SLM Research

Here is an example of how careful SLM are in preparing their arguments.

Out of curiosity I was out today on Porters Field with a 30 cm skewer and the results were:

outside the 'reinstated area' it could go all the way though it took quite a lot of pressure.

where the new turf is, there is an impenetrable solid barrier almost everywhere between 10 and 25 cm below the surface. It literally felt like solid concrete (which is presumably what it is) - trying to drive it in with my foot bent the skewer. 

I randomly tried 15 points both around the pools and in the relatively dry areas. I only found one spot where the skewer could go to 30cm.

Subtracting the 4cm thickness of the big roll turf this means the topsoil depth measurements in cm were -

13
19
13
26
19
11
14
18
13
6
14
16
18
20
21

The implications are 

• they skimped on the topsoil which according to the reinstatement plan was supposed to be average 20cm, the average is 16 from my measurements.
• the solid fill underneath is almost certainly too impenetrable for the ground probe aeration which Sean Dawson claimed was being done
• fixing the drainage problems would I think require drilling thousands of holes or digging trenches across the site and inserting some sort of drainage system
• Even if the waterlogging was fixed, the fact that the topsoil's so shallow and effectively sealed off by the membrane + solid fill layer means the field will probably be very vulnerable to drought in the summer