Henley On Thames – Diary of a Installation

It was a frosty morning when our convoy rolled out of the yard to start the long journey to Henley on Thames, which is a quaint, picturesque village not far from the centre of London.

We took to the road in sub-zero temperatures and settled in anticipating the usual M25 and M4 traffic chaos. We weren’t disappointed!

At approximately 9am, our team of four guys, two vans and one pick-up rolled into town and were greeted by a wonderfully hot cup of coffee. It was well needed as temperatures had slipped even lower due to crystal clear skies.

This job held a challenge we hadn’t faced before and we were all looking forward to coming up with a workable salutation. Most installations we carry out include submerging a pump into a tank provided by us. Henley, however, has the Thames flowing through it, as the name suggests, and conveniently this property backed onto it. The challenge, of course, was to figure out how to use this source of water successfully, as the property was on the shallow side of the river.

With the slope of the river bank, it was decided to dig a trench about chest high and sink a steel tube horizontally and suspend the pump from the end of it.

We had two days of beautiful sunshine in Henley and our mammoth dig was a success. Our tube slotted in well, the pump sat perfectly and all our pop-up sprinklers and micro sprinklers ran like a dream. All round, it was a very pleasing result!