Where is Sam Springer when you need him ?

[David Mack]

7 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

I'm surprised some architect hasn't worked out how to convert a gas holder into trendy apartments - all in the name of urban conservation and heritage

 

And once they've done that, cooling tower apartments. 

 

I mean, if 18th century prisons can become hotels and student accommodation, retaining their perimeter walls and bars on the windows...

 

At my student architect daughter's degree show a couple of years ago there was a well-presented scheme to do something similar with the disused gasholders at Saltley in Birmingham, including a couple of reopened / new canal arms wandering through the site. I could see influence from the Kings Cross and New Islington developments.

[Alan de Enfield]

3 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

At my student architect daughter's degree show a couple of years ago there was a well-presented scheme to do something similar with the disused gasholders at Saltley in Birmingham, including a couple of reopened / new canal arms wandering through the site. I could see influence from the Kings Cross and New Islington developments.

 

 

 

Those apartments must get quite dark when they drop down below ground level.

 

In Vienna there were 4 converted in 1999

 

 

 

 

The four former cylinders located at the Gasometer were built as part of the Vienna municipal gas works Gaswerk Simmering in 1896–1899 to be used as gas storage tanks. They were used from 1899 to 1984 as years later different type of gas started to be used and newer technologies allowed gas to be stored underground at higher pressure and therefore occupying smaller space.

In 1995, the city decided to reconvert the old gas buildings and to give them a future appropriate for the urban needs of the 21^st century.  A call for projects was initiated and the winners were architects Jean Nouvel (Gasometer A), Coop Himmelblau (Gasometer B), Manfred Wehdorn (Gasometer C) and Wilhelm Holzbauer (Gasometer D) and these projects were completed between 1999 and 2001. Each gasometer was divided into several zones for living (apartments in the top), working (offices in the middle floors) and entertainment and shopping (shopping malls in the ground floors). The shopping mall levels in each gasometer are connected to the others by skybridges.

The music lovers of Vienna know for sure the Gasometer as it hosts also a music hall (capacity 2000–3000 people) where famous local and international bands come to entertain their fans!

[mark99]

Been on a lot of roofs of London gasholders.

 

A few had steel welded patches where ww2 bombs punctured.

 

 

The issue with converting gasholders is the huge contamination they sit on. You have to demolish, excavate and remediate the whole land before you could build new or re-assemble gas holders as a frame and let anyone loose on there.

Edited January 24, 2021 by mark99

[Athy]

24 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

 

It has been done, though with plenty of steel scrapped for Sam's successors. These are just off Regent's Canal 

https://gasholderslondon.co.uk/

Actually, those look better than I imagined they would.

When we lived in Uckfield, there was an old water tower converted into a house.

[mark99]

Me as a very young "erk" up a London Gasholder. Below is the Grand Union can't see it in image though.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by mark99

[sailor0500]

1 hour ago, sailor0500 said:

My first narrowboat was a 30' Springer. My partner and I bought a shell from Sam and fitted it out as we wanted to try the canals. Took us about 3 months spare time, cruised a lage part of the system as it was then. If I remember correctly total price including fit-out materials was 3500. We sold it after 18 months for £6ooo and used the money to buy a bare shell from Steven Sagar.

Sam was a great guy. My partner and I were at the London boat show the year he exhibited the big steel Guinness bottle which I think had a BMC 1.5. Someone was going to motor it across the Atlantic. I remember as it came into view David said "I bet Sam built that!" He was correct. You could tell by the rippled plating. 

He got many people into boat ownership at a price they could afford and his boats are still around and Sam will be fondly remembered by many.

      Just found photos of that boat being fitted out and first cruise. This would have been early seventies. If I remember rightly we were going to Heben Bridge.

[tree monkey]

56 minutes ago, mark99 said:

Been on a lot of roofs of London gasholders.

 

A few had steel welded patches where ww2 bombs punctured.

 

 

The issue with converting gasholders is the huge contamination they sit on. You have to demolish, excavate and remediate the whole land before you could build new or re-assemble gas holders as a frame and let anyone loose on there.

Is it just some remnant of the gas that's contaminated the site or it there something else?

51 minutes ago, Athy said:

Actually, those look better than I imagined they would.

When we lived in Uckfield, there was an old water tower converted into a house.

