Technical possibilities of lowering the pitch?

[ekavall]

As I cant find a topic about what people have been talking more and more about lately, I'll start a topic about the tecnical possibilities of lowering the pitch.

Ive been reading through whats been said at the Supporters Advisory Board I find it a bit strange that there doesnt seem to have been any questions about the posibility to do this technically. Just the Lego talk, which didnt say muchy. Or is it just to damn expensive? Fore christ sake man can fly to the moon and build almos as high. Of course It must be possible to do some sort of strong reinforced concrete foundation that would work? Retractable seatings would be possible, as it has been done at numerous sites, including the arena in Paris. I realize that the OS is enormous but if you is would be dug out and strengthened bit by bit, I dont see why it wouldnt be possible.

Any technicians or engineers with experience of building things out there? Have these questions been asked to D&D and co and If so why arent there any real answers?

[frankiemac]

retractable seasting where such a vast area has to be covered ends up looking ridiculously disjointed and you end up with huge chasms behind the lower tier

also, we will only be renting this stadium...surely we wount be able to make any structural changes, or be able to afford it for that matter?

[sendô]

Depends what's under the pitch. How is the drainage and undersoil heating laid out? Is there room for it to go down without all this having to be reinstalled, which would be expensive, as would excavating a large area like that.

Anything is feasible, it's a question of money.

[ekavall]

I say this would be a enormous selling point if you want some big investors to come in. Remember when Tony Fernandes tried to buy a part on the cheap earlier, D&D were taling about "If some very wealty person would come in we would welcome it". The kind of people they are dreaming about would only come with a view of something to bragg about. That would be the arena with lowered pitch, but not the one with huge running tracks. I.e an arena that would allow us to compete for real with the big boys and getting some real exposure internationally.

[Wembley1966]

I posted this at the beginning of the year but I'll repeat it here as it's a dedicated thread;

There's a number of problems with digging down:

The water table could be overcome, but is going to be really expensive and a big construction project. If they committed to doing it now then they might have time to do it between the end of the Olympics and the start of the 2014 season. They'd certainly not be able to achieve it once we were in there - with only a few months during the close season during which time athletics want to use it, is nowhere near long enough - we'd have to move elsewhere for a couple of seasons!!

You've got an awful lot of mud to shift (some of which is contaminated so needs additional sealing before being transported away from the site) which would involve destroying some of the landscaping that is being done to make the park look pretty - you're turning the OS back into a major construction site again. As you're digging down you've got the water to keep on removing (so you hope it doesn't rain whilst this is all going on. Not only have they got to dig down the pitch and also the track, but they've also got to dig out from underneath the solid concrete lower tier so that the retractable seats have somewhere to retract to. As you're trying to seal the water table you need to dig even more margin around the hole to effectively seal it. That's a big hole to dig!. The lower tier is then going to need all sorts of underpinning to hold it up - quite a bit of work.

Once that is done you're going to have problems with humidity as you're well below ground level. The retractable seating would need to be made of components that weren't susceptible to damp - otherwise they'd rust up and seize! Then you've got the problems with the pitch and having anything like decent conditions for growing grass - the problems they've had at Wembley would be nothing like those that would occur trying to grow grass in a hole in the ground!

So it could be done - but probably cheaper to knock it down and start again. Now there's an idea!

BTW - The pitch has got to be completely relaid anyway - there's minimum drainage, irrigation and no undersoil heating in it at the moment (a few people throwing javelins and hammers in the middle of summer don't need these)

[the pink palermo]

BTW - The pitch has got to be completely relaid anyway - there's minimum drainage, irrigation and no undersoil heating in it at the moment (a few people throwing javelins and hammers in the middle of summer don't need these)

There goes the first couple of million of the conversion cost ............

[MEM]

Somewhere hidden in the original Stratford thread and more recently in here I posted up loads of examples from America where running tracks had been removed by digging down 8 - 14ft allowing the seating to be moved closer in to the lowered pitch. A few were next to rivers just like Stratford whereby concrete bathtubs and pump systems were installed to protect the lowered pitch from the water table. One gave a very complete description of the engineering involved in the bathtub approach and from memory was commissioned by Populous, the same architects who have built Stratford. Cant find them now and have no desire to wade through the 1500+ pages on the original thread. I did repost them somewhere in a thread within the Olympic Forum in response to one of Pinkies assertions about the technical feasibility of conversion to retractable seating, but where who knows. Here are a few but not the ones that show what to do with a high water table and cant find them now.


http://www.texassports.com/facilities/r ... adium.html

http://www.mwcboard.com/www/forums/inde ... opic=24596

http://www.collegegridirons.com/bigten/OhioStadium.htm

http://espn.go.com/college-football/tea ... sc-trojans

[taffhammer]

I noticed in one of those pics they pushed the pitch all the way up to one end, therefore only needing one temporary stand at the other end. Couldn't we do that and cover the track with the pitch during the season.

