Mark Wright
Active member
Apologies first of all for the Kenilworth size of post.
I doubt re-bolting Rowter Hole would have been done if the BCA hadn?t funded it. The digging and climbing project cost over ?2,000 in materials and access fees and another ?1,000 for anchors would have broken the club?s bank.
Instead, cavers would be using some of the 150+ HKD?s that we used during the original vertical exploration beyond the Ice Cream Trail. And as for carrying out a visual examination of all anchors prior to use, for the anchors in most of the Rowter Hole extensions, you can?t. You?ve got to trust the anchors have been installed and tested correctly and the fixed ropes are all in good order!!
The current problems relating to the choice of anchors that Bob Mehew mentions on the CNCC thread are the exact same problems that were being discussed well over a decade ago when I was briefly involved with the BP anchor training scheme Bob Dearman was putting together.
I had developed a training course for industrial anchor installers while Bob worked for me and he had asked for my opinion on his course content. It was certainly thorough. I did question though the need for such a high strength requirement when industry accepted significantly lower minimum failure loads.
I think insisting registered BP anchor installers demonstrate their SRT competence was a step too far, causing an eruption of ridiculous DCA/CSCC regional anchor installation politics, getting quite nasty on a few occasions.
I get the impression from Simon?s partial explanation of the status of IC anchors with the BCA/CNCC in the Dales that the political situation hasn?t got any better, indeed it sounds like things are even worse.
It was bad enough when the politicians only had one type of resin anchor to bicker about, now they appear to have 3 and if Simon is no longer in a position to produce his IC anchor, there will probably be 4.
We had a long discussion about BP anchors at the Buttered Badger AGM in Castleton a few weeks ago and, other than the fact that the BCA pay for them, they don?t have much else going for them. Issues include the physical size and weight of the 36v drilling machine needed to drill the deep 16mm holes required for their installation as well as not being able to easily remove them afterwards without leaving a potentially ugly blot on the underground landscape.
Another issue is, as soon as you carry out the axial pull test to confirm their placement, the resin around the little notch you have to drill out to locate and position the eye, cracks as it flexes. In an industrial environment this cracking could be considered as a fail requiring the anchor to be replaced and re-tested.
It?s all well and good expecting ordinary cavers to carry out a thorough examination of all the anchors prior to use but its most unlikely they will have the appropriate skills and knowledge to be able to know what is and isn?t acceptable when even those supposedly ?in the know? can?t even agree on what is and isn?t acceptable, e.g. +/-1mm rotational movement of the anchor after installation, testing or no testing.
So long as the actual anchor eye is not the welded variety its most unlikely it will fail. The only anchor I have ever had fail was one of the old Petzl welded ring hangers attached to an 8mm HKD type anchor in concrete. Under test conditions, following significant deformation of the eye, the weld failed at just over 14kN. Petzl stopped manufacturing welded eyebolts because of the problems Bob Mehew mentioned in the CNCC thread.
The HKD type anchor itself did not show any signs of movement in or out of the hole which is why I was a little surprised at the 5 ? 7kN pull-out forces MarkS mentions in his HKD thread.
I?ve tested many hundreds of these anchors, mainly in concrete, and have never had them pull out at such low loads. I?m pretty sure they?ve all been well over 12kN. I generally use Rawl HKD type anchors. The same HKD type anchor I loaded to 14kN, I regularly load to in excess of 15kN for demonstration purposes and the anchor looks as good as new in the hole. It?s in the floor as well, so it?s usually always wet.
The low failure loads of the Hilti HKD anchors that haven?t been given a good belt with the hammer is not surprising really and is the same for all manufacturers.
Some of our club members have questioned the need to carry out the 6kN axial pull testing of every installed BP anchor.
As an installer of thousands of eyebolts for use in the industrial environment over the past 30 years, correct installation and appropriate testing by trained individuals is the key to a sound anchor placement.
With regard to the testing of IC anchors, Simon says, ?Actually we don't have any tools to test them. We do not have the capability and do not do any testing of anchors in caves. The present policy is for you to do the testing of the anchors?.
If it really is the case that ?officially installed?, ?officially approved? or some other equally confusing classification of BCA ?officially certified? anchors are not being appropriately tested after installation then this is very worrying. Checking the current BCA anchor policy there is no mention of testing installed anchors yet in Derbyshire anchors do have to be tested, and rightly so.
In the industrial environment and following the requirements of EN795 and BSEN7883, there should first be a 3 minute, 12kN substrate test in the direction of intended use (usually carried out in shear and then scrapped). All subsequent anchors (in the same substrate) should then be axially tested to 6kN for 15 seconds at least once per year for fall arrest purposes and every 6 months where there is likely to be full suspension, i.e. descending and/or ascending a rope.
