Some members do the work; others “supervise”. 🙂
This year the Club applied for, and was awarded, a $25,000 grant from the Federal Government’s New Horizons program.
Cost estimates for the new sunshades were received from a number of contractors. All of those estimates exceeded the $25,000 grant.
We decided to move forward with the project and find areas where our members could do some of the work so that the construction costs could be reduced to stay within the $25,000 budget.
To start, a number of our members dismantled the old sunshades and took that material for recycling.
The next area was a rather labour-intensive program. Club volunteers took two days to dig twenty holes where concrete will be poured to provide the foundation for the posts of the sunshades. As you can see from the first video below, it was a significant amount of work to complete this stage. The second video shows work in progress.
Once the District of Oak Bay inspects these holes and the placement of the forms, the concrete can be poured. Once that concrete is set we will need additional volunteers to replace the dirt around the concrete foundations. We will then need to have the excess dirt removed from our area.
We have a regular group of people that come out to help, but we would like to see more of our members helping out in this project. Even an hour or two would be appreciated. You will see notices when we are in need of some extra help, so stay tuned and watch as the sunshades take shape over the coming months.
Brent Merchant
For full screen image, click on the [ ] icon at bottom right in the videos below. To play picture-in-picture, select the three dots icon at far right. Press the triangle symbol on the left to play.
Phase 1 complete
Work in progress