Kites Nest
Background
Kites Nest, Snowshill, Gloucestershire.
In November 2014 we were approached by a private land owner and the Forestry Commission because they required access to a commercial wood for timber harvesting. The wood will be harvested in three sections over the three following years. The road had to be wide enough for harvesting machinery and strong enough to support large loads over many years to come, clear enough each side to give good drainage and have no obstructing trees.
Before we started the job the only existing access was a small stone pad and 100m track. The rest of the wood had footpaths throughout and nothing more.
The wood covered an area of 100 acres of steep hillside and was on poorly drained heavy clay soil.
The requirement was for 2 miles of new road to be built from scratch and to extend the pad and existing access track.
The quote was accepted in May 2015 and works began in June. The job took three months to complete.
Detail
Plans were put to us detailing the routes that the new roadways would take, we marked the routes and sub contracted a local harvester to clear the timber. SDL Biomass felled and chipped on site leaving clear routes for us to begin construction.
Using two 13 tonne excavators we set about lifting stumps and roots from the ground and clearing them away.
Once clearing was complete we were left with a hillside that had to have a pathway cut into it. Areas were levelled, cuts were cleared and track way was built up throughout the entire wood.
We installed all drainage, being on a hillside the track was liable to subsidence and without sufficient drainage it would be destroyed. We camber the track in a dome to give equal drainage either side and to enable draining in as little time as possible.
Stone was quarried from an existing site within the wood, we also had to buy in stone to complete the track ways.
Once we had laid out the stone and had it sufficiently level and compacted we then crush it, using our Kirpy BPB250 crusher we can tackle stone of all shapes and sizes. after crushing we can grade the track to give us our finishing levels and camber. we then simultaneously grade and compact to leave a smooth finish.
The job was completed on time, to specification and within budget.