Project Activity:
Overburden removal from filter drain stone on the north and southbound carriageways, in addition to Haloptic camera surveys.

Summary of Works:
Over 14-night shifts Crown Plus undertook the refurbishment of the filter drain stone to 14 separate locations covering a total of 9133 meters of filter drain along the North & Southbound verges of the M6 Toll road.

For this scheme, Crown Plus utilised the VERGEblaster as part of a programme designed to test and showcase its potential. This new bespoke technology has been specifically designed for the removal of overburden from filter drains and the edge of carriageways.

One of the features of the VERGEblaster is that it has been designed to be easily adaptable to suit different stone conditions.  This was showcased on the scheme due to the filter stone being heavily coated in bitumen, once this was identified the VERGEblaster was modified to allow it to easily go through the bitumen coated stone to reach the silt below. Various conditions were encountered throughout the scheme whereby the Crown Plus team were able to modify the process and technology to suit. When the works first commenced, the VERGEblaster was achieving between 80 – 100m per hour, and after 2 weeks it was processing in excess of 130m per hour particularly excelling on compacted and heavily silted areas of filter drain.

Paul Conner, Commercial Director at Crown Plus thanked the client for having faith in the technology and letting them pilot the VERGEblaster under real life conditions on the scheme.  Putting it to work on this scheme meant we could test it thoroughly, under varied and real-life conditions. 

In addition, Crown Plus undertook pipework condition surveys, within the area of the filter drain refurbishment work, to check that the surface water drainage system was free of defects.