In a message dated 11/3/2007 8:57:41 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
towertalk-request@contesting.com writes:
> Hi all, I have a tr ex 51' crank up I am going to srrect. I live a long
way from any concrete supply and am looking for a way around the big expense
of delivery. Earlier, I salvaged a large steel tube 24" across with 5/8"
walls by 20' long. from another project. It is already filled with concrete.
My
plan is to auger a 24" hole in the ground as deep as possible (6 to 8') , cut
the tube, insert it and use it for my base. I would weld brackets directly
to the 5/8 plate on the top to bolt the legs to. I could mix enough concrete
for a shallow pad around it. What do you think of this idea? the tower would
be directly grounded through the tube right into the water table. Is there a
concern for lightning strikes in the base or any other potential problems
anyone can see? It would certainly be grounded well ! ...any guidance
appreciated.
I expect that this tower needs something like 4-5 yards of concrete in
the base (an educated guess). How many yards of concrete are in the pipe? (I'd
attempt answering that but I don't remember the formula.)
If there's enough, having 1/3 of the pipe per anchor bolt (like a pier
column) would be a start.
But the engineering instruction is to have the concrete in undisturbed earth
so you'd need to drill them with an auger before dropping them in the hole.
At 4000 pounds per cubic yard, there's a bunch of handling involved just in
getting the pipe pieces where they need to be.
WARNING: I'm not an engineer so let's see what real engineering types
have to say.
Grounding OTOH is pretty straightforward.
Cheers,
Steve K7LXC
TOWER TECH
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