Foresters Harpenden, 23rd February

The Foresters Development by Jarvis is certainly looking much closer to completion, and I arrived earlier than usual as I needed to return to base by eleven, and once again I am greeted by sunshine, and for a change the weather is pleasantly warm with just a slight breeze.

Around the back turf is going down and the gardens have much of their plants in, though there are more paths to be completed. Around the front screeding is drying. New garages in the front have tiles being hung, and others have their roofs yet to be completed but the weatherproof membrane is down and the battening is nearing completion.

Some pavers are going down at the back of one of the cottages, and many of the exterior doors are being fitted. Many of the kitchens and bathrooms are coming on apace, laminate flooring is being laid, and one staircase has some glass panelling with bold aluminium fittings up, but with its protective sheeting still in place.

As I left I also captured the newly completed re-arrangement of the service road pavements with its bright ringing of double yellow lines, and I gather there are some six weeks till completion, given favourable weather conditions.

Jarvis Foresters – Fixtures & Fittings

Visiting the Foresters Development this day was slightly less than straightforward as the approach is beset with bright orange plastic guard rails, and the end of the service road is entirely blocked off. The reason for this is down to the number of essential services that are now being brought to the site, and this has involved considerable disruption to both the road itself and much of the pavement and kerbing. Also additional drainage is being added; whilst I was there a fairly deep hole was being widened to take a large concrete sump.

I had already decided that this visit I was going to be using a wider angle lens to capture some of the kitchens and bathrooms as they took shape, and although I have covered some of the more accessible rooms, the smaller or awkward ones needed me to have a shorter focal length than 24mm. What that meant was that my concentration for this visit was more about the interiors and the fixtures and fittings than the groundworks going on.

One pressure I always face is limiting myself to parking close by and avoiding punitive parking fines, by allocating precisely an hour, including donning my PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and subsequent disrobing to drive back. There were other parts of the site I would have preferred not to have missed, but I am in the midst of a massive tech-editing job, which has an effect on time available as well. Anyone know where I can lay my hands on a forty-eight hour day?

Jarvis Foresters in Cold January Sunshine

Once again it was hard to decide just what to wear – if all the shooting was inside – the heaters on at full blast to keep the interiors warm would make it hot and sticky; if  the exteriors showed the most changes, then it would be just right. The latter was my choice, so initially I concentrated on what was happening outside, but it was soon inevitable that I found myself checking out the most conspicuous changes to bathrooms, and corridors.

When the bathrooms and kitchens are more finished I will use a wider angle lens, but for the moment, the details of the unfinished work is more important than the overall view, so the less wide the shot is, the larger it appears within the galleries. The electricians and carpenters were hard at it, connecting up and testing the electrical wiring, and hanging doors in the corridors.

The garden areas are now being planted, hopefully allowing them to bed in; I just hope the frost does not kill them all! Most of the last roof structures are now weathertight, these are the garages. Outside the site, work has been carried out in the service road parallel to the High Street; it is largely complete but protected by brightly coloured plastic guardrails, so access along the service road is somewhat restricted till these are fully restored. It was good to see that some effort was being made to clean the wheels of vehicles leaving the development site.

First 2012 Visit to Foresters

After several days of wind and rain, today dawned bright and calm, but fairly cold. I over-dressed with this in mind, but found myself mainly inside where there were now industrial heaters everywhere to allow plastering and painting to take place, so I was as hot as if it had been summer when I had far less on!

Everyone was welcoming and it was ‘Happy New Years’ all around, and whilst at the garages that lie immediately behind the high street shops, I met someone who reminded me that I had been at the site since the very first brick was laid, and another who said I must have taken a couple of hundred shots since I had been coming to the site! More like thousands, but I was not counting.

Several more kitchens and bathrooms were going in, lifts were being installed and coving being cut to size and fitted. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their work and smiling, and I put this down largely to the sunshine. Someone came up and said he had passed on my good wishes to Sean Mooney, and said he would probably welcome a call, so I feel another ‘Happy New Year’ coming on.

Jarvis Foresters Exteriors Beginning to Show

Today's visit, again on a sunny day, showed me what had changed in the interim since my last visit. The trench newly dug on my last visit was now being populated with pipework. Many more kitchen and bathroom fittings were going in, and the floor tiles which had been down earlier, were all covered by protective rubber mats.

Windows which had been barely visible behind a lattice work of scaffolding and some deteriorating plastic sheeting were now visible to the world, so the final look of the buildings is becoming more apparent with each visit.




Beyond and to the left of the Site Office Portakabin, the garages now have the roof trusses up, here is one of the few places on site where scaffolding is still visible; the majority being behind the buildings to allow the renderers to work.

Whereas on most previous visits I would move around the various buildings using the outside stairs and ladders, today I did most of walking within the building using concrete stairs, so despite the bitter wind, I traversed the site in comparative comfort.

The unseasonable weather this late autumn is certainly a far cry from the snow that was here this time last year, and is probably very welcome for those still working outside.