Here in Denver, just digging and pouring a basement for a house requires a
city inspection and write off before you can pour the concrete and then
again afterward. The suburbs around Denver almost all require building
permits before you can put up any kind of a tower and most restrict it to
certain heights, too. A tower as large as Alan is talking about he might
get, probably wouldn't be allowed even in Denver county and they used to
never require a building permit. Now I believe the tower has to fall within
your property if the thing falls down. Of course, they don't know that
towers just don't falls straight over; it is wind torque that twists a tower
like a cork screw and it collapses in on itself. I'll tell you one thing,
if I was putting up something of that nature, I'd want a person from the
company there even if it wasn't required by the company. The quality of the
soil can make a big difference with a tower that heavy and with big antennas
on it. Tower installation at any level is an art and rotating towers and
hydraulic up and down poles or frame towers are nothing to mess around with.
Soil content to a certain depth, geographical requirements, studies of
weather patterns, and a lot more are required for any tower installation
like Alan is talking about. You best know something about concrete,
digging, soil shifting, root growth from any nearby trees, tree heights, and
what long boom antennas do in the winds that are possible in your
geographical location before you even do anything. With the schnook warm
high winds Denver gets off the mountain during most of January and February,
it can be scarey. I just had a little 38 foot tower once with a 4 element
20 meter beam on a 26 foot boom and in a 110 MPH wind during the middle of
the day blew up and lasted for hours , it rotated the antenna 90 degrees.
My friend down the street had a 130 foot Rohn 25G tower with a 6 element
tribander at 132 feet and a 2 element 40 at 136 feet with a seamless mast
and in that same wind storm, one of his top guys cables at 130 feet snapped
off and the tower, he said, was leaning, in the wind I might add, from the
60 foot level up to the top, over about 8 feet at the top. It never fell.
He knew how to put up towers and it was guyed in 4 points up the tower. How
he didn't lose the whole thing in that wind was a miracle to me. When the
wind died, he had to climb all 130 feet and hook that top guy cable back up
again. I just had to climb 38 feet, loosen the bolts on the boom, rotate
the antenna by hand back in place, tighten up the boom again, and I was done
in 5 minutes. I'd never own a fixed tower with a big bunch of antennas on
it again, that is, I'd want one that automatically lower in wind and was
certified installed correctly by the company. Law sues