The New Pavilion - The Story So Far . . .

Posted: April 2009

Well we did do the D&D in the nick of time before the AGM deadline of 31st March. The former was well attended (75 sitting down and a number of disco only attendees after the meal) and the AGM was moderately well attended. For once, being actually under our control, we actually made a much needed profit on the D&D.

Of course the new pav was not really ready and still remains to be finished. The trouble is that members seem to have taken their feet off the gas just because there is a working bar and in the case of most cricketers, as I said at the D&D, I think they have forgotten where the accelerator pedal is. There are lots of little things still to do – many of them not obvious – but we cannot expect visiting teams and particularly people attending lucrative functions not to notice unfinished detail and make do and mend solutions that our own members would perhaps put up with. After the years of toil and tribulation to get this far, I am still determined to have the best pavilion in Hertfordshire at the end of it all.

But time is not on our side. Unless the cricketers get their posteriors in gear, we will not be ready for the beginning of the season and they will have to change in the dank recesses of the old pav. Oh yes, the old pav is still there. We trashed the inside and moved everything of any value and a lot of dubious worth over to the new pav. The result is not immediately obvious till you get up to the loft which now looks like the Augean stable before Hercules got busy. Even Mike Penning, got involved and nearly gave two of his elderly constituents a heart attack. Out for their Sunday afternoon stroll they were thunderstruck to see their Member of Parliament tripping across the field with a litre and a half of vodka in one hand and large bottle of Gordons in the other. He had some fast explaining to do, but it is just as well there was no reporter from The Sun around.

The Chair (Nick Wright to newbies) mobilised an efficient task force to rip the old pav down before Easter but to my weary despair the electrical contractor (who shall be nameless except that he is a member who is an aficionado of all things teutonic and of thirtyish ladies) forgot to organise the removal of the power line to the building. Rather than see his staff go up in a blue light (literally) Nick had to call off the blitzkrieg on the old building. The trouble is, until it is removed the Boxmoor Trust cannot start on the car park which still resembles a bomb site. Meanwhile, our debts continue to mount and we are going to have difficulty in running money making events until the project, including the car park, is entirely finished. We could end up with the bailiffs at the door before we are officially in occupation. I think I may see a use for the suicide doors in the members Room after all.

Posted: May 2007

Construction has started on a new pavilion at Hemel Hempstead Cricket Club after the club got the final all-clear from the Box Moor Trust after seven years of planning. The two-storey building on Heath Park is expected to cost around £370,000..

Chairman of the Heath Park club John Birnie, said the new pavilion was crucial. "It's massive for the club. We've been here for 150 years but we were beginning to lose members because our prefabricated 1960's clubhouse is obsolete. The new pavilion is an absolute must for the survival of the club ."

A sod-turning ceremony held at the club in May was attended by Mayor of Dacorum Cllr Catherine Appleby and MP Mike Penning. Groundwork for the new pavilion is expected to take around a month and a timber frame should go up in June.

Mr Birnie said he hoped the project would be finished by October, when the old pavilion would be pulled down. Once completed, the new clubhouse will feature a large ground-floor function room, with changing rooms and a meeting space on the first floor. Mr Birnie said the new pavilion, first planned in 2000, will help the club to raise funds through hiring room space to other clubs and societies.

Posted: July 2007

The site has now been cleared and marked out and thanks are due to the members who helped to erect the fence. However, as is often the case in building projects, a snag has temporarily halted progress. The proximity of a surface water sewer means that we need a licence from Thames Water to bridge over this sewer before the piling can proceed. Thames Water require to inspect the site before issuing the licence and they have scheduled the inspection for July 10th. This obviously has a knock on effect on the rest of the programme and the project is now unlikely to be finished before late November.

