Continued...
The skids are fully integral with the structure to increase mechanical strength, and the building overall is designed to be extremely rigid so it retains its squareness despite being towing over uneven ground. It weighs approximately 18 tonnes, so it can be pulled by a bulldozer winch once the skids have been broken free of the ice by inflatable airbags.
The building itself and all the services and fittings have been designed for minimal maintenance because of the cost of transporting materials to the Antarctic and the difficult working conditions.
Bennetts designed the garage in modular form with the minimum number of components and fixings so that it could be handled and assembled easily by staff at the Halley base. No special tools were needed, and fixings were a convenient size to work with, given that staff wear thick gloves virtually all the time when outdoors at Halley.
Before the building was shipped from the UK to Antarctica, it was fully pre-assembled and then dismantled for packing.
Photographs supplied by the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge - www.bas.ac.uk
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