The information on the BCA website relating to this axial element of testing as being 10kN is very confusing. Simon quotes axial pull test figures for EN959 anchors of 15kN and 20kN. The BCA website also uses some very peculiar terminology (to me anyway) when it talks about SWL?s. It quotes a SWL for BP anchors as being 11.46kN but I can?t for the life of me work out how that figure has been calculated when the maximum rated load for an item of PPE is usually only a single person.
The requirement in industry to test every anchor at least annually came into force in the late 1990?s. Before then the minimum requirement was to test annually only 5% of the installed anchors on a structure. I can?t remember the exact details of the particular incident that finally led to the change but basically somebody fell onto an EN795 anchor and it failed catastrophically. When the HSE tested all the other anchors, they all failed catastrophically. It was found that none of the anchors had ever been axially tested after particularly poor installation by people who were supposedly competent.
Where anchors are used in a professional capacity, e.g. by cave instructors, they should really be tested in accordance with the criteria previously mentioned. When health & safety legislation use the word ?should? it effectively means the HSE won?t prosecute you if you don?t test the anchors, but if you don?t test them and one of them fails, resulting in a serious accident or worse, and it can be shown that the accident wouldn?t have happed if you had tested it, then the prosecution would, quite rightly, throw the book at you.
Whilst caving instructors may work under the 2007 amendment to the 2005 Work at Height Regulations, in that they can use a single rope for full suspension purposes, there are still many other regulations which should be followed, e.g. MHSW, PUWER, PPE and LOLER (particularly when terminology such as SWL is being used).
Obviously, anchors should always be used in pairs so the above scenario should be most unlikely.
The issues with 316 Stainless being used in the rope access industry have been similarly discussed. With a large proportion of the work being in the offshore industry it rightly deserves such discussion but I really can?t see the issue in a typical cave environment.
We seem to be tying ourselves in knots with this 316 requirement when there are only a handful of sea caves which may need such permanent rigging, and these have probably already been done if anyone is that bothered about them.
The original idea of the BCA anchor scheme was basically to help stop the problems of bolt rash and hopefully make things a lot safer for those venturing underground. A sound idea.
I wonder though, how bad things would have actually got from a conservation perspective and how many of these bolt failure accidents there actually would have been if the BCA hadn?t developed the scheme. As I said above, if cavers always attach their ropes to 2 anchors there shouldn?t be any accidents.
There was a lot to be said for learning SRT rigging when you had to actually think about where to attach your hangers. One of the main complaints about Dave Elliot and his red ringed bolts and their associated guide book, was that he was trying to coerce us all into ?dot to dot? caving. He got some serious flack for it at the time and I certainly wasn?t a fan but looking where we are today with 2 different batches of BP anchors, Self Drillers, HKD?s, DMM, Raumer, Rainox, IC and their associated guide book, come back Dave Elliot I say.
I?m only joking obviously, any type of threaded anchor is going to wear out too quickly, but we don?t seem to have made much progress since we all agreed they weren?t suitable in the 80?s other than the same ?bolt rash? but this time, instead of them usually being difficult to even see, they stick out like a sore thumb, some might say a proper blot on the landscape.
Another potential issue is the testing of anchors. The ?Axial? test should be just that, a direct pull outwards. The only anchors available which can be truly axially tested are those such as the Collinox, Batinox or Fixe which allow the test rig to be positioned in the middle of the eye. All threaded type anchors can be tested in the same way with the correct thread attachments that are usually supplied with the test rig.
The potential problem with not just the BP anchor is that the test load is applied slightly off centre thus applying bending forces and possible deformation during the actual testing operation and explains why the resin cracks around the offset eye when you test a BP anchor. The inability to properly test the old stainless Petzl Coeur Permanent anchor is the main reason Petzl no longer manufacture them.
We did some testing in the early 90?s before Richard Greenslade (NCC) and me installed about 400 x 12mm stainless HKD type anchors up and around the Emley Moor transmission tower to enable a full internal and external inspection to be carried out. We managed to break a number of anchors when applying an offset 6kN test load via 12mm stainless Petzl Coeur hanger plates!!
Finding a company capable or, more importantly, willing to take over the responsibility for the manufacture of anchors that are to be used for suspending people, I can?t imagine is going to be easy.
If companies as experienced in this field as DMM stopped making their anchor then any other prospective manufacturer is going to be asking why they stopped. I would hazard a guess at a combination of them being too expensive to manufacture for such a limited market and the potential legal and financial implications should one of them catastrophically fail due to poor installation, which, after all, is the most likely mode of failure.
Ignoring the 316 issue, which isn?t an issue for probably 99.9% of cases, it is clear to me from the different anchor descriptions on the IC website that the best anchor would be a Petzl Collinox. Simon agrees that forging is the best manufacturing method, that they are inherently robust mechanically and that they require only a 12mm hole and it is only the high cost causing them to be rejected.
Collinox anchors are currently available off the shelf at a retail price of ?10.00 + Vat and another ?2.82 + Vat for a glass resin tube but I would imagine, if asked for politely, somebody might offer them at trade so there could be no accusations of profiteering. You could also buy them singly, instead of having to wait for 3 months while 2,500 of them are shipped in from China at considerable up front expense only to be left to clog up somebody?s garage for the next 10 years.
I wonder how many ?15.00 resin tubes are opened to install only a couple of anchors, or in the case of Rowter Hole, for only a single anchor. That?s nearly 7 x more expensive than a Petzl glass tube.
The glass tubes are surprisingly robust and are a lot easier to carry than the current bulky resin tubes and clumsy application guns which take up as much room in your tackle bag on the way out as they did on the way in.
It?s all well and good accusing people of being selfish, irresponsible and vandalistic for not engaging in the CNCC anchor scheme and installing non-authorised anchors, but to not test any of the ?official? anchors that are being installed under the name of a BCA constituent body, to me, is irresponsible in the extreme.
OK, it?s not reasonably practicable to test anchors every 6 or 12 months but surely they have got to be tested after installation.
We talk all the time about the litigious world we live in. Indeed, we have even allowed ourselves to be convinced by BCA that we all need to be insured to go caving because of some faint likelihood that someone will try to sue us if we accidentally drop a rock on them.
The likelihood of literally coming unstuck by not testing ?official? anchors at least after they have been installed is a far more worrying and likely outcome.
Simon wrote, ?there was a period when the resin anchor scheme was not operating as well as it could have been?. I would suggest there has never been a time when the BCA resin anchor scheme has been operating as well as it could have been simply because some of the politicians won?t let it.
I would suggest people engage in the BCA anchor installation scheme by demanding a fundamental review of its current requirements and seriously consider the big chunks of limestone that will be ripped from cave walls when the current BP anchors need replacing in another 10 years and take very seriously the issues relating to not testing ?official? anchors.
Mark
I doubt re-bolting Rowter Hole would have been done if the BCA hadn?t funded it. The digging and climbing project cost over ?2,000 in materials and access fees and another ?1,000 for anchors would have broken the club?s bank.
Instead, cavers would be using some of the 150+ HKD?s that we used during the original vertical exploration beyond the Ice Cream Trail. And as for carrying out a visual examination of all anchors prior to use, for the anchors in most of the Rowter Hole extensions, you can?t. You?ve got to trust the anchors have been installed and tested correctly and the fixed ropes are all in good order!!
The current problems relating to the choice of anchors that Bob Mehew mentions on the CNCC thread are the exact same problems that were being discussed well over a decade ago when I was briefly involved with the BP anchor training scheme Bob Dearman was putting together.
I had developed a training course for industrial anchor installers while Bob worked for me and he had asked for my opinion on his course content. It was certainly thorough. I did question though the need for such a high strength requirement when industry accepted significantly lower minimum failure loads.
I think insisting registered BP anchor installers demonstrate their SRT competence was a step too far, causing an eruption of ridiculous DCA/CSCC regional anchor installation politics, getting quite nasty on a few occasions.
I get the impression from Simon?s partial explanation of the status of IC anchors with the BCA/CNCC in the Dales that the political situation hasn?t got any better, indeed it sounds like things are even worse.
It was bad enough when the politicians only had one type of resin anchor to bicker about, now they appear to have 3 and if Simon is no longer in a position to produce his IC anchor, there will probably be 4.
We had a long discussion about BP anchors at the Buttered Badger AGM in Castleton a few weeks ago and, other than the fact that the BCA pay for them, they don?t have much else going for them. Issues include the physical size and weight of the 36v drilling machine needed to drill the deep 16mm holes required for their installation as well as not being able to easily remove them afterwards without leaving a potentially ugly blot on the underground landscape.
Another issue is, as soon as you carry out the axial pull test to confirm their placement, the resin around the little notch you have to drill out to locate and position the eye, cracks as it flexes. In an industrial environment this cracking could be considered as a fail requiring the anchor to be replaced and re-tested.
It?s all well and good expecting ordinary cavers to carry out a thorough examination of all the anchors prior to use but its most unlikely they will have the appropriate skills and knowledge to be able to know what is and isn?t acceptable when even those supposedly ?in the know? can?t even agree on what is and isn?t acceptable, e.g. +/-1mm rotational movement of the anchor after installation, testing or no testing.
So long as the actual anchor eye is not the welded variety its most unlikely it will fail. The only anchor I have ever had fail was one of the old Petzl welded ring hangers attached to an 8mm HKD type anchor in concrete. Under test conditions, following significant deformation of the eye, the weld failed at just over 14kN. Petzl stopped manufacturing welded eyebolts because of the problems Bob Mehew mentioned in the CNCC thread.
The HKD type anchor itself did not show any signs of movement in or out of the hole which is why I was a little surprised at the 5 ? 7kN pull-out forces MarkS mentions in his HKD thread.
I?ve tested many hundreds of these anchors, mainly in concrete, and have never had them pull out at such low loads. I?m pretty sure they?ve all been well over 12kN. I generally use Rawl HKD type anchors. The same HKD type anchor I loaded to 14kN, I regularly load to in excess of 15kN for demonstration purposes and the anchor looks as good as new in the hole. It?s in the floor as well, so it?s usually always wet.
The low failure loads of the Hilti HKD anchors that haven?t been given a good belt with the hammer is not surprising really and is the same for all manufacturers.
Some of our club members have questioned the need to carry out the 6kN axial pull testing of every installed BP anchor.
As an installer of thousands of eyebolts for use in the industrial environment over the past 30 years, correct installation and appropriate testing by trained individuals is the key to a sound anchor placement.
With regard to the testing of IC anchors, Simon says, ?Actually we don't have any tools to test them. We do not have the capability and do not do any testing of anchors in caves. The present policy is for you to do the testing of the anchors?.
If it really is the case that ?officially installed?, ?officially approved? or some other equally confusing classification of BCA ?officially certified? anchors are not being appropriately tested after installation then this is very worrying. Checking the current BCA anchor policy there is no mention of testing installed anchors yet in Derbyshire anchors do have to be tested, and rightly so.
In the industrial environment and following the requirements of EN795 and BSEN7883, there should first be a 3 minute, 12kN substrate test in the direction of intended use (usually carried out in shear and then scrapped). All subsequent anchors (in the same substrate) should then be axially tested to 6kN for 15 seconds at least once per year for fall arrest purposes and every 6 months where there is likely to be full suspension, i.e. descending and/or ascending a rope.
The information on the BCA website relating to this axial element of testing as being 10kN is very confusing. Simon quotes axial pull test figures for EN959 anchors of 15kN and 20kN. The BCA website also uses some very peculiar terminology (to me anyway) when it talks about SWL?s. It quotes a SWL for BP anchors as being 11.46kN but I can?t for the life of me work out how that figure has been calculated when the maximum rated load for an item of PPE is usually only a single person.
The requirement in industry to test every anchor at least annually came into force in the late 1990?s. Before then the minimum requirement was to test annually only 5% of the installed anchors on a structure. I can?t remember the exact details of the particular incident that finally led to the change but basically somebody fell onto an EN795 anchor and it failed catastrophically. When the HSE tested all the other anchors, they all failed catastrophically. It was found that none of the anchors had ever been axially tested after particularly poor installation by people who were supposedly competent.
Where anchors are used in a professional capacity, e.g. by cave instructors, they should really be tested in accordance with the criteria previously mentioned. When health & safety legislation use the word ?should? it effectively means the HSE won?t prosecute you if you don?t test the anchors, but if you don?t test them and one of them fails, resulting in a serious accident or worse, and it can be shown that the accident wouldn?t have happed if you had tested it, then the prosecution would, quite rightly, throw the book at you.
Whilst caving instructors may work under the 2007 amendment to the 2005 Work at Height Regulations, in that they can use a single rope for full suspension purposes, there are still many other regulations which should be followed, e.g. MHSW, PUWER, PPE and LOLER (particularly when terminology such as SWL is being used).
Obviously, anchors should always be used in pairs so the above scenario should be most unlikely.
The issues with 316 Stainless being used in the rope access industry have been similarly discussed. With a large proportion of the work being in the offshore industry it rightly deserves such discussion but I really can?t see the issue in a typical cave environment.
We seem to be tying ourselves in knots with this 316 requirement when there are only a handful of sea caves which may need such permanent rigging, and these have probably already been done if anyone is that bothered about them.
The original idea of the BCA anchor scheme was basically to help stop the problems of bolt rash and hopefully make things a lot safer for those venturing underground. A sound idea.
I wonder though, how bad things would have actually got from a conservation perspective and how many of these bolt failure accidents there actually would have been if the BCA hadn?t developed the scheme. As I said above, if cavers always attach their ropes to 2 anchors there shouldn?t be any accidents.
There was a lot to be said for learning SRT rigging when you had to actually think about where to attach your hangers. One of the main complaints about Dave Elliot and his red ringed bolts and their associated guide book, was that he was trying to coerce us all into ?dot to dot? caving. He got some serious flack for it at the time and I certainly wasn?t a fan but looking where we are today with 2 different batches of BP anchors, Self Drillers, HKD?s, DMM, Raumer, Rainox, IC and their associated guide book, come back Dave Elliot I say.
I?m only joking obviously, any type of threaded anchor is going to wear out too quickly, but we don?t seem to have made much progress since we all agreed they weren?t suitable in the 80?s other than the same ?bolt rash? but this time, instead of them usually being difficult to even see, they stick out like a sore thumb, some might say a proper blot on the landscape.
Another potential issue is the testing of anchors. The ?Axial? test should be just that, a direct pull outwards. The only anchors available which can be truly axially tested are those such as the Collinox, Batinox or Fixe which allow the test rig to be positioned in the middle of the eye. All threaded type anchors can be tested in the same way with the correct thread attachments that are usually supplied with the test rig.
The potential problem with not just the BP anchor is that the test load is applied slightly off centre thus applying bending forces and possible deformation during the actual testing operation and explains why the resin cracks around the offset eye when you test a BP anchor. The inability to properly test the old stainless Petzl Coeur Permanent anchor is the main reason Petzl no longer manufacture them.
We did some testing in the early 90?s before Richard Greenslade (NCC) and me installed about 400 x 12mm stainless HKD type anchors up and around the Emley Moor transmission tower to enable a full internal and external inspection to be carried out. We managed to break a number of anchors when applying an offset 6kN test load via 12mm stainless Petzl Coeur hanger plates!!
Finding a company capable or, more importantly, willing to take over the responsibility for the manufacture of anchors that are to be used for suspending people, I can?t imagine is going to be easy.
If companies as experienced in this field as DMM stopped making their anchor then any other prospective manufacturer is going to be asking why they stopped. I would hazard a guess at a combination of them being too expensive to manufacture for such a limited market and the potential legal and financial implications should one of them catastrophically fail due to poor installation, which, after all, is the most likely mode of failure.
Ignoring the 316 issue, which isn?t an issue for probably 99.9% of cases, it is clear to me from the different anchor descriptions on the IC website that the best anchor would be a Petzl Collinox. Simon agrees that forging is the best manufacturing method, that they are inherently robust mechanically and that they require only a 12mm hole and it is only the high cost causing them to be rejected.
Collinox anchors are currently available off the shelf at a retail price of ?10.00 + Vat and another ?2.82 + Vat for a glass resin tube but I would imagine, if asked for politely, somebody might offer them at trade so there could be no accusations of profiteering. You could also buy them singly, instead of having to wait for 3 months while 2,500 of them are shipped in from China at considerable up front expense only to be left to clog up somebody?s garage for the next 10 years.
I wonder how many ?15.00 resin tubes are opened to install only a couple of anchors, or in the case of Rowter Hole, for only a single anchor. That?s nearly 7 x more expensive than a Petzl glass tube.
The glass tubes are surprisingly robust and are a lot easier to carry than the current bulky resin tubes and clumsy application guns which take up as much room in your tackle bag on the way out as they did on the way in.
It?s all well and good accusing people of being selfish, irresponsible and vandalistic for not engaging in the CNCC anchor scheme and installing non-authorised anchors, but to not test any of the ?official? anchors that are being installed under the name of a BCA constituent body, to me, is irresponsible in the extreme.
OK, it?s not reasonably practicable to test anchors every 6 or 12 months but surely they have got to be tested after installation.
We talk all the time about the litigious world we live in. Indeed, we have even allowed ourselves to be convinced by BCA that we all need to be insured to go caving because of some faint likelihood that someone will try to sue us if we accidentally drop a rock on them.
The likelihood of literally coming unstuck by not testing ?official? anchors at least after they have been installed is a far more worrying and likely outcome.
Simon wrote, ?there was a period when the resin anchor scheme was not operating as well as it could have been?. I would suggest there has never been a time when the BCA resin anchor scheme has been operating as well as it could have been simply because some of the politicians won?t let it.
I would suggest people engage in the BCA anchor installation scheme by demanding a fundamental review of its current requirements and seriously consider the big chunks of limestone that will be ripped from cave walls when the current BP anchors need replacing in another 10 years and take very seriously the issues relating to not testing ?official? anchors.
Mark
