At long last following the recent floods we have finally been successful in placing the coffer dams at the sluice gate and the tailrace exit . There still remain some small water leaks but we are reasonably confident that these can be contained. Indeed it has been water ingress across the coffer dam (now buttressed with several hundred sand bags) that has been the main problem plus the weather which has caused two delays (the first storm on Sept 23-24 brought water up to the window sills of the mill but scoured off a lot of the silt from the July 13-14 flood).
The next step will be to commence work assoon as possible on tailrace excavation and bank reinforcement. Key work on the turbine area cannot commence until the main salmon run on the fish pass ends on December 10th. This will most probably delay the commissioning period about two months until late January/early February, 2013.
The pictures from September 24 give some idea of why we had delays!
