Projects
Re-concreting of footpaths, Case Study
Objective
To break out and remove old concrete footpaths and road within the cemetery, and to completely renew.
We were delighted to be doing this work for Irthlingborough Town Council at the cemetery, so close to where we all live. And it was a tad emotional for a lot of us, who live in Irthlingborough, and found ourselves to be surrounded by so many familiar names. The concrete paths around the cemetery and the main road were full of trip hazards and the only remedy was to take them all up and start again. We kept the cemetery open whilst we were carrying out the work, and helped people get about the cemetery where we could.
The old concrete paths were well-made, and some of them laid at about 5” or 6” thick, but our 6-tonne excavator soon broke them out and we took the waste away on our own grab lorry. We dug out the old sub-base and laid Type 1 Granite MOT on a geotextile membrane. Some of the paths were curved, so we used plastic fascia board to create the curved sides.
On the majority of the paths we used 4×2 timber to create a shutter on either side. We lifted these a bit higher than the new sub-base to leave 5” (125mm) for new concrete.
A long 150-metre stretch of the path had to be pumped with an overhead ‘boom pump’, which pumps it in from above. For the remainder of the paths we used a dumper truck to move the concrete into place. And when we concreted the road to the old chapel, the concrete lorries were able to drive down the already-prepared road. In total we poured 80 metres of RC40 concrete with fibres, a total of approx. 180 tonnes. With the paths and road concreted, we finished the sides with topsoil and grass seed.
With the job finished after a bit less than 3 weeks, we completlely opened up the cemetery to the general public. We believe the old concrete was in excess of 60 years old, and of course we hope the new concrete paths and road will last a lot longer than that!
