The icy and frosty weather recently has reinforced one of the problems we face at our little cottage. When the girlfriend is putting her horses out in the field in the morning, usually at 6am before she heads off to work, the access to two of the fields is restricted by a stream and so she has to take them down a country road for about 100-150m depending on which field she takes them too.
In good weather and daylight this isn't much of an issue, more an inconvenience, however once it is icy and dark it does become rather dangerous, for her and the horses. As I am such a magnificent bloke and spent a good bit of time fetishizing bridges in the Royal Engineers I came up with a decidedly genius plan to bridge the stream at a suitable location thus allowing access to three different field gates all through one route. Huzzah!
The diagram above shows what the issue was, hopefully! The scale is off, but it gives the general idea of the problem. The road it self bends and goes down hill towards the stream before rising on the other side of it. The 1 and 2 in grey boxes are the current gate entry points to the fields. The brown 1,2 and 3 are where I plan on making the new entry points so that the horses can go out entirely within our own property. It should also mean they come in a lot easier too as they will probably just trot themselves up to the stables (if we leave the gate open) when it gets dark in the evening. I'll probably also set up a gate of some sort (electric wire likely) across the path at the stables to allow for this.
Anyway that is the problem and as mentioned my previous bimbling it means I get to build a bridge, something I must admit I really enjoy doing. The first step was to use some old concrete blocks scavenged from an broken wall to create two piers either side of the stream. The blocks are the type with two holes in them so once laid and offset I drove piles through to hold it all together and filled both piers with concrete.
The clear span is only 1600mm so not a huge gap, and it won't have heavy traffic so these piers will do the job. The bridge will be a timber one using seven 47x150mm beams at 2400mm. The bridge will be 1500mm wide (max).
The first job was to cut the timber to 2400 and profile the ends to allow for a sloped rise onto the bridge proper. These timbers were painted with a cuprinol timber treatment. They are already pressure-treated but as they will be over water and getting damp a lot I want to go a bit further on the protection. I used the offcuts from the main beams to make up some spacers that will keep the beams at the desired spacing while I sort the seating and decking.
So that is the wood beam structure in place with some uprights of 47x50mm which will become the railings. I've cut decking planks to size to fit the width of 1500mm although I'm keeping one back for any adjustments. This leaves me with a number of 1200mm length decking planks, which I may use near the uprights and then also cut about in half and have them butt-up to make 1500mm as required. I'll see how far I get with the full width ones first. The decking needs painted before getting screwed into position, and rather than start on that I decided to watch the rugby!
In good weather and daylight this isn't much of an issue, more an inconvenience, however once it is icy and dark it does become rather dangerous, for her and the horses. As I am such a magnificent bloke and spent a good bit of time fetishizing bridges in the Royal Engineers I came up with a decidedly genius plan to bridge the stream at a suitable location thus allowing access to three different field gates all through one route. Huzzah!
The diagram above shows what the issue was, hopefully! The scale is off, but it gives the general idea of the problem. The road it self bends and goes down hill towards the stream before rising on the other side of it. The 1 and 2 in grey boxes are the current gate entry points to the fields. The brown 1,2 and 3 are where I plan on making the new entry points so that the horses can go out entirely within our own property. It should also mean they come in a lot easier too as they will probably just trot themselves up to the stables (if we leave the gate open) when it gets dark in the evening. I'll probably also set up a gate of some sort (electric wire likely) across the path at the stables to allow for this.
Anyway that is the problem and as mentioned my previous bimbling it means I get to build a bridge, something I must admit I really enjoy doing. The first step was to use some old concrete blocks scavenged from an broken wall to create two piers either side of the stream. The blocks are the type with two holes in them so once laid and offset I drove piles through to hold it all together and filled both piers with concrete.
The clear span is only 1600mm so not a huge gap, and it won't have heavy traffic so these piers will do the job. The bridge will be a timber one using seven 47x150mm beams at 2400mm. The bridge will be 1500mm wide (max).
The first job was to cut the timber to 2400 and profile the ends to allow for a sloped rise onto the bridge proper. These timbers were painted with a cuprinol timber treatment. They are already pressure-treated but as they will be over water and getting damp a lot I want to go a bit further on the protection. I used the offcuts from the main beams to make up some spacers that will keep the beams at the desired spacing while I sort the seating and decking.
So that is the wood beam structure in place with some uprights of 47x50mm which will become the railings. I've cut decking planks to size to fit the width of 1500mm although I'm keeping one back for any adjustments. This leaves me with a number of 1200mm length decking planks, which I may use near the uprights and then also cut about in half and have them butt-up to make 1500mm as required. I'll see how far I get with the full width ones first. The decking needs painted before getting screwed into position, and rather than start on that I decided to watch the rugby!
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