I’ve always been very interested in draining despite not doing a lot of it. I've done masticator drain a couple of years ago and bunker drain last year, they had the feelings of a great exploration as it was all new to me, going along finding the places that I had seen pictures of before, putting it all together like pieces of a jigsaw in my mind. Exploring something ‘new’ is different though, not knowing what is round the next corner, if it will be as you imagined. Well after spending who knows how many hours here and there over the years searching the time had come for me to find a ‘new’ walkable drain.
The hint for this one, which is well hidden below ground came from a publication that stated something along the lines of “Drainage big enough for a man to walk in†well that was it, it had to be done. The main obstacle was the designer of this drainage system choose to put 99% of the manhole covers in the middle of the road. We found a way though, however it involved a 300m crawl (each way) through 3foot RCP to get to the walkable stuff.
This was a surface water system, however a lot of it did get a bit smelly due to the wildlife. Aswell as the usual frogs, worm like things etc something had been laying millions of tiny eggs in the water, no idea what they will hatch into but it smelt a bit fishy.
As the area is flat, there’s none of the great features like stairs. Plugholes etc as found in bunker drain. Many of the chambers were the pretty generic, however there were a few different ones which we pictured.
So on with the pictures:
I know some people are adverse to concrete but here it is:
Me and Devster in a chamber:
Devster in an overflow chamber (the otherside is now blocked off, the greyness of the water comes from the millions of eggs in it, hmm nice)
A nice junction, Left us up stream, behind is downstream, the smaller one was silted and smelt bad, the right one is unexplored (as of yet, and as of until we find a suitable substitute for the 300m crawl) it will naturally shrink, but should be larger than the part of the system we did.
Devster stood in the storage tunnel, behind us is a pumping station with big noisy pumps.
The hint for this one, which is well hidden below ground came from a publication that stated something along the lines of “Drainage big enough for a man to walk in†well that was it, it had to be done. The main obstacle was the designer of this drainage system choose to put 99% of the manhole covers in the middle of the road. We found a way though, however it involved a 300m crawl (each way) through 3foot RCP to get to the walkable stuff.
This was a surface water system, however a lot of it did get a bit smelly due to the wildlife. Aswell as the usual frogs, worm like things etc something had been laying millions of tiny eggs in the water, no idea what they will hatch into but it smelt a bit fishy.
As the area is flat, there’s none of the great features like stairs. Plugholes etc as found in bunker drain. Many of the chambers were the pretty generic, however there were a few different ones which we pictured.
So on with the pictures:
I know some people are adverse to concrete but here it is:
Me and Devster in a chamber:
Devster in an overflow chamber (the otherside is now blocked off, the greyness of the water comes from the millions of eggs in it, hmm nice)
A nice junction, Left us up stream, behind is downstream, the smaller one was silted and smelt bad, the right one is unexplored (as of yet, and as of until we find a suitable substitute for the 300m crawl) it will naturally shrink, but should be larger than the part of the system we did.
Devster stood in the storage tunnel, behind us is a pumping station with big noisy pumps.
