road plate hire

A customer of Southdown’s for over 25 years, going back to the Jones/Iron Fairy days has been busy inventing. And come up with the EVACSTAC prefabricated, modular fire escape that can be retrospectively installed to virtually any existing high-rise building. Basically an ‘anti-Grenfell’ device, the units once installed come complete with fire hose compatible water supplies, grade A steel access stairs and refuges for those with mobility issues.

There’s been huge interest in them and in order to get the maximum exposure for this truly lifesaving concept, they were booked into the IFSEC 22 fire and safety exhibition at Excel, London.

It’s fair to say the job had its share of wrinkles. Bringing 4.25 m wide modules out of Battersea, round the M25 and then positioning and stacking them on a floor with surprisingly low ground pressure ratings, not to mention just over 1.00 m clearance between the top of the pod to the underside of the ceiling structure.

Fortunately, we’ve got some of the best crew in the business. Whilst one team were charged with the move, other men went to the Excel and marked out the positions to the nearest millimetre. So that when the waggons arrived they could pull into position and work safely with the minimum of fuss.

Pictures courtesy of Nick Briody

PDF Specifications for the Job

EXCELLING 8

EXCELLING 9

At the end of a busy year we’re pleased to assist civil engineers of note, J.Murphy & Sons Ltd, realise their solution with a tricky bit of infrastructure..

A section of a road bridge on the busy A1189 at Stratford has culverts underneath the road deck. These culverts have the inglorious but vital duty of carrying millions of gallons of sewage at that end of the metropolis.

Prior inspection had highlighted issues with the cast iron slabs that form the roofs of the 8 foot wide channels, which in turn formed the only support for the road deck.. This resulted in a prohibitive 7.5 t weight limit being imposed on the carriageway.

This situation could only be temporary as
A) The road was a vital route for HGV traffic and
B) The issues with the culverts had to be addressed as soon as possible.

So we and the Murphy’s designers worked up a scheme whereby the use of fabricated bearing strips, running in line with the culverts supporting walls, formed the bridging points for some mighty 3 metre x 3.5 metre S355 roadplates that were designed to carry any likely traffic loadings allowing the full 44 t GVW to be reinstated on the bridge.. Each one of the 30 units supplied had to be made to fine tolerance so they could be bolted to the bearing strips and also so that the spare, pre coated units that were supplied, can be replaced with minimal disruption.

With all of this installed before Christmas 2021, the important restorative work on the culverts can continue into 2022 with no impact of traffic flows and the travelling public being blissfully unaware of hard work going on just below their wheels.

An industrial client came to us with an urgent problem to solve.

A problem in the supply chain meant that they had been landed with thousands of tonnes of gypsum based boarding material that needed storing for some months whilst it could be dealt with safely.

Ideally, it needed stockpiling on a concrete hardstand – but their factory works was at full capacity and such a large area could not be turned over to such an unproductive use.

They had an area of adjoining grassland that, providing it could be sealed at the base and could be worked on by machinery in a way that could guarantee zero surface damage or risk of contamination, could be allocated temporarily.

A few truck loads later and they had themselves a hard, flat and smooth area 24 metres x 12 metres. Comprising of 16 pieces of our substantial 6m x 3m x 25mm solid steel plates

Using such large panel sizes not only greatly reduced the seams, but because the plates weigh in at over 3.5t each, any tendency for them to rock or move whilst work was ongoing was eliminated.

Some weeks later, the material was carted away and safely processed.

The client scraped the whole area clean and the hardstand was subsequently collected by our transport fleet, leaving the whole job smart and tidy.

We’ve got a long history of providing plating and access solutions for a host of scenarios involving all sorts of influential individuals in British life.

So it was every bit as satisfying to enable in our own small way an event such as the recent G7 summit in Cornwall.

The landing strips and taxiways normally relatively quiet and tucked away Newquay Airport needed a bit of a freshen up ready for when President Biden and his peers arrived with their entourages and seemingly endless toy boxes full of helicopters and motorcades needing somewhere to park.

In fact J.B came with a couple of jumbos – one for him and his massiv’ and one for all his clutter! I wouldn’t want to be picking up his excess baggage charges!

So to keep the job going we’d provided a couple of our larger 6×3 Airside plates.

After a night run up from our Albourne depot, Adrian ‘Mole’ Woolgar arrived as fresh as a Sussex daisy at 8 o’clock sharp this morning at a refuelling installation in the Highlands of Scotland.

Proving once again;

• You can’t beat us for service: delivering the goodies no matter where and when you need them!
• You can’t beat us for range: as we were the only ones able to deliver 6 pieces of 3.0m x 1.85m x 40 mm thickness steel complete with anti slip coating and the unbeatable SALLY lifting feature straight out of stock.

So whether you’ve got a problem in the Highlands or the High Street, we’re just a phone call away with the solution!

