Bowling Green Ditch Board Replacement

Click here See Detailed Description of the work.

Click here see How to Repaint the Head Colours.

Allow three weeks. Most of these photographs span a two day period during which we fabricated and installed about one sixth of the ditch boards.

1 of 19 photographs. The old ditch boards have been removed and taken to the dump.

#2. John Heimbuch and Colin Murray drilling a front board with two, half inch holes for 3ft long reinforcing bars that will anchor each front section of ditch board.

#3 Jim Curley feeling the heat! Note the stack of prepainted black, back boards.

#4. Mike Comba laying out the west end components. Prepainted back boards, spacers and front boards.

#5. Colin cleaning out the west ditch ready to place the prefabricated ditch boxes. See in front of benches, the previously installed south ditch board awaiting its cap board.

#6. Mike fabricating the next box. See below, the use of spacing block to hold front board horizontally during assembly.

#7. Harvey Talbot making sure the assembly ends are square prior to attaching the spacers. The front board has been supported by removable spacing blocks. Spacer attachment screws can be seen in pre-drilled holes awaiting tightening.

#8. Mike and Colin continuing the process. Boxes are laid end to end so that the final box dimensions can be calculated and a gap left for machinery.

#9. More framing. Mike notices that the last spacer will interfere with a sprinkler head. He is pointing to it with the framing square. The spacer must be moved.

#10. Mike repositions the spacer to avoid the sprinkler head. The spacers are attached to the underside of the backboard with two 2.5" screws.

#11. Note the sprinkler head in the ditch below the framing square. Mike avoided placing the spacer at that location.

#12. To install the front board, Mike placed three removable vertical spacing blocks to hold the front board horizontally during attachment. Here he can be seen removing one of the temporary blocks. The ditch has been cleaned and prepared for installation. The boxes were installed individually.

#13. John Heimbuch prepareing to lay a string to start the installation allignment process.

#14. Place the first box in the trench leaving a gap for machinery to pass through. Level this south-west box to the (already installed) south ditch board and then level it in the trench by tamping sand beneath the spacers and under the back and front boards.

#15. Helen Kret helping with the installation by packing sand under the spacers, front and back boards. The hammer head was used as a tamper in the confined space.

#16. John Heimbuch filling the base of the box with sand. Enough to cover the spacers.

#17. Galvanized framing plates were added to the back of the ditch boards to tie the installed boxes together. Then a white cap board was added. The cap board was drilled and painted to mark the rink centers.

#18. Note the reinforcing bar screwed with a tubing bracket to the back of the board.

#19. Note the front and back galvanized framing plates and the coloured rink centres on the cap board. The front framing plate sits just below the level of the front ditch board so that it doesn't interfere with the mower.