Today the nice calm weather came to an end here at GRIP, with wind picking up from south, and both snowdrift and even some snow showers in the late afternoon. With the drill tent all up and secured, the drillers are luckily able to work almost entirely independent of weather, and they thus accomplished a lot (see below), and Sepp also started out as usual with further excavation of cable trenches, but unfortunately the snow blower hit a very hard layer, and thus in need of a repair by Thomas in the mechanic’s garage. Despite the windy conditions, Thomas also managed to level out the snowdrifts between the garages, and return the tomatoes their previous position. Charlotte, Jonathan and Rahul, used the windy day to accomplish a lot of smaller tasks in camp, as well as to move the scaffold to a new position, facilitating more solar panel mounting when the winds become lower again. Cabling for the solar panels was also prepared inside the dome. After another productive day, Anders treated us to a delicious dinner of veal tenderloin accompanied by a mashed mix of cauliflower and potatoes, with a mushroom sauce and tree types of greens!
What we did this Wednesday:
- Reached final depth in the inclined trench, to make adjustments to the casing.
- Laid down 1/3 of the geoblock flooring in the drill tent.
- Installed ERV in drillers workshop.
- Installed backup power distribution board.
- Moved scaffold into new position for solar panel mounting.
- Prepared more cabling for solar panels.
- Leveled surface around camp and moved tomatoes back.
- Continued making power line trenches.
- Continued testing and planning of luminescence measurements.
Re 1-4: Drillers’ report:
After a lot of digging, Julien, Chantal, Kevin, Carlos, Jonathan, James and Grant reached the final depth of the inclined trench. Total depth was 5m (2x1m casing pieces removed from the top, then 3m section. 1m was added to the bottom to bring the casing to the desired trench depth of 4m). Some shaping still remains on the tower side. James laid Geoblock. All. Day. Approximately 1/3 the floor is complete. Grant installed the ERV in the workshop (providing clean air circulation, while recovering heat). Also, general workshop tidying. Kevin helped install the backup power distribution board.
