Monday 6 August 2012

New Tower Proposed for Ramsgate Harbour

Putting up the new planning applications on the press release blog this morning I noticed the council have applied for a new radar tower on the end of the east pier.
I was reminded of  the proposal in Bob Simmonds book Ramsgate's Answer to Turner& Tracey for a Tissot Centre in Ramsgate on this same spot

13 comments:

  1. I wonder how they will get it up there, as an engineer Michael you will interested in their load test procedure. TDC put a 2 tonne limit on the landing stage nearly 25 years ago because of the poor state of the concrete construction and haven't bothered to inspect it since.

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  2. Perhaps they could be persuaded to put a couple of diving boards on the seaward side, a touch of olympic sustainability for the local teenagers.

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    1. Isn’t that a bit harsh on local teenagers considering it dries out on both sides here at low tide.

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  3. blood money from the export of innocent animals shame on you thanet district council shame on you.

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  4. Natural selection Michael, the bright ones will only dive a couple of hours either side of high water.

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  5. I have a really good idea, lets try and lease out the cafe at the sametime as applying for planning permission to put a monstrosity of a radar tower on top of the cafe- wow that is joined up thinking for TDC. { I am only suprised that they didn't apply for permission to put it on the sundeck }

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    1. On top of the café is port control, without radar no boats, no boats no fees, no fees no harbour.

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  6. The way the sand is encroaching into the outer harbour it will soon be like Broadstairs and the Radar will not be needed,our own dredger that the council in their wisdom sold has been revamped and is still a very usefull piece of floating plant.
    Stargazer

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    1. But a radar system used for developing and testing the latest technology, which the harbour port control gets to use for free, would be a good reason to keep dredging the outer harbour.

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    2. Complex issue here, I think to some extent the council bought betamax when they should have bought vhs, the main issue being the Scandinavian granite blocks imported at considerable expense to form Port Ramsgate. Somehow the sand proof membrane got left out of this construction so the sand come in through the walls.

      In retrospect a piled concrete filled arm would probably have been a cheaper and better solution.

      I also wonder if anyone has checked where the dredged sand is being dumped to ensure that this isn’t where the current flows towards the harbour from bringing the sand back.

      The design of the harbour was such that the head of water in the inner basin was used to flush the sand out, but the sluices have been allowed to decay.

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    3. Michael a couple of comments.
      (1) The port was actually designed and built by the Sally group, the involvement of the council was minimal.
      (2)The sand is dumped on a designated "dump site" the tidal flow takes it away from the harbour.
      (3)The sluices were excellent at what they were designed for, but since then the marina's have been built and the outer stone breakwaters, if the sluices were capable of operation now they would transport the sand and silt from the outer harbour into the turning circle.
      (4) There is a "river" of sand that runs down the coast from north to south and runs in through the north breakwater, this was known prior to the construction of the "port" to stop it a pier or breakwater would have had to be built approximately half way down the East pier running out to sea to push the flow of sand out into the tidal stream.

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    4. I fully agree with the comments about the dredger, but not sure about the lack of sand proof membrane with the granite blocks.

      Only going on observations of a river dam which had to be increased in height to ensure a cooling water supply during summer months, stone blocks of a minimum weigh of 4 tonnes each were used. Silt was still deposited up upstream the these blocks without any membrane being installed, but the capture zone needed to be kept clear by regular use of a sluice. Care was needed in running this sluice because of the downstream damage which it could cause.

      anon 4:54

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  7. In regard to Stargazers comment about the former Ramsgate dredger, use this link: http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/showallphotos.aspx?imo=5289883 to see how she looks in her new life.

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.