Another very early start for Heronshaw meetings in Norfolk with David Townsend, the structural surveyor and later with Steve Martin of Bamber Roof Trusses. Between times trying to visit planners at NNDC office in Cromer and North Walsham without much success.
Later home to another Local Government meeting this time at The Alwyn School, Ramsey, for the third in a sequence, again tussling successfully with Derek Holly. Home to bed with Diana
Yet another very tiring and demanding day. It started with me being woken at 6.00am and having to quickly shower and shave to enable Diana to use the bathroom at her normal time. Then a quick breakfast and rush out, packing for an overnight stay in case that was needed. The journey went very well indeed, for leaving near 7.00am avoids the Cambridge traffic, and I actually arrived at the offices of David Townend, the structural surveyor, with half an hour to spare for my 9.30am appointment. I had a good meeting with him, showing him my piling plan and roof truss sketches, and he agreed that a viable design could be put together out of timber that would meet the building regulations.
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They had produced another boat-house in Horning and, turning up these files, he was able to confirm that piling on 3 metre centres (with telegraph poles supporting 2 tons each) would be sufficient, but we would put extra piles in at key positions for flexibility and try to get Amis to tie the piles to the quay-heading to give the structure lateral stability which was always going to be the other problem from that of supporting the roof. On to Cromer and the offices of the North Norfolk District Council where I met the head of building control who directed me to their North Walsham Office. I was not going to leave Cromer until I had walked around the cliff-tops and had a snack lunch in the cafe at the top of the beach access. I also wandered along to the old lifeboat station where I found about eight crab boats hauled out on the trailers and tractors.
Then on to the NNDC North Walsham office (which was in the old Town Hall) where after I found the building control officers unavailable until mid-afternoon which was a blow. Drove on to Heronshaw and, the roof truss man from Bamber not being arrived yet, I took the chance to walk up and see Mr Howlett and managed to talk to him about his own similar boat-house design. He was quite a mine of information on piling and also gave me some detail of local contractors. I was kept talking quite a while and was then late back to Heronshaw where the unfortunate Steve Martin from Bamber Roof Trusses Ltd had been kept waiting an hour and was just about to give me up. He had prepared some roof calculations of cost, load capacity and weight and, although incomplete, would give us something to plan on.
I was just about to leave when Jack and Dolly arrived for their visit to the properties, but I had little time to speak to them for I had decided to return home for my evening's meeting. A fair journey but I telephoned ahead and picked up my tea at McDonalds as Diana was taking the girls to the Happy Eater for a treat. Then a rush to get to The Alwyn School, Ramsey, for the third in the sequence of local government meetings. We found some desire amongst the representatives in the north of the district to be allowed to join Peterborough to which their population looks for services and amenities anyway. Holly got into trouble for calling them the "lowest level of councillor" and I rubbed his nose in this for he had just been accusing me of scoring points by talking about segmenting the district. Home quite late, but Diana was still awake and so we went to bed together.