Preparation

Before starting work on the build there was a fair bit of work to do on the site. The substation had sat in the middle of two trenches containing coolant, and by the time we got hold of the site they had been filled up with mud, sand and assorted rubbish, including two mature willow trees. Rather than building on top of a midden, we decided to clear out the trenches and remove any organic matter and growing things that could make life difficult for us in the future.

With the rubbish and spoil from the trenches bagged up and taken to the tip, the next stage was to get the site ready for building the floor. The concrete base wasn't quite level, made worse by the fact that it had cracked in places, so we mixed up some more concrete and dabbed around 20 small blobs at regular intervals to support our floor plate. Time to start building!