Posted: August 2007

We have started in earnest – honest! We finally got the licence from Thames Water and the ground is being cleared, crushed concrete laid and rolled as a mat for the piling rig and the piles will be driven in during the week beginning 6th August. So from that date the car park will be closed permanently to EVERYONE until the project is finished. For health and safety reasons while the project is ongoing everybody is also banned from the area enclosed by the fencing.

Posted: September 2007

Some time ago I sent round a happy email informing you that the piling for the foundations of the new pavilion was about to start. O, idiot to tempt the fury of the Fates! I had reckoned without the wizardry of our structural engineer, who had recommended one of the biggest piling companies in the land. As cancelled start date followed cancelled start date, it began to dawn on us that our mere £20K job was not exactly a hot priority compared with the multi million pound contracts this company also had to fulfil.

However, the big day finally dawns and Tommo and the bleary eyed Chairman fend off early morning parkers to keep the back passage to the club open. The big red monster of a machine appears. The Chairman is assured that all 51 piles will be set in place within 2 days and the first 10 metre pile is lifted up and thumped lustily into the ground – and completely disappears. Apparently, chalk doesn’t like getting wet and it doesn’t like being pulverised while it is wet and if it is, it reacts by turning into sludge and – you’ve guessed it – we are building on chalk after the wettest summer on record. “No problem,” says the rig driver, “we can connect 2 piles together”. So our budget for piles suddenly doubles in size. But even at 19 metres (think about it, that’s higher than most people’s houses) the pile is still not set. “Oh dear”, says he (actually it was a bit fruitier than that) “I’ll have to ring the office for some fatter piles”. A day later a fat pile is finally pronounced “set” and the Chairman sighs with relief and pops off for some lunch. But when he returns, the monster rig towers idly over a deserted site. The Chairman stabs furiously at his mobile phone and a few moments later, a rig driver with slightly singed ears tells the Chairman it’s not his effing fault and to get in touch with the office or alternatively to get raffled. Of course, the office is now closed and it is only the next morning that we learn that they have run out of fat piles and they are taking their rig away until 26th September and they will charge us another £2,000.00 just to relocate it to the club. The Chairman wonders if piles can give you a heart attack.

Fortunately, Nick Wright – the ex Chair – is a civil engineer and knows a thing or two about foundations. He suggests that after it calms down, the agitated chalk sometimes sets like concrete and a test is worthwhile. “No problem”, agrees our piling company, “That’ll be another grand, thank you” and their test engineer arrives to the sound of ringing tills offstage. He attaches two wires from his test computer to a 10 metre thin pile that failed to set before and the monster gives it a little experimental pat. The pile and the computer vanish underground as if through a stage trapdoor. After some frantic digging, the computer is retrieved – slightly soiled. This time it is attached to the 19 metre skinny pile and much to everyone’s amazement, it stand firm when the monster gives it a thump. So the following Friday, 2 lorry loads of skinny piles arrived and the final load on Monday and we were promised relief from our piles by Wednesday, but the operation went without a hitch and with the car park looking like a mini Stonehenge, the Chairman can at last get some relief – only 2 months late!

But to cap it all...

Out of the blue last week a call to say that the piles will be cropped to size and their caps added this week! It will only remain to add the concrete ring beams upon which the floor is laid and we can finally say goodbye to our pile problems.

But this pain in the rectum does not go so easily. Tommo turns up at 7am to fight with the would be parkers and we are unsurprised when the new machine to crop the piles arrives four hours late. However, all is bustle and activity for the rest of the day and the Chairman settles down in front of the telly at tea time. Cue the telephone: despite their site plan clearly showing the services running through the site and despite our having previously exposed the gas main next to the piles to show where it runs, the pile cropper driver has managed to plough through the gas main! Now, irritated that nobody told him to look at the plan, he goes on strike till we expose the gas. When we point out that it is exposed a metre from where he vandalised it, he insists on striking till we hire in another (more careful) digger to expose the electric cable as well. Yet more unbudgeted expense!

