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Jackson’s engineering team at Stallingborough is using specialist divers to clear silt from a 100-year-old concrete culvert that it is renovating as part of work to upgrade flood defences on the south bank of the Humber estuary.
The 170-metre-long culvert has been blocked with silt flowing in at one end from the Humber and in at the other from New Cut Drain. This has resulted in the three-metre by two metre culvert being blocked along its entire length with silt and an assortment of items dumped in the drain.
To clear the blockage, an expert team of seven divers from RS Divers has been enlisted. They work with hand-held vacuum and expulsion equipment to clear the tonnes of rancid detritus that has gathered over the years. The divers work in pitch-blackness, unable to see in front of them for two hours at a time. They use large suction pipes and high-pressure jets to loosen the compacted silt and then pump it out into the reedbeds on the estuary shore.
Project Manager, Liam Gallagher is full of praise for the work the divers are doing. He said: “The conditions that the divers are working in are horrendous and not made any better by the proximity of sewerage outflow pipes, which occasionally stop work. They have pulled out shopping trolleys, car tyres and children’s bikes and unbelievably a live eel; how it lived in that water is beyond me.
Liam added: "The team works with the estuary tidal flows but progress is being made with 45 metres already cleared, hopefully the top end of the culvert won’t be so densely filled as the bottom.”
The team at Stallingborough recently earned an Outstanding rating from its CCS audit and drew praise from the auditor after they used hydro-demolition to form an opening in the culvert to allow for future maintenance access. The team was concerned that traditional methods risked causing structural damage to the culvert, as well as a potential risk of combustion from any unknown trapped gasses produced by rotting vegetation within the culvert.
About Jackson Civil Engineering
Jackson is a regionally structured civil engineering firm with national capabilities. Our no-nonsense approach to work means that our clients keep coming back because they can rely on us to get the job done on time and on budget. We have a strong reputation a...
