The preservation of the former Gasworks building’s chimney has been a matter of taking it apart brick by brick — all 4000 of them — in a bid to protect the rest of the South Dunedin structure.
Project manager Paul Stevenson, project and interiors manager at Naylor Love, which is handling the project, said the work done in the past few weeks had gone relatively smoothly, particularly given the weather.
"The initial challenge was getting the crane in here.
"It was quite a tight spot with the limitations on the dangerous building notice. But then also competing with the lovely harbour breeze, which constantly comes up daily.
"So yeah, we had many days during the decommission where the guys in the man cage were battling the elements — pretty much we pulled it out piece by piece up the top."
Mr Stevenson said there had been a lot of discussions with the Gasworks Trust and the Dunedin City Council to determine the best way to proceed with the project.
"There’s a lot of interest in this project and we were probably a wee bit tied down as well, given the ‘dangerous building’ notice on it."
The council-owned category 1 historic place was in April found to be in a worse condition than first thought.
"Currently, we’re just awaiting some pricing for some engineered scaffolding to go around the chimney.
"Once we get that okayed and approved, we will put that scaffold around. We’ll get up and further investigate, you know, the actual standard of what’s left there."
Council group manager property services Anna Nilsen said to date the council had spent about $225,000 while carefully dismantling the top section of the heritage-listed Gasworks Museum chimney.
"Most of cost comes from crane rental, as we needed a large crane on site over the past month to ensure the safety of our contractors during deconstruction work."
She said the bricks would remain on site until a longer-term storage site was confirmed, but this would be a secure, covered location somewhere in the city.
"This will allow the bricks to be retained, preserving the option of a potential rebuild in future, funding permitting.
"The next steps will involve the installation of a scaffold around the remaining chimney, which will allow for a full, detailed assessment of the structure.
"This will provide us and the Dunedin Gasworks Museum Trust with a more complete understanding of the condition of the chimney and how it is best managed into the future."