They promise to be finished by next Monday and then their 17 ton crane will arrive to lift in the ground beams. The Chairman can hardly wait for the next disaster.

Posted: October 2007

When last I wrote, I was relieved that the massive ground beams shown in the "before" and "after" pictures opposite were in situ and you could see the shape of the rooms to come. But then I discovered that piles can give you a heart attack: our dearly departed Rolls Royce of foundation firms popped a little extras bill in the post that came to over £30,000 !!

Thank goodness we have finally got rid of those prima donnas and now have local tradesmen who actually want to work with us. We have made good progress with the rest of the foundations and the sleeper walls rose from the ground beams in double quick time.(SEE the picture gallery).The next phase is laying the floor beams on the sleeper walls and slotting in the concrete blocks between these beams to complete the flooring. We will then have built the most expensive open air dance floor in the county.

Unfortunately, the next so-called specialists are the timber frame people. When they took our £15k deposit in April, they made much of the fact that they were a "local" firm based in Sussex. They blithely promised engineering drawings in 6 weeks, a 10 week manufacturing period and erection of the building in a further 3 weeks. Six months later, they are still fumbling on with the drawings which, surprise, surprise, are done in Scotland. I know it is not yet independent, but can Scotland be considered local? We have been promised that the manufacturing period can be shortened to 3 weeks, but that was by the sassenachs and no prize for guessing that the manufacturing is actually done by Rob Roy and his boys in the heather clad glens of the north. I wonder if there is a market for outdoor raves in Hemel......

Posted: December 2007

As anyone driving past the club will know, the beam and block floor is now in place. It has also been approved by the Building Inspector. So far, so good. But, of course, we are not yet home and dry.

The notorious sub prime crisis has made our bankers nervous and although they are still playing ball, they have sent us some hefty legal documents for the Boxmoor Trust to sign. The problem is that The Boxmoor Trust, our landlords, will only grant our new lease when the building is complete. But we need this lease as collateral for our loan from the bank. So the bank want The Boxmoor Trust to agree that if for some unforseen reason we blow the bank's money and fail to complete the building, the bank can take over the site and complete it themselves. The lease would then be forfeit to the bank.

The Boxmoor Trust has been very supportive of the project so far and one would hope that the Trustees would have no problem with this proposal, since it relieves them of the possibility of a part finished building on their land. In addition, of course, the lease states that the building can only be used as a pavilion - so, in the unlikely event that (after a record of 150 years of successfully operating) the club goes bust , it is not as if the bank can open a supermarket on the site. But we must wait and see what the good Trustees decide.

Meanwhile, there is no point in erecting the timber frame until this issue is resolved and unfortunately, the new season is not many months away. So I am afraid that if we get enmeshed in a lawyerfest of legal nit picking between the bank and The Boxmoor Trust, then our chances of occupying our Rolls Royce pavilion by next season are nil. Just as depressing, we are in danger of losing a lot of the revenue from room hiring that we had negotiated. All members should keep there fingers and any other members they can manage crossed for a favourable result from the meeting of The Boxmoor Trust on 12th December.

Posted: January 2008

Well, the only person to get a Xmas present from our landlords was their lawyer as they handed the problem (and presumably, fat fees) on to him. In fairness, the papers covering this project were signed so many moons ago that The Boxmoor Trust could perhaps be forgiven for having forgotten that they had agreed then to allow us to borrow against the new pavilion. But it took a month of the lawyers fruitlessly circling round each other to get nowhere. Then, after a bout of legal sabre rattling, a meeting was at last arranged between two of the Boxmoor Trustees and the present and a past Chairman of the Club. Ten minutes later, the matter was settled and we could pick up the pieces again - if the bank was still ready to play in the midst of a deepening credit crunch. It took a further two months of breath holding while the paperwork ground through the bank's approval machinery, before it finally came across. The only question now is not, "will the pav be built?" but "will the Chairman not be pushing up daisies by the time it is built?"

