“The job will be a piece of cake for you, Ed,” they said. “You have a great team of workers - so with your engineering background it will be merely a case of jotting down the tasks, prioritizing, and setting them to work. It’s all quite simple really.”
“Ah… right, of course,” I responded, reassured by the apparent clarity of the task at hand.
Later that evening the first of the howling winter gales rolled in. Beach fence poles snapped like matchsticks, fence wire bundled into spaghetti-like balls, waves dismantled walkway steps, foam and water hurtled up one pathway, smashing a gate and lightly injuring a worker. Gutters and pergola roofs blew back over house roofs, flotsam and jetsam was scattered onto the Island, several trees came crashing down and some of our roads were flooded where leaves and branches had blocked the drains.
The floods had halted all trains, bus services to many areas had been cancelled and one worker’s bakkie had been trapped in deep water on his way in to work with several colleagues. Notwithstanding, the four hardy workers who eventually fought their way through the storm, set to work fixing and clearing.
In the midst of all this, the phone rang in the office “Good morning, Shannon here.” “Ah Shannon, how are you this morning?" "Very well thank you Mrs. Islander - and yourself?" "Shannon, you’ll remember that I mentioned yesterday that our shower tap along the pole fence is dripping a little? Don’t want to waste water now, do we?" “No problem. I’ll get the maintenance team onto it right away.”
That night the words ”this job will be a piece of cake” briefly surfaced in a nightmarish dream.
Several weeks later – once the fence was back up (though a little the worse for wear), the roads were drivable, the gutters were up again, the pergolas had been repaired, the drains had been cleared, the streets neatly swept and even the dripping tap repaired, we were able to make a start on one of our most urgent projects - commissioning the tank and pump system to start filling the pond.
Thanks to the temporary piping we had laid to divert rainwater into the cascades from most house roofs alongside it, the pond was already a quarter full. Now came the challenge of treating the water from Potsdam to a degree of sanitisation suitable for the pond. In a nutshell, this involved first treating it in the new tanks, testing the quality via test pools in the cascades and then pumping it up into the pond. Aside from a delay of a month or so, when the Potsdam water mysteriously suddenly stopped flowing (eventually traced by a CoCT official to a municipal valve closed near Boundary road), we eventually finished filling the pond one day before Christmas.
With the pond filled, we turned our attention to running water down the cascades. As noted time and again in discussions on the Island, the cascades are regarded as a particularly lovely feature of the Island and enjoyed by all so, happily, we have now succeeded in getting them flowing again. Gardening department is in the process of purchasing water lilies and plants for both the pond and the cascades and we are hoping that they will also serve to reduce the level of green algae in the pond as they shade the water and absorb nutrients.
Another huge benefit that the relative abundance of low-cost treated water from the tank system has made possible is the greening of the Island for the first time in several years, as the irrigation system is once again able to operate at full capacity.
With our focus now firmly on boosting property values through Island appeal – by upgrading and modernizing the ‘image’ of the island - we tackled the refurbishment of the shabby jetty outside the main office. Whilst not a huge job in itself, it nevertheless took more than six weeks to complete – progress being hindered repeatedly by the ongoing string of emergency repairs that always absorb so much of the maintenance team’s time. Anyway, that upgrade being successful, the Mariner jetty is our next target upgrade…as soon as possible.
Through our ongoing tasks, we’ve become ever more aware that as the Island ages, the need for ever-increasing maintenance work on Island infrastructure becomes ever more apparent. Several strategies are being discussed One immediate plan in respect of longer-term thinking has been to undertake a camera survey of all major sewer lines which will identify root-crushed pipes and manholes, building rubble in the pipes and more. It’s on the cards as the next preventative action.
During the winter, we had a particularly bad run of blocked sewers, especially in Mariner and lower Winton. Turned out that – particularly in Winton – the reason was 'wet wipes' as, for some reason, residents (or their nannies and domestics) had been flushing wet-wipes down the toilet. These do not dissolve but gang up into little bundles which then block pipe entrances down in the manholes. Clearing these has been the cause of much lost maintenance time and cost so please folks, do not flush wet wipes down the toilet.
Sometimes new modern equipment can make a huge difference to results. Marc had recently purchased the high-pressure water trailer for the Island - a new equipment item that has become a ubiquitous tool for general cleaning too. It is now constantly used to clean everything from refuse bins and rooms to pond edges, paving, storm-water drains and spider webs from garage doors and exterior walls. By training our workers to use it - still a work in progress - the improved cleanliness of the Island is being achieved. Discussions are underway to even further extend its use to drain cleaning and pipe flushing using new reverse-jet tools.
In addition to the original tank system installation and the water trailer, Marc was also instrumental in upgrading our workshop with new productivity tools for the workers and tradesmen. A recent example of their effectiveness has been the dune fence. To enable the correct wire tension of the top strand on the dune fence the new tools included a manual tool for tightening this. The huge improvement in the appearance of the fence is testament to the adage ’new tools sweep clean’ (with apologies to Mrs Malaprop).
Thanks are due to the maintenance team for their sometimes-thankless tasks – and to all residents for your positive encouragement and support.
Ed Jakins
Maintenance Manager