[the pink palermo]

I did repost them somewhere in a thread within the Olympic Forum in response to one of Pinkies assertions about the technical feasibility of conversion to retractable seating, but where who knows.

I would doubt I would have been commenting too deeply from a technical perspective - but I'll happily express my opinion that the chances of their being retractable seating in the OS as rather low .I would also be amazed if anyone spent a bean digging downwards ........

I've been wrong before though.......

[the pink palermo]

I noticed in one of those pics they pushed the pitch all the way up to one end, therefore only needing one temporary stand at the other end. Couldn't we do that and cover the track with the pitch during the season.

Undersoil heating ? Maybe get round that with a hot air blowing system , otherwise , that would be my choice .

Make it a D shaped arena , with the away support in a temporary stand , like we get at Fulham .

[Wembley1966]

You'd need undersoil heating - blowers are OK for temporary measures. You've got to build a proper pitch anyway - what they've got at the moment will look nice and probably just about durable enough to stand a few javelins being thrown into it, but not much more. For the opening ceremony it will all be covered. The pitch is quite complex, needing a very good drainage system - it's probably already under the water table - a few layers of substrate and irrigation and undersoil heating systems. Then the grass has got to be very durable - probably mixed with plastic grass so that it's still in a decent condition during the winter.

The Emirates and COMS (or whatever it's called now) were designed around the pitch - to make sure that the sun and wind got to it to ensure it would grow - that's where Wembley went wrong. I can envisage problems with the pitch at the OS - they've designed the roof to stop any wind (so that world records are allowable without wind assistance). We want to extend it making it worse.

[Hammer110]

I can envisage problems with the pitch at the OS - they've designed the roof to stop any wind (so that world records are allowable without wind assistance). We want to extend it making it worse.

Not so the roof has been designed to keep the wind below 2 metres per second (about 5mph) most of the time.

[Dyer's Leg]

Losen the strings, maybe top e to down to a d.

Certainly possible, yet not that technical.

[eastsider]

Digging down below any water table must be fairly straightforward as half of Holland is on reclaimed land!!

Moving the soil, although a big job, given the right circumstances could be done, then install proper retractable seating ..

Expensive maybe but this could still be an option the Spuds put forward later this year as it would probably be a lot less expensive than the £450 milion + that their Northumberland project will cost.....

[AJ]

If you lower the pitch you need to remove the stands, as the rake of the stands means that you wont see the pitch if you lower it enough to make room for a stand bellow the current lower tier.

the only way to solve the distance from the current row a and the pitch is to demolish the whole os down and start from scratch. otherwise its temporary seating as the only solution, and imo would look w*nk in a new stadium.

[taffhammer]

If you lower the pitch you need to remove the stands, as the rake of the stands means that you wont see the pitch if you lower it enough to make room for a stand bellow the current lower tier.

.

If you continued the rake of the stands down below what they are at present they could eventually stop at what would be the size of a football pitch.

[AJ]

Id like to think that would work taff but, say you are sitting in last row of lower tier, as soon as you make the pitch lower so you can carry the stand down all the way to the pitch, as the rake is so low of the stand you wont see some of the pitch anymore. if the rake of the lower stand was higher you could make it work as suggested.

ive tried to explain in the image below, red being the sight lines, green being the stand being built to continue seating to the pitch and the blue showing an estimate as to how much you need to dig down in turn affecting anyones view towards the back of the lower tier.

[Sweeney Bod]

All the technical consequences of digging down has been discussed for the last year, so I will not repeat. The simple facts are that any lease we will sign will prohibit us removing the track, and furthermore if everyone said "we had our fingers crossed" and said we want to "dig down", we just do not have the budget to make it reality.

Who knows the future, but for the short to medium term, digging down is NOT an option so can we please stop debating it. It is about as relevant as argueing the benefits of having a floating pitch that moves towards the most populated stands.

[Tin Hat]

Losen the strings, maybe top e to down to a d.

Certainly possible, yet not that technical.

Known as the early 90's Grunge method

[Sweeney Bod]

We constantly get this crap, and the crap about retractable seating. Over the last year, there has been enough engineering evidence to suggest why both would not work, however people still don't get it.

So, I will try to lose logic...

Levy might be a b*stard, but he is no idiot. If retractable seating/ digging down was workable, why did he not go for it. He has spent enough on lawyers, so I am assuming he would have paid some engineers and architects to look at all solutions.

If they had gone for keeping the stadium as an athletics stadium with retractable seats, he would have blown us out of the water. BUT, Spurs thought that knocking the whole thing down, building a new stadium at Stratford AND building a new stadium at Crystal Palace was more workable, and probably cheaper that just extending the roof and constructing a retractable seating plan.

NOW what does that tell you?