Stoke Mandeville summary thread.

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This is the Stoke facilities/sports building

This is the Disabled Target Shooters of Great Britain building.

Spot the difference yet?

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An inspection visit in early June 2007 revealed plenty to do, including an asbestos roof sporting a considerable collection of holes.

Financial collections were taking place in many different places, at events, shoots, by donations, and any other way anyone could think of to raise the significant amount needed to simply make the building watertight.

Make no mistake, the Shooters had pools of water inside their building!

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Terry D posted this on 12.07.07

I'm absolutely delighted to announce that, at yesterday's meeting with the Airgun Manufacturer's and Traders Association, it was unanimously agreed that a sum of £15,000 would be donated to the appeal. This is designed to kick-start the refurbishing programme as soon as the estimates are in.

Furthermore, the organisors of the Midland Game Fair immediately pledged a further £1000, plus a whole range of fundraising options which are incredibly promising.

So, that's £16k in the kitty, plus the kind donations already received, which means we'll soon be making noise and replacing stuff. Lobberman is getting the estimate for the roof on Wednesday, after which it's all systems go.

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Donations continued to come in from Shooters, Clubs, organisations, all types of generous people dug in to help.

Then on 12.10.07 the roof works started, with the scaffolding to protect the sprayers who were to seal the roof.

Picture 1

Picture 2

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18.10.07, the roof works started in earnest.

From Pete Snock, our on-the-spot reporter....

Report from Stoke Mandeville.
Things are really starting to happen at the ranges!

I arranged with Rosie Hughes, the group coordinator, to meet her and her husband Keith at the ranges today, because the company who are doing the roof re-covering work, started today.

I met up with Keith and Rosie, who'd got their slightly before me, at about 11:15 this morning. The lads from the spraying company had been there long enough to set their gear up and have a cuppa whilst 'scoping the joint.

They gave me quite a concise run down of the process involved and it sounds very impressive! Basically it's a resin-based foam application which offers good insulative and waterproofing properties; just what they need down at Stoke Mandeville!!

It's applied via a compressed air line, through a spray gun attached to a very bulky hose. The actual foam seems to be made from a two-pack mixture of a resin and and another, ammonia-like smelling chemical. It doesn't smell too fragrant, but hey...what does that matter!

It's dried in about 10 seconds, so there's no problem with runs or poor coverage, as they can simply blast a load more gear onto the area affected.
They have to prepare the surface, of course, so all the lichen and moss has to be removed from the asbestos sheeting, otherwise the foam won't adhere to the surface and it could cause a blow hole where the moisture stops the foam curing. One of the lads was clearing the vegetation from the roof as his mate was laying it on. Sorted!

They were rained-off yesterday, for the reasons above, so they were anxious to start work because of scheduling issues with head office. Then they couldn't access some parts of the roof because of frosty patches which hadn't yet been melted by the morning sun. This wouldn't have been a problem by midday, so they didn't have long to wait.

The next part of the process involves painting the hardened foam basecoat with an aluminium rubber-based paint, to further seal the building from the elements. I can't remember what this stuff is called, but it comes in 25ltr drums and there's lots of it!! The painting will be done by another bunch of lads from the same company in the next few days. Hopefully I will get along for more stories and pictures then.

They were quite surprised, as I was, that there are few parts of the roof which are strong enough to support the weight of a person, but even so, they must tread carefully. That roof is 50+ years old!
Rosie told me that she always has reservations about workmen being less-than-honest, but her fears soon dissolved when the older of the two blokes pointed out, just by looking at the roof, where the leaks were coming from; that put her mind at rest.

Lots of large tins

Basecoat

That's a long one!

Hard at work


With silver topcoat

Drainage was less than impressive

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10.11.07, the drainage problems were attended to, on a work party.

Pete again,

"The day started at around 10:00

We were discussing the digging work we had to do, and I pointed out to Rich the obvious differences to the plush, aluminium-clad, smoked-glass building which is no more than 60-70 yards away, and is the new stadium for disabled sportspersons, and our 1940's nissen hut. Quite a stark contrast, I can tell you!

Rosie Hughes, the organiser of the British disabled shooting squad, arrived soon after with one of - in fact I think she was our best disabled shooter, Di Coates. Another friendly person. There's a lot of them here!

After a cuppa and a quick introduction we went around the side to look at what needed to be done. We got our shovels and spades out and got cracking!
The sole reason this needed doing was to stop the ingress of water from the surrounding soil [read thick, claggy clay], getting into the walls of the hut and seeping into the ranges, as it has been since I don't know when.

We got the gulley dug out to accept the drainage pipe and shingle which Mr Graham Guest is hopefully sorting out for us. This will, when laid, allow any rain water to drain away into the ground further away from the hut. Sorted.

Then the next job of the day: to re-jig the guttering which was compounding the problem by controlling the water which had been pouring out of the broken joint between two lengths of gutter, by improving the 'fall' on the pipe, whilst diverting the water to a point where its drained further from the walls.

Richard is an engineer for the people who supply, fix and maintain the vacuum pod systems we have in supermarkets, so he already had a selection of off-cuts of 4" tubing and all kind of fitting which we used to do this job.

In these pictures you'll see that we did a pretty good job of using what we had, to do the best we could.

There was also a small job of stemming the flow of water from the overflow from the gent's loo, which was soon rectified by a bit of creative ballcock-bending."

Base of Shooting "hall"

Creative guttering, I work with plastic pipes for a living!

A Rosie between two thorns.

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My view of the same day.

"Well, today really opened my eyes.

Met Pete, as posted above, its great to meet people that we talk to so often.

The contrast between the on-site facilities cannot be over-emphasised.

The look on Rosie's face when the range was dry inside was a great start to the day, and made me realise how small improvements can make life more bearable and facilities more welcoming.

The ditch was dug, and a repair made to the guttering to keep the water away from the building, not earth shattering stuff, but moving toward keeping the place watertight.

The toilets and sinks are in desperate need of replacement, yet all the way around Rosie was telling us what's going where, and how its going to be once its done. It certainly has loads of potential!

Watching Di shoot was awe inspiring, the level of concentration and discipline required to shoot that well was clear, watching Pete shoot at a similar target he showed how far she is ahead of us!
I chickened out due to my fear of making myself look a complete Berk!"

Pete shooting at 10m, with Diane in the background

Look at Pete's score, not the hat!