The Stockwood Leisure Gardens Association
Stockwood Leisure Gardens finally gets a Loo!
Stockwood Leisure Gardens finally gets a Loo!
Page 1
The Groundworks
The Groundworks
| Our new toilet facilities Stockwood Leisure Gardens did not have on-site toilet facilities. Not to put too fine a point on it this was generally not too much of a problem for the men, but for the ladies it was a distinct issue. The idea of purchasing a composting toilet was mooted and investigations made. The cost was great and therefore, taking the idea forward, depended on both raising capital ourselves and, more importantly, seeking funding (grant aid) from other organisations. Composting toilets are available from a company called NatSol Ltd and they seemed to be able to deliver what we reckon we needed. Apart from the obvious facilities, it needed to be essentially fire-proof. They do a version that comes in a cabin which looks suspiciously like a shipping container, and it was felt that this would work for us. We started fundraising - with various ideas, tea and coffee available in the site shop - free in reality, but a small contribution was sought for each cup. A Christmas Bazaar was held in the site shop on the 12th December, 2009 and that was a great success, raising over £500. Two members of the committee went on a fact finding trip in February, 2010 to two sites in Ipswich. Both sites have NATSOL compost toilets installed - report of the trip can be seen here together with some pictures of the installations. As at the end of March 2010 our site improvement fund stood at over £1,000 - all thanks to the generosity of our members. A number of other ventures, for example, the Summer Fete, was organised. This too raised more funds to help. We did look at alternatives to the composting solution but they turned out not to be viable from a financial standpoint. (for our readers interest; the up-front requirements of the (foreign owned) water company quite simply ridiculous, they wanted a five figure sum as a non-refundable deposit just to do a site survey. We therefore went ahead in May 2010 with funding applications in order to purchase the compost toilet from NATSOL. The Awards for All Lottery Fund required us to have at least a five year tenure of the site before they would consider a grant application from us. Luton Borough Council provided us with the necessary documentation and we submitted our grant application. In October 2010 we were advised by the Lottery Fund that we had been successful and so we started to make the necessary arrangements. An order was placed with NATSOL By the beginning of November we had a delivery date, the 1st December, we had arranged for the groundworks and a building specialist (Tony) to be on-site for the day in order to ensure that everything was carried out per the spec given to us by NATSOL. This part was very important as, to ensure a warranty, we needed to photograph each step of the installation and provide that information to NATSOL. The day started at 07:30 for Pete, our Treasurer and Project manager. He arrived on site to find all the locks frozen and then had to set about defrosting them before opening up the site. The other important people arrived around the same time; Tony who was in charge of the complicated stuff, John with his digger, Sue our Site manager, and finally the Chairman putting in an embarrassingly late arrival at 08:45 (but I did have the rolls, butter, bacon and the means to turn them into edible snacks - I had to wait 15 mins for the rolls to finish baking - that's my excuse anyway). By this time the hole was well underway and things were looking good with the news that the lorry bringing the 'goods' should arrive around lunchtime. At about 11:00, (so somewhat earlier than expected), the lorry arrived with the prefabricated building. Happily the groundworks had just been completed and the concrete to bed the vault had just been delivered. Timing couldn't have been better. Throughout proceedings bacon rolls and tea were freely available - bet you wish you'd come up to help after all! The rest of the story can be seen in the pictures. |
The Pictures
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Digging the Hole. A big thankyou to Paul Merryweather of LBC Parks Department for arranging for John and his magic digger to do the hard work. See the next picture: you wouldn't want to have done this by hand. |
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The Hole. I suppose it doesn't look so bad in this picture.. but if you click on it you'll see a bigger picture.. later on another picture in this series shows one of the heaps of rubble that came out.. |
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The concrete arrives. This will be used to bed in the base of the toilet and back-fill the sides. |
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| The toilet arrives. All the way from Wales, in bits, (but the correct bits!) on the back of a lorry. |
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With a great deal of effort we managed to get the sides, back and front off the lorry - they are seriously heavy and there was no where to get a grip. |
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| Tony and Brian attaching the strapping so that John can use his digger to lift the top of the vault off the lorry. |
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The lid comes off and is put to one side. |
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| Then the vault is off-loaded.
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Left to right: Brian, Tony, Pete, Sue (in the distance), the chap from NATSOL, and almost hidden from view, John operating the digger. |
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