Our Portland House preschool councillors had an organised visit downstairs in the basement to carry out their inspection on the focus rooms to see how their environment has changed since the water flooded the rooms over the Christmas period.
The councillors were interested to learn about what happened, where the source of the water had come from (which intrigued one councillor in particular) learning how this occurrence had impacted their environment, the destruction and damaged it had caused across the rooms and resources. They discussed the work that had been carried out already, since they were last down there they could see that the rooms had been emptied and all the walls and flooring had been removed.
The walls now exposed the brickwork under the sheeting and they were fascinated to see all the various structures that had previously been hidden by the plasterboard. The councillors put their hands upon the wall to see how it felt and deciphered if it was still wet or dry and did it feel cold? It was agreed that the walls were indeed now dry, this was because they had been dried with special machines called dehumidifiers we looked at these and discussed how they worked by sucking out the moisture in the room, air, walls and floors and collected the water which travelled through pipes into the canisters and listened to the noises that they made as they operated.
One of the councillors asked what was behind the brown cupboard doors which was discovered led to the fuse boxes, this sparked a conversation around electricity. We observed the wires and talked about where these go what their purpose is to transport the electricity around the building to operate things such as lights and sockets. All agreed that they are not safe to touch unless you are an electrician.
Next they looked at the copper pipes and pointed out where they travelled to around the room and followed them to see that they went which was right up to the boiler they learnt that these pipes carry the water around the nursery to heat up the water in the taps and also the radiators to keep us all cosy warm. The councillors also talked about what they remembered from our focus room recalling where we used to have our resources and how it looked previously.
The builders will be returning next week to start the next stage of the restoration work putting down new flooring and plaster boarding the walls. We look forward to our next inspection and to seeing what the rooms will look like after the scheduled works are completed. Exciting adventures ahead.
