Enable
Leisure and Culture (ELC) is a registered charity, contracted by Wandsworth
Council to manage and develop the council’s parks, commons and playgrounds.
Working in
conjunction with sub-contractors such as idverde. ELC takes responsibility for
monitoring the grounds maintenance across a total of 200 sites.
Enable
also advises Wandsworth Council on its responsibilities with respect to
legislation relating to biodiversity and best practice in the ecological
maintenance of parks. Among the sites under their watchful eye are the sports
pitches, of which there are 95 football pitches, 10 cricket squares, bowling
greens and running tracks.
“A
lot of the sites are on made up ground and experience major problems with
drainage,” says Andrew Green, Enable’s Parks Officer, Sports Provisions. “We
have carried out aeration down to 300mm but it’s not enough to get to the
pans.”
Andrew
called on the services of Terrain Aeration whom he has used for around 20 years
to deal with waterlogging problems, most recently for Tooting Common, with its
six senior football pitches which became waterlogged in the winter season;
along with Garratt Park and Fishponds Playing Fields. Terrain Aeration’s
Terralift was brought in to apply deep penetration aeration to relieve the
problem.
The
machine uses a JCB road breaker hammer to drive a hollow probe one metre into
the soil. This is needed, especially on made up ground, because it is usually
so compact at depth it requires the hammer to get through. Once the probe
reaches the optimum depth, compressed air is released up to a maximum of 20Bar
(280psi). This blast fractures the compacted soil to allow drainage and deep
aeration.
The probe
is withdrawn and, in the case of the work for Wandsworth, the process repeated
using one and a half metre spacings on a staggered grid pattern. This means
each shot interconnects the fissures. On the tail end of the blast, dried
seaweed is injected which sticks to the walls of the fractures and fissures.
Over time,
this expands and contracts with the moisture content in the soil to effectively
keep the ground drained. At Wandsworth the 1½" probe holes created by
the Terralift machine were backfilled with Lytag aggregate to provide a
semi-permanent aeration/ventilation shaft, helping to keep the whole aeration
process working.
Put
simply, Andy Green says: “We wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. We find the
Terrain Aeration process is a cost-effective solution, without the need to dig
up pitches and lay drainage.
