"Draining The Swamp - The Report

I was at the Science & Tech Museum one Saturday a few months ago where I usually am most Saturdays with the Dirty Hands Club of the Bytown Railway Society.  BRS has a number of pieces of railway rolling stock that we DHC members work on most Wednesday and Saturday mornings.  It's been a good experience for me as there are a number of guys (I call them my "maestros" or "Jedi Masters") who have shown me how to operate the various pieces of machine shop machinery and where I've been able to upgrade my tool and equipment skills.

Ross mentioned to me about a report on dewatering the basement.  As I previously mentioned, my experience with playing in the water goes back to when I was around 8 years old.  In addition to digging ditches with bulldozers, scrapers, graders, Grade-alls, and other big boy toys.  I've laid sewer pipe, water pipe, hydro pipe (they're called high-tension wires), in addition to smoking a pipe once upon a time.

If you travel down Greenbank Road, you'd never know there was a 6" water pipe on the east side of the road between Hunt Club and Fallowfield Roads.  That got installed the summer of 1967.  As you go south on Greenbank after Hunt Club, you go over a large "overpass".  That's where I first experienced leda clay in digging the hole for that super-sized galvanized steel culvert.  That was a really good summer for me as I got to play with some 75% Forcite - 400 pounds of it going "KABOOM!!!" all at once, blasted rock flying all over the place and bouncing off the trees!!  Almost wiped out a car with a rock the size of a small Ford Focus.  Which is why I still like to hover around a construction site where the heavy equipment is whenever I get the chance.

But I digress...............   (Wow, have I ever digressed!!!)  Back to the topic at hand.  Draining the swamp.

I took a look at the report and decided that I would do my own report.  So one Thursday I went down into the basement, took a look around, took some photos, did some pondering and came up with a plan.  I then took all of this information and put it into a report which I called "Draining the Swamp - Dewatering The Basement at the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) Smiths Falls Station". 

If you want an autographed copy of the report, let me know, eh!  (Okay guys, that's a joke, eh!!)

That was back in April.  Shortly afterwards, George Ward, Ross Robinson and I huddled.  If the recommendations in my report were to be implemented, I was going to need some help.  I'm not so full of piss-n-vinegar as I was 22 years ago and hauling pails of heavy clay through basement walls and up-and-down stairs is not exactly my idea of fun and exercise.  I was prepared to make it happen but I was going need some help.  George said he would arrange to get some help and Ross said he would stick-handle it through the bureaucracy.

And that's where things stood until last June 30th.