Well after a long delay I am finally going to get the base for the
tower poured. I started this project during a week vacation from work
in October! But murphy struck and missed up my plans.
First I rented a back hoe on Sat and started digging the holes for
the base a elevated guys. I ordered the Rohn 5ft base section from
Texas Towers on Monday and figured that Since they were only about 60
miles away it would arrive by Wed, Wrong, UPS lost the order after
talking to Texas Towers they shipped a replacement base but it
arrived the following Wed, 2 days too late vacation time over and
back
to work.
For the next 3 to 4 weeks it rained almost every weekend, then my
boss decided he needed me to work Mondays ( my normal day off and the
only day to get a concrete truck to deliver, they don't work
weekends) for the next month, by then the holes had started to
collapse and fill in. By now it is January and getting to cold, even
in Texas, to work on the project, by March the weather had warmed but
it is raining on the weekends ( the weekdays were beautiful).
Finally in April we get a forecast for nice dry weather for the
weekend and my boss says we won't call me in to work so I rent the
back hole again and start digging out the holes. Well this time
murphy
took a vacation most of the time HI HI I got the holes cleaned out in
no time went to check the depth and oops too deep get out the shovel
and start filling in ( I'm not good enough with the front end loaded
to put a little back end, but the shovel worked fine) I only had one
more little problem and this is my fix for it.
When I put the tower base (with one 10ft section of Rohn 25
attached) in and started to try and level it and guy it the base
slowly worked into the the dirt until it was almost 8" lower than it
needed to be. I pulled the base back out and jumped in the hole and
tried to firm up the dirt in the bottom so the base wouldn't sink,
but when I put the base back in and got it all level and the
temporary
guys on it, an hour latter it had sunk again. My XYL suggested
putting
some bricks under the legs to support the base, but I knew that the
legs won't drain if I did that so after some heavy duty thinking I
figure out if I put the bricks under the middle of the base between
the legs and let the first crossmember sit on the bricks then the
legs
would drain. It worked like a champ the bricks kept the base from
sinking and the legs are about 3" into the sand gravel clay mixture
in the bottom( the clay got mixed in when I was digging out the
holes. but the bottom still seems real porous).
Well I still have 2 more forms to build in the morning after I take
the back hole back and before the truck comes tomorrow afternoon so I
better end this and get some sleep.
I mainly want to share my method of keeping the base from sinking
under it's own weight.
73
Rick
KC5AJX
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