Removing the Davington Weir on the Border Esk.

by | Feb 13, 2025 | Conservation, General | 1 comment

In October last year we removed a concrete weir on the Davington Burn, a tributary of the Border Esk. Having won the contract, we worked with Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to remove the weir and restore the burn to its natural state, reconnecting salmon, trout and eels to their native range.
We used demolition grout in a new to Scotland approach (to the best of our knowledge!) to remove the weir. We have produced a short video detailing the work that went into this removal and show the impact the weir was having on the watercourse.

A happy team (minus Carolyn who was off electrofishing) after the job was completed. We had a long week at Davington but were very pleased to walk off site on the Friday have achieved everything we set out to do.

 

All waste materials was removed from the site and went to be recycled as lowering the environmental footprint of this project wherever possible was a key consideration.

 

There was a lot of drilling ahead of the grout being poured. Having the right tools is key to being able to work efficiently in these situations.

 

A waiting game now! Once the chemical is poured into the holes it becomes a waiting game for the grout to start expanding and breaking the concrete apart.

 

Drilling into a piece of concrete removed from the burn – this acted as a control piece for us to be able to monitor the reaction of the grout in the concrete without any influence of water.

Pouring demolition grout into a drilled hole. Whilst the basic methodology for this technique is relatively simple there are tricks to getting the best outcome and whilst this project went well and worked, we learnt a lot from it and will tweak methods slightly going forwards.

The timescale for delivering this work was very tight however, the project went very smoothly and we’ve learnt a lot from this work. We have plans for quite a few barriers in Ayrshire where we can use this experience on the Davington Burn to deliver similar removals to across Ayrshire – so watch this space!
We’re grateful to the British Geological Survey and the other private landowner for their help in delivering this project.
The link to the video on our YouTube page can be followed here https://youtu.be/flyMUfU4jWE 

Before – this weir had stood at this site for around 200 years and limited salmon and trout migration due to the shallow take off pool below the weir.

 

After – five days later and the burn was returned to a natural state where salmon and trout have unhindered access to the upper reaches of the Davington Burn.

1 Comment

  1. Gary Anderson
    Gary Anderson on March 1, 2025 at 9:47 am

    Hi, is there any plans to use that grout method anywhere on river Irvine catchment?kind regards