I quite like them, quirky, not that I would want to live in one

Edited January 24, 2021 by tree monkey

[mark99]

21 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

Is it just some remnant of the gas that's contaminated the site or it there something else?

All gasholder sites and gasholders are quite old and used to manufacture gas from coal, coke, oil. It was a dirty disgusting process with so many noxious byproduct substances and those byproducts that they could not sell (liquid and solid waste) were left and spread all around the site over 50 to 100 years or so. The ground is typically a blue colour from the main useless byproduct known universally as "blue billy". I've had plenty of site samples analysed and the mix of chemicals was lethal.

 

One of the experts used to do lectures. He went into detail about all the nasties and produced a bottle and poured it out into a glass, held it up to a light to show the colours etc and how thick it was. Explained what dire things it did to human tissue etc. Then he would suddenly take a big swig of it and declare it tasted ok. Its was his party trick. The liquid being only coke, syrup etc.

Edited January 24, 2021 by mark99

[David Mack]

53 minutes ago, mark99 said:

Me as a very young "erk" up a London Gasholder. Below is the Grand Union can't see it in image though.

 

 

That looks a damn site safer than the gasholder in Salford which I went up in the early 80s. At the time I was working on the construction of the M602 extension, and I accompanied the photographer who used the gasholder as a vantage point for taking photos of the progress of the work.

Tha ladder up the side was bad enough, but the top was a gentle dome shape, newly painted in gloss paint and very slippery in the Manchester drizzle. The edge was protected by a barrier with two horizontal rails at about 18" and 3ft height, but no mesh infill or toe board. It felt like one slip on the dome and I could have slid straight under the bottom rail!

[mark99]

1 minute ago, David Mack said:

That looks a damn site safer than the gasholder in Salford which I went up in the early 80s. At the time I was working on the construction of the M602 extension, and I accompanied the photographer who used the gasholder as a vantage point for taking photos of the progress of the work.

Tha ladder up the side was bad enough, but the top was a gentle dome shape, newly painted in gloss paint and very slippery in the Manchester drizzle. The edge was protected by a barrier with two horizontal rails at about 18" and 3ft height, but no mesh infill or toe board. It felt like one slip on the dome and I could have slid straight under the bottom rail!

The image I put up does show the corrosion hole in the footplate but not the thin-ness of the plate and its general lack of integrity. Pointed out by another "erk" when he finished the photo!

[David Mack]

A quick check on Google maps shows the gasholder I climbed together with its twin is just a cleared level site, but Streetview shows a notice on the boundary wall saying "Dismantling the gasholders", so they can only have gone quite recently.

[mark99]

40 minutes ago, David Mack said:

A quick check on Google maps shows the gasholder I climbed together with its twin is just a cleared level site, but Streetview shows a notice on the boundary wall saying "Dismantling the gasholders", so they can only have gone quite recently.

The light blue Battersea Waterless (MAN) gasholder was dismantled efficiently a few years back. Bearing its close proximity to a main London rail line it was done very efficiently. Use of low pressure air pumping up and down the huge piston inside - the piston being used as the variable height working platform. Ie gas axing top downwards slowly descending over time by letting air out of the piston bore. Amazing really when the piston to gas holder wall seal is a crude engineered tar based and leather seal!  Shame been inside and outside that one too.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by mark99

[Tacet]

15 hours ago, mark99 said:

All gasholder sites and gasholders are quite old and used to manufacture gas from coal, coke, oil. It was a dirty disgusting process with so many noxious byproduct substances and those byproducts that they could not sell (liquid and solid waste) were left and spread all around the site over 50 to 100 years or so. The ground is typically a blue colour from the main useless byproduct known universally as "blue billy". I've had plenty of site samples analysed and the mix of chemicals was lethal.

 

Were not the gasholders sometimes quite separate from the gasworks?  Even then, I imagine some nasties would condense out of the gas and end up in the water seal.

 

A relative had a gasholder in his garden in the 1960s.  Or perhaps more correctly, had a house within the gasholder site.  I ascended it at least once.   One of the less onerous responsibilities of the relative was to report the height of the gasometer by telephone.

 

 

[Murflynn]

back to the thread title - I hate to be a killjoy but AFAIK the plating appears to have been been removed and only the skeleton is left which wouldn't be of much use to Sam, although he might invent a new use for the uprights - crane jibs perhaps?

