Works have progressed well this week, with over 2000 tonnes of the original 1960's asphalt surfacing removed off site for recycling by sub-contractor E&J Douglas. The large planers took the asphalt layer off to a level above the existing concrete deck surface, so that it wasn't damaged. This is because the concrete surface installed between 1963 and 1966 is not perfectly level and we needed to avoid damage to the structural slab from such large milling machines. The next stage, which also commenced this week, is to use much smaller milling machines to gently scrape, or scabble, the remaining asphalt to expose the concrete surface without damaging it. This process takes a number of "passes" to make sure that this process does not damage the slab before surface preparation can take place to make sure that the new waterproofing will stick to the concrete.
The contractor, Volker Laser on behalf of Volker Stevin, have also started to remove the smaller Half Battered (HB) kerbs from lane 2 and to tidy up the concrete upstand that they leaned against. This is a labour intensive job and requires workers using spades to remove old bedding sand and mortar from the upstand. Volker laser have removed around 500 linear metres of kebing off site to date (just another 1750m to go before we need to remove the larger L shaped kerbs from lane 1!). Milling of the surface will continue for a few weeks yet as we need to scabble an area of approximately 16,500m2.