Posted: April 2008

So many months had elapsed since the foundations crept above ground that old grannies no longer stopped me in the street to demand when the building would start. Instead, they crossed the road when they saw me coming in case I mugged them for their pensions. But, the rumour that we had run out of cash was not true. However, we had placed the order and paid the deposit for the timber frame so long ago and then done nothing that the timber frame company seemed quite put out when we asked them to deliver. Indeed, almost a month was spent arguing about how to deal with a discrepancy of 4" between the plans and the actual foundations. Four inches over a length of 18 metres? Give me a break. Suffice to say that we finally got a delivery date of 21st April for the timber frame. But then I was asked so many times by the members if I was really sure it would arrive that even I began to doubt it.

On the 20th April, the first Sunday game of the season is over and the lads are well satisfied with their win and with the new lager we have introduced at the bar. After a few merry tinctures, they gradually drift away until only Tommo (who else?) is left at the bar on his third “one for the road”. He twists my arm for yet another last drink on the promise that he will help put out the cones to fend off the early morning parkers just in case the lorry does arrive the next day. As he weaves his way to the loo, I realise that in this task Tommo might just about be as useful as, well, a traffic cone and I finally prise him out of the club around midnight. I decide to put out the cones anyway and as we emerge from the car park (Tommo at an uncertain shamble in the rear) we are transfixed by a powerful beam of light and there is a mighty roar and a myriad other flashing lights and I realise that the biggest artic in the world is bearing down upon us. THE TIMBER FRAME HAS ARRIVED 12 HOURS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE!  Even Tommo sobered up – well, momentarily. You may also catch sight of an ecstatic Chairman in the Gazette this week, photographed the next morning as the numbered pieces of the new pav were unloaded from the juggernaut . Keep your fingers crossed that the jigsaw fits together!

If you go down in the town today, you're sure of a big surprise! Yes, the ground floor has now arisen and a number of stalwarts of the club were able to watch us beat Radlett in a friendly at the weekend from the wonderful vantage point of what will eventually be the players balony. At the rate that our Custom Homes erection team is going, the frame should be complete in a few weeks. Fingers, arms, legs, in fact everything crossed please!

Posted: July 2008

When will I learn to curb my foolish optimism? 5 weeks we were confidently told and it will all be up. Unfortunately, that was by the timber frame company, not the erecting company which, it suddenly transpired, is a separate company. Their erectors discovered that the bits of the jigsaw weren't all there and then the wrong bits were sent and then it was realised that some bits would have to be specially manufactured. Most amazingly, the massive beams supporting the players balcony had to be actually shaped on site with a handsaw! What happened to my dream of all the factory precision machined components arriving on site "just in time" like an outsize meccano set?? I'm sure the Germans could get it right, but this has been a typically British "make do and mend" experience. Don't hold your breath but , 11 weeks after the start, they claim they will be off the site by the end of the first week in July.

Posted: September 2008

Yes, it looks impressive as you can see from the pictures, but there is a long list of things yet to do, such as tiling the roof, cladding the outside in brick on the lower and wood on the upper storey, putting in windows and doors, electricity and plumbing and then, you lucky members, you can get your hands dirty helping with the painting, wall tiling etc etc Of course, our target completion date of the end of August has long gone out of the non existent window, but we are desperate to finish in time to hold the D&D in the new pav. Otherwise, there is unlikely to be a D&D this year!

At last, like a butterfly emerging from its pupa, the new pav drops its scaffold skirts! But it has cost us an arm and a leg to get this far (remember the £30,000.00 cost overrun on the piling?) and it may well cost us the other ones unless we get some help from the members. Indeed, if we do not get immediate assistance of some sort from members, there is no chance of getting the pavilion operational this year. Not only will this mean no Dinner & Dance, but we shall also be called upon to start repaying monies we have had to borrow so far, without any monies coming in - which will spell disaster.