Anderson Shelter Restoration: Day 23

Today we worked on the entrance to the shelter. We had to remove the soil at the front of the shelter doorway to a depth of 1 foot to create a step. With this step in place, there will still be a 2-foot drop to the floor of the shelter. This job took several hours due to the ground being mostly stone, and we even had to remove a concrete block which once supported a fence post. Luckily, we managed to narrowly avoid a submerged electric cable, which was about a foot down, and will eventually be covered up again!

The next step will be to line the outside edges of the hole with sand bags to create a wall in front of the shelter doorway. We will also line the step with weed control matting to prevent anything growing.

Exposed electric cable. . .

Once the step had been dug, we lowered the lower-centre panel into its final resting place, creating the correctly-sized doorway at the front of the shelter. A wooden beam was cut to size, and bolted in place to clamp the 3 front panels together. 

The next job will be to cover the roof of the shelter with sandbags at the point where the front and rear panels meet the roof sections to stop soil / moisture getting into the shelter where the panels join. The step will also be lined with sandbag 'walls'.