6th October 2021, Pallets and … pallets… and food!
When we first started the allotment, we knew we would need a few pallets. We estimated maybe a few for the compost bins and then, maybe a few more for this and that, a wild estimate would have been 20, but more likely 16 or even 6...
At this stage we’re up there at around 50 pallets! OK, we have used them for the terrace, raised bed walls, a work area, the area around the polytunnel that is being worked on now, but the crazy thing is, now we are planning ahead and it looks like 100 pallets for the project would not be a silly guestimate (any more)!
Pallets, although standardised in many respects, come in a wide variety of different shapes and build styles. The pallet on top shown here EPAL is a really good pallet for our uses. There are 4 wide beams 120cm in length and narrower ones too, but all are really thick wood. These are amazing for so many of the projects! Very good free wood, except for the lugging about and also the dismantling, which does take a bit of a knack.
Having broken the pallets down we get some good solid timber for using in all kinds of creative ways. There is also a wild variation in the quality of the wood, from some which still has bark on it, through to soft pine wood and then quite hard wood which proves troublesome often to get the screws to be flush as the countersink doesn’t want to screw right in… Anyway, with a surfeit of pallets, Chris even has the choice of which wood to use, depending on its thickness and width. That’s also a pain too, as all of this sorting out does take time.
In the last picture, eating in a building site. But at least we now have a nice comfy terrace to sit and eat on, and a table to sit at too! It must look like we do quite a lot of eating here, well, we do… and why not?! We’ve earned it!
