News archive: Narr Lodge Gets Its B4RN Inspection Chamber
July 9th, 2012
Author: Chris Conder
Tags: blog digging guest
Posted In: Archive News
Here is another guest blog kindly submitted by a local resident, Tim from the village of Quernmore who unfortunately has a broken leg, (get well soon!). The spare time has highlighted even more than before the fact that the internet connection is inadequate. Anyhow, many thanks for the post, over to Tim.
Narr Lodge gets its B4RN 1000Mbps inspection chamber.
I suppose one good thing about being intermittently off work with a broken leg (don’t ask!) is that you get to see exciting developments like the digging in of the B4RN inspection chamber serving our group of houses. One of the many down sides is that you spend more time on the internet getting frustrated with the rural broadband speeds, however things will impove shortly. The main ducting to the Rec in Quernmore had been dug in a few weeks ago. I could see that it was hard going in the stony ground round here but it passes close to our gate into the field, just the spot for the access chamber. Today (Mon 9th July), the B4RN team Rusty, Bruce and Frank turned up with a mini-digger. For once the weather was kind and the sun shone between fluffy cumulus as we struck earth in front of the gate and got into the stony ground. After battling down to a metre we took the top stone off one of the old stone land drains – STOP!
OK, re-think. After restoring the culvert cap stone, the digger moved a metre and a half to the side and hit better clay soil, the digger easily reaching the required depth and cleaning out a neat square hole. They borrowed my crutch whilst I propped up the gate post, to check the depth against the access chamber – so I did help, a bit. They bedded the bottom plastic chamber module on gravel and dropped the other three on top, topped off by the “B4RN” concrete cover. A bit of backfill and job done! It isn’t rocket science but the logistics and routing have required tremendous planning by the B4RN team. This week we’re going to trench up the garden, about 30cm deep, split into north and south branches to run ducting to the back of the houses. Then all we have to do is wait for the fibre and communication at the speed of light.