While major noisy work happened next door – ranging from hammer drills to jack hammers to earth movers and a couple of cranes – construction began on Hamilton Rd, from Egerton to approximately Chesley Streets.
This meant that the lanes on Hamilton Rd were reduced, so seething drivers raged down my street. Many angry drivers tied up in traffic honked, swore, revved, turned up their awful music and fender benders and worse abounded. Dump trucks filled with earth and gravel also roared down my street, or sat noisily idling starting at 6 a.m. or so. Sidewalks on Hamilton Rd were torn up and the crosswalk light by the library on Sackville was gone. It was a big, noisy, dangerous mess.
Signs said this road improvement was supposed to happen between May – September.
What really happened was that by the first snow in November there still weren’t even sidewalks. If you needed to walk on Hamilton Rd, you could walk on a sloped, slightly gravelled ledge where the sidewalk had been, hoping you wouldn’t slip into the aggressive traffic only inches away. If you used a mobility scooter, wheelchair or pushed a stroller that was your bad luck. You had to go blocks out of your way only to discover that some streets like Trafalgar by the school were absolutely blocked to even foot traffic.
With the traffic light and crosswalk gone from Sackville, as a pedestrian you could either walk to Rectory or Egerton to use a safe crossing. Or you could dart across Hamilton Rd when it seemed safe, to scramble over cement barricades. When the road was more repaired and the lights put back up, drivers were now completely blind to these lights. I don’t know how many near misses there were. I don’t know how many times I pointed at the red light above as drivers tore through the crosswalk, with the walk signal on.
The parking lot at the factory next door was used to store large items used for whatever infrastructure thing they were doing, so there was a great deal of big sounds and vibration coming from that direction, too.
At some point temporary (I hope temporary) asphalt sidewalks were laid down in early December.
By October, after this had been going on since the beginning of May, new hairline cracks appeared in several of the walls I had repaired. Typically, these cracks happen if the joint compound is put on too thick. Usually these cracks show themselves right away.
My walls had been fine in the 12 – 16 months since they were repaired, primed and painted. Then suddenly a bunch of these hairline cracks showed up on my the interior walls that faced an exterior wall.
Doors that had always opened and shut now wouldn’t close properly. Some wouldn’t close at all. These were doors adjacent to the exterior walls, close to the walls that had new cracks.
How could I prove what was happening ? who could I complain to ? John the carpenter planed the doors to make them fit again, which only took a few minutes, and I could fix the plaster and paint myself.
Did all the vibration from the combined construction cause this ?
Black Picket Fence 