Educational Establishments
Tennis: first coat
The Grange
New polytunnel
Tennis: painting completed
Both the school’s blocks of tarmac courts were resurfaced with a new layer of tarmac. The Prep school courts, originally just a block of three courts, had a fourth court constructed at the same time.
Tarmac court painting
One block of tarmac courts painted with anti- slip paint - August 2013
The Prep school’s block of courts, resurfaced in 2007, were painted in the same colours to match the new Durrant artificial pitch.
The courts had become slippery, due to the high usage, plus consequent wear and tear.
The paint used was called Sports-Cote
Excel - a water based polyurethane coating with the necessary player/surface interaction characteristics to meet the current standards, which is 75% slip resistance when damp for netball. After pressure washing and scrubbing the tarmac, the paint was applied in two coats over two days, with each coat at 90 degrees to the other. Finally, the four netball courts and four tennis courts were remarked.
This work was carried out by H C Courts and the whole job took just a week to complete. The results have been fantastic and well received by all sports staff and sports club members alike.
The Grange
School acquires 2.5 acre property off site for TSIMS - January 2012
The school acquired a large property three miles off-site in the small village of Kingston St Mary. Called The Grange, it was formerly a private residential property for the elderly. It consists of the main building and a pair of two storey annexes, so was ideal for the creation of an International Middle School to compliment the current International School on site at the main school campus.
Gardener’s compound Work started in January 2012 to
renovate and update the campus and it opened in May 2012.
The Grange can accommodate up to sixty pupils for boarding - it currently has forty-eight, within less than two years of opening. The site comes with 2.5 acres of gardens which the team have to look after. The garden is a mature country residential garden with large shrubs and an expansive lawn. The team took the garden on in a fairly neglected state, and have worked hard to reduce and replace many of these shrubs and to improve the lawn itself through cultural practices over the last two years. The acquisition of a van and trailer has made all the difference when maintaining The Grange - we struggled for the first seven months using a school minibus and a hired trailer which proved a logistical nightmare. We finally convinced the Bursar to purchase our own!
1st XI cricket square Two tracks relaid - July 2011
Two adjacent tracks were relaid by the team at the end of the 2011 summer term. This was to address the issue of undesirable levels on this part of the square. After stripping off the remaining turf
and excavating the bowling ends of the grass nets, we stripped off the existing turf from the two tracks to be relaid. We then excavated the soil to 100mm, using a contractor with excavator, and used this soil to relevel the bowling ends of the grass nets. After consolidating the soil, we laid the
turf from the square on the bowling ends, fertilised and irrigated thoroughly. We then verti-drained the sub base to a depth of 150mm using a hired Charterhouse Verti-Drain and installed road formers to the desired finished levels. We used Surrey Loam’s GOSTD 125,
New polytunnel - planting begins
which we had delivered in twenty IBC bags. These were introduced one at a time into each of the tracks, raked to distribute the loam and then consolidated thoroughly using a utility vehicle. After raking the surface to form a key, we introduced the next bag into each track and repeated the process until we reached the top of the road formers. Once we were happy that the consolidated levels were accurate to the road formers, we removed them, back filled the voids with loam, consolidating thoroughly, and then raked over the surface to form a tilth. We then over seeded using Limagrain MM50 - a pure rye mix of grass seed at 60g/m2
- using a
Sisis Variseeder and fertilised with a pre- seed fertiliser.
One of these tracks came in to play last season and we were very happy with the results.
Gardener’s compound
Construction of new Gardener’s compound and polytunnel - Winter of 2011/12
Due to the current location of the gardener’s compound being earmarked for development, the decision was taken to move the operation to another location adjacent to our main storage sheds. This involved the re-alignment of a security fence, removal of several small trees, levelling of the ground and construction of a new poly tunnel with overhead irrigation system and sliding benches, fence, shed and nursery bed along with water and electricity supplies being installed. Conditions were generally difficult to work in, but time was of the essence to allow for the poly tunnel to be ready for starting off the summer bedding. The project took the team nearly three months to complete, but has made a tremendous difference to the whole operation of the gardening side of things.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014 PC 99
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