Pictures courtesy of ‘Mole’

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s a ROADPLATE, the world’s fastest man made object!

During the 1950’s the U.S military carried out a series of tests in order to see the effects of atomic weapons in various scenarios.

One of these, carried out on the 26th July 1957, involved sinking a 485 foot deep shaft in the desert and detonating a nuclear bomb in the bottom.

For reasons that have been lost to the mists of time, someone elected to place a half ton steel road plate over the head of the excavation – in all probability, to prevent the technicians working around the site setting up test apparatus, from accidentally falling in.

Anyhoo – in the aftermath of the explosion, which by all accounts resembled a giant roman candle, all of the results and gear were checked. Mysteriously, the roadplate was nowhere to be found.

Robert Brownlee, the astrophysicist who had designed the original test, had it all recreated, this time at a depth of 500 feet, and a similar 500 kg steel plate was installed. On the 27th August 1957 the second device was detonated and this time it was all captured on high speed cameras. Brownlee used the frames to calculate the speed of the plate as it was blasted skywards at a rate of 125,000 mph! To put that in perspective, escape velocity for a spacecraft is a mere 25,000 mph.

This made the pair of them the fastest man made objects by some mark and for years afterwards physicists argued on the fate of these hypersonic trench covers. More recently, with the advent of super computers and greatly increased knowledge of how objects moving at those sorts of speeds behave, it’s been established that neither one would have been completely vaporised before they left the Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s also been calculated that they would have passed Pluto as early as 1961 and still continue their voyage of discovery in deep space, seeking out new life and new civilizations – boldly going where no item of non-mechanical plant has gone before. 😉

‘Time and tide wait for no man…’

St. Marher 1225 AD

So, even in the grip of a global pandemic the ceaseless task of stabilising the beaches and shingle banks around our coastline must continue.

Fortunately, for the people charged with actually doing the work, technology has moved on a bit since the 13th Century, when ox carts and peasant labourers were the bulk carriers of choice.

Nowadays huge excavators shovel sand and aggregate into 6 wheel drive dump trucks 5 tonnes at a time, that when fully freighted, weigh in at 60 tonnes plus.

The downside of all this titanic ironmongery is that as soon as they come off a section of mobile beach and into areas where either there’s a paved road, or a zone that relies on plant roots and grasses to keep it from moving, the massive wheel loads need mitigation.

As was the case at Hythe in Kent where Mackley Construction had this very problem.

Over 2 days 100 tonnes of 3m x 1.5m x 25mm PLATES where delivered and installed by our dedicated team of Heavy lift HIAB and Low Loaders… solving the problem and keeping the project in motion…

As we go into the new school year trying to find a pathway to the ‘new normal’ teachers and headmasters are faced with a range of problems well outside the norm. This includes how to get staff, pupils and parents in and out of school premises safely and still maintaining social distancing.

Those lucky enough to have sports grounds and green spaces in and around their premises have been able during the dry weather to use them as thoroughfares for people and vehicles – often with great success.

However, as we move into autumn and winter, it’s clear these measures will be remaining in place for the foreseeable future. This means that unless steps to mitigate damage to unpaved areas are taken, it will become either messy, muddy or impossible to use these extra pathways and roads safely.

Fortunately we at roadplatehire have been preparing by ensuring we have adequate stocks of temporary roadway panels and the construction industries ‘go to’ solution for tough, easy to install temporary footways – ‘Walkovers’. These fully compliant HD rubber mats lock safely together to form a trip free runway at 1.2 m wide (wheelchair width) and can be laid, lifted and reconfigured without any specialist tools or training.

Contact the hire team today who can advise you on what would best suit your needs and budget.

For a bit of instant, secure, pop-up storage you can’t whack the sturdy ambience of a good old fashioned shipping container.

So buy or hire from us. Huge stocks with sizes from 8ft x 5ft through to 45ft x 8ft. High cubes and standards. Glossy or mossy – one at a time or all at once. All the colours of the rainbow…

Our deliveries and collection with our own FORS compliant fleet. Ground level lifting rig (no working at height) and Supertruck (short wheel base) trucks available for tight sites.

Call George today for a delivered price with unbeatable service and value.

Here’s a good example of one of those weird little jobs for which we had a weird little solution.

A customer had a skeletal arctic trailer which needed an MoT. These involve a rolling road brake test, which to work properly, should have the trailer loaded. In this case for a twin axle set up – about 14 + tonnes.

But if you’re in the middle of rural Sussex, such a thing in a fully loaded ISO container so it will fit safely and securely to the securing lugs  is not that easy to come by at short notice.

So they brought the trailer to us, we loaded on to it an empty 20ft ISO from the hire fleet, and then proceeded to stuff it full of 7 heavy duty road plates at 1.60 tonnes each using a Supertruck.

So if you need a heavyweight box – contact the Greatest!

Pictures by George Burling