[Alan de Enfield]

22 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

back to the thread title - I hate to be a killjoy but AFAIK the plating appears to have been been removed and only the skeleton is left which wouldn't be of much use to Sam, although he might invent a new use for the uprights - crane jibs perhaps?

 

 

Isn't that just the frame work that it slides up and down in ?

The gas holder would be inside that, and as there is no pressure in the holder it is quite probably in its 'below ground' (lowest) position.

[GUMPY]

18 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I have seen an early Springer with a wooden cabin, was still afloat in 2009. Whether this cabin was Springer built or A N Other I don't know.

Many of the wooden tops were done by Faulkner's at Cosgrove the slipway is still there but the site is now housing.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y1iS4r8WBMvjFtvz8

 

A very good friend of mine used to own one of, if not the first wooden top Springer that was finished at Cosgrove sometime in 1969.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Loddon

[ditchcrawler]

3 hours ago, Loddon said:

Many of the wooden tops were done by Faulkner's at Cosgrove the slipway is still there but the site is now housing.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y1iS4r8WBMvjFtvz8

 

A very good friend of mine used to own one of, if not the first wooden top Springer that was finished at Cosgrove sometime in 1969.

The oldest springer in Town

[Tracy D'arth]

3 hours ago, Loddon said:

Many of the wooden tops were done by Faulkner's at Cosgrove the slipway is still there but the site is now housing.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y1iS4r8WBMvjFtvz8

 

A very good friend of mine used to own one of, if not the first wooden top Springer that was finished at Cosgrove sometime in 1969.

Now serendipity steps in today, weird.

 

An ancient Springer with a wooden top has just gone up the Middlewich Branch, a 50 foot boat maybe. No name, couldn't see a licence so who knows?

 

How odd is that? 

Edited January 25, 2021 by Tracy D'arth

[TheBiscuits]

7 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

An ancient Springer with a wooden top has just gone up the Middlewich Branch, a 50 foot boat maybe. No name, couldn't see a licence so who knows?

 

Was there an eerie glow around it and nobody at the helm?  Dutch flag flying?

 

 

 

[GUMPY]

25 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Now serendipity steps in today, weird.

 

An ancient Springer with a wooden top has just gone up the Middlewich Branch, a 50 foot boat maybe. No name, couldn't see a licence so who knows?

 

How odd is that? 

The boat I referred to was called Badger but is/was 37ft long. It was recognisable because although built as a cruiser stern it was changed later to trad stern and you used to be able to see the join ?

Edited January 25, 2021 by Loddon

[ditchcrawler]

1 minute ago, Loddon said:

The boat I referred to was called Badger, it was recognisable because although built as a cruiser stern it was changed later to trad stern and you used to be able to see the join ?

Still had a Cutweb sticker in the window last time I saw it

[Tracy D'arth]

15 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Was there an eerie glow around it and nobody at the helm?  Dutch flag flying?

 

 

 

On the stern was "Wolf Power" so I don't want him moored near me. There was a sad faced old guy hanging on the tiller, hard to see for the smoke from the exhaust. Its one of those with the gearstick sticking up in the back deck, an old Lister?

[bizzard]

47 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

On the stern was "Wolf Power" so I don't want him moored near me. There was a sad faced old guy hanging on the tiller, hard to see for the smoke from the exhaust. Its one of those with the gearstick sticking up in the back deck, an old Lister?

Probably named after an old 1960's Wolf electric drill that he loved. I bought one for £10 at a boot sale, a big very low geared one, a beauty, will drill with no fuss large diameter holes, like for roof vents and chimney collar hole with hole tank cutters.

[Tracy D'arth]

12 minutes ago, bizzard said:

Probably named after an old 1960's Wolf electric drill that he loved. I bought one for £10 at a boot sale, a big very low geared one, a beauty, will drill with no fuss large diameter holes, like for roof vents and chimney collar hole with hole tank cutters.

Nah, a damn big frame gen.

[John Brightley]

23 hours ago, sailor0500 said:

      Just found photos of that boat being fitted out and first cruise. This would have been early seventies. If I remember rightly we were going to Heben Bridge.

Of course it wouldn't have been Hebden Bridge as the canal wasn't open there then. Would it be Sowerby Bridge ?