Refurbishing the Burrington Combe cattle grids for North Somerset Council

EJ McGrath Construction has completed the refurbishment of two highway cattle grids on the B3134 at Burrington Combe, on the northern edge of the Mendip Hills. We were engaged directly by North Somerset Council’s highway structures team as main contractor, and delivered the works with our own team, plant and traffic management.

The job

The crossing carries two metal cattle grids set on concrete sleeper walls. The grids needed welding repairs and re-fixing, and the drainage beneath them had silted up. North Somerset Council put the repair out to tender and provided the road closure order; EJM priced and delivered everything else, from labour, plant and materials through to temporary traffic management, landowner liaison and pollution control.

What we did

• Lifted out the two metal cattle grids with a 13 tonne rubber-tracked excavator to avoid damaging the carriageway
• Cleared silt and vegetation from the pit and jetted the existing drainage through to the adjacent manhole
• Prepared the concrete sleeper walls and stripped out all the old fixings
• Cleaned down the grids and carried out welding repairs to the steelwork
• Drilled new fixing points, reset both grids and fixed them down with no residual movement
• Grouted the voids between the grids and the walls, and re-hung the side gate

Solving it on site

Once the grids were lifted it was clear the tops of the sleeper walls had deteriorated and would not take the grids again as they were. With the council’s agreement we broke out and recast the top 50 to 80mm of the walls in M60 high-strength mortar to give a sound bearing, changed the anchor fixings to M12 A4 stainless steel, and set a 6mm EPDM rubber interface between the walls and the grid frames to absorb movement and extend the life of both. Because the B3134 had to reopen to traffic every evening, the crew broke the closure down and re-set it each day.

The result

Both cattle grids were returned to service, re-welded and reset on rebuilt bearings with new stainless fixings and a cushioned rubber seating, with the drainage cleared and running. The crossing was handed back to North Somerset Council fully reinstated and reopened to normal traffic, a compact but technically involved job delivered end to end by our own team.