Frenchs Forest on Sydney’s Northen Shore is a beautiful and leafy suburb, opitimised by the National Park and the proximity to the city. The unique topology of the area, created by the natural erosion of the Ancient sandstone ridge that runs through it, creates ‘fingers’ of smaller ridges, rising steeply between the myriad of smaller creeks.
The steep inaccessible nature of the terrain has assisted the area in maintaining a mature and prolific coverage of fauna to this day. Road Access continues to be governed by the short steep nature of the sandstone fingers, and this has also inhibited the proliferation of houses, despite it’s proximity to the centre of Sydney.
Advances in Engineering techniques and the advent of Computer Aided Design programs has allowed architects to design houses that will safely perch upon the edges of these fingers to take advantage of the naturally occurring views, and the ability to place the homeowner in a vantage point ‘amongst the treetops.’
It is one of these magnificent homes that Mr Scaffold visited this week. Our reputation at being capable of overcoming the difficulties posed by the topology and vegetation has preceded us.
On this occasion, the home sits securely upon the available footings within the sandstone, and projects over the precipice below to gain further access to the views. This requires Mr Scaffold to do the same with a scaffolding structure.
The steep nature of the site required us to start metres below the footings of the structure and find our own secure footing on the sandstone. Thankfully, the soil is very thin and loose over the sandstone rock, and very quickly the scaffold started to rise toward the base of the house.
There is obviously no way to use outriggers on this project, but the supporting structure of the house, allowed Mr Scaffold to securely ‘tie-in’ to the structure, and also utilise the nature of the scaffold on the other sides of the house to safely spring outwards to match the projecting nature of the inhabited levels of the house.
Mr Scaffold is proud to be part of the team trusted to work on and around these magnificent homes in Frenchs Forest and many other suburbs in Sydney.