From the casual reading of this situation and the sage wisdom that has
been proffered..
What do you get from all this possible new effort, you made casual
mention of it being a hobby tower for you, it must be the ham repeaters
i assume as no mention has been made of HF antennas or such. You said
presently the income stream from the paying users covers the property
taxes and utilities. Charlie responded and offered what i think is a
pretty hard and objective look at your expenses to build a new
replacement tower, these cost are enormous and nothing has been factored
for a standby tower while the replacement tower is being erected.
Nothing has been said about these commercial customers being insured for
loss of service if something bad happens with the new tower and the
supposed "service" obligation you have to these commercial customers in
the event of some failure, so some form of insurance needs to be
factored into these cost.
I dont see the satisfaction or remuneration here to anywhere near equal
the effort.
From all i can gleam from this as i read it, i would not do a thing to
this existing tower situation, leave it alone and run with it till it
fails. Or raise the rents and make this thing what it has to be ?? a
for profit capitalistic operation with long term leases and escalations
included to fully support the replacement effort and ongoing operations.
Best: mac/mc w5mc
On 7/18/2019 6:01 PM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:
Hoping to gather some community wisdom before embarking on a tower
replacement.
I have a 2.5 acre property on a slope with what I believe to be a Rohn 55
tower that was installed as a commercial paging transmitter tower in 1971
at 150 feet, then extended sometime in the 1980s to 170 feet when they
switched from VHF to UHF and then 900 MHz paging. (The top (5th) guy level
was quite clearly added using an existing hole on the anchor and a
strandvise instead of the big grips that were used for the other guys.)
The tower has withstood at least one lightning strike, the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake, and numerous storms,... but the guys are getting very rusted,
the tower is rusting (despite a coating of zinc-rich paint a couple years
ago), and the guy anchors are in unknown condition (though visually "ok").
I'm not sure how long a tower should last, but it can't possibly be
"forever".
Two of the guy anchor locations are just above the tower elevation, the
third is some tens of feet lower. Each guy anchor has a metal rod that
extends 3+ feet unprotected through dirt and then into a concrete block .
The tower has a pier pin base on concrete which is below ground level, so
is in a bit of a well with retaining blocks around it (had been buried
under the earth when I acquired the property and tower).
I have the following limitations:
1. I want to have minimal downtime - the tower has a couple of heavily-used
ham repeaters, a commercial repeater, and a wireless ISP on it.
2. The county would never issue a permit for a tower like this today... the
property has a use permit for the tower, specified as "18 inch face" and a
drawing of its approximate location on the property. So I need to somehow
permit this work as "replacement in kind". A new tower would be limited to
53 feet in this zoning district, with a possible variance available to 78
feet... the trees are taller than that.
3. I have no construction drawings for the guy anchors or the tower base,
and have no way of nondestructively testing the strength of the guy anchor
rods.
4. I'd like to ensure that the tower can support the existing and future
microwave dish loads, and reduce the twist both for those and the fire
detection cameras I have up top... so maybe should go to star guying?
So... I need to choose a tower that is roughly 18" face width (possibly
just Rohn 55 again), and install it at (if I trust the foundation) or near
the existing tower location, with presumably new guy anchors that must be
near but not at the existing anchor locations (to minimize downtime), and
do as much of the removal and installation as possible with a crane (or
helicopter?). I also need to not break the bank, as this is really a hobby
tower for me, where the commercial customers are mostly to pay the
utilities and property taxes.
Thoughts? Alternatives?
Matthew Kaufman, KA6SQG
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