Fulham Football Club – Training Ground – Flood Relief Scheme
October has seen the Glenco team presented with an interesting challenge to alleviate the severe flooding on the site. The flooding occurred on a regular basis due to inadequate drainage to the hard landscaped areas which predominantly consisted of a series of soakaways which quickly became inundated during intense rain events or longer periods of rain. The large catchment area of the main car park was on a pronounced fall and served by one gulley – once this was overtopped torrents of surface water flooded adjoining areas of the site and even the goal keeping training area which was at the lower end of the site.
Glenco proposed a flood relief scheme which involved the installation of a full sized road gulley to catch the run off from the main car park. Also an existing gulley in the middle car park would be connected to the main surface water pipe and a new yard gulley installed on the other side of the middle car park to catch all the surface water run off from this area too. Finally the main surface water pipe would cut through another 20 metres of car park surface to pick up the storm water culvert. Finally the site would have proper connected drainage rather than relying on the far less effective soakaway system, that had resulted in large areas of standing water around the site after heavy rain events.
The main gulley was to be connected to a storm water culvert located on site, but more than 60 metres away. It would be necessary to excavate through 35 linear metres of soft landscape, under an existing astroturf walkway and then through 30 metres of car park surface, picking up the other two surface water gullies into the proposal. A careful fall of 1 CM per metre maintained an even depth to the trench and was carefully maintained with the laser level. Due to the preponderance of services running through the area, great caution was required while excavating and copious scans where made a recorded with cable avoidance tools. Some services were not marked on the plans and some did not show up on the CAT scan – water pipes in polyethylene wont show up so excavating was at all times precarious!
As the site is a high end facility, great importance is attached to the quality of the reinstatement too and also maintaining access to the various facilities used by the players and staff. Only small runs were attempted at a time and then these sections needed to be reinstated professionally to maintain access and to minimise any disruption. Part of the success of the scheme was to effect a very complicated drainage work without occasioning any inconvenience to the users of the facility! The tarmac will be reinstated on a concrete base and during normal usage will quickly blend in with the original car park and drive accesses.
This will have been an interesting challenge where the quality of what is under the surface will be as important as the usual quality that is brough to the surface by the Glenco team!
