Tag: dust

#365daysofbiking Making a deposit

August 29th – I travelled home through Aldridge early in the afternoon after visiting the bank, and I had stuff to wait in for. On the way past the brickworks at Stubbers Green, just where the marlpit fence runs near the towpath, I noticed this curious instrument.

It’s a temporary placement, for gathering data about but deposition from the quarry and brickworks. It’s called – I kid you not – A frisbee deposition gauge, and it collects dust from the air and rain, which it collects in the vessel at the bottom of the tripod. There’s thin crosswires to stop birds landing on it, and a course foam pad to stop large debris like litter and leaves clogging it up.

Several of these instruments appear to be positioned around the site, presumably to test compliance with relevant pollution law.

It’s a fascinating area of environmental science and engineering and interesting to see it in use locally.

August 7th – Closer to home, across the spread of Springhill and Sandhills, it’s harvest time. At Cartersfield Lane, wheat was ripe, and ready to be harvested, a process already underway at Home Farm, where the combine was sending up a terrifically dramatic cloud of cereal dust as it worked. Also growing on the lower fields of Sandhills, a healthy and verdant maize crop, now quite tall.

This does seem to have been a most favourable summer for the farmers, but I’m sure they’ll find something to complain about before long…

October 22nd – I noted on my way to work the other day that ownership of the former Shire Oak Quarry – now a landfill for dry construction waste – has passed from Tarmac to JPE. I’m not sure why Tarmac sold it, but it was mothballed for a while after the slump in construction after 2008, to be reopened a couple of years later. 

I also noted that dust monitoring equipment has been installed, too. Wonder if that’s in response to local issues or a general requirement these days?