as we drove off-road for the first time.

Fortunately we'd come armed with bolt cutters, a couple of new padlocks and a few metres of new chain. We were able to improvise temporary locking arrangements and cut away some of the old chains. A local farmer has a right of access to his field through our entrance, so over the next few days we'll visit his farm and give him a set of keys.  

I walked around the field and found some evidence of dumped rubble, so there may some work necessary to deal with the unwelcome present from the previous owners. Up on the road side hedge there's evidence of a car accident which has caused some damage to the hedge and also left the front wheel and axle of a car on the embankment. We're thinking of installing a low wire chainlink fence at the roadside to provide some security while we work on rebuilding the hedge.

The first task is to cut down the grass and thistles, this awaits the delivery from Estate Machinery of a brand new Kawasaki Brush Cutter tomorrow, then we can start work. We did slash down a few weeds and shrubs to open up the path, but didn't make a lot of progress, but we felt when deserved some refreshment at the local pub the Railway Inn just down the road. It was well worth the visit.

Some of the blackthorn and wild plum saplings in the meadow area will be cut down carefully so we can save the wood as shanks for walking sticks to be sold on Ebay to hobby carvers some time next year. They seem to sell for about £3 each so this create a small income, particularly if we also harvest the ash and hawthorn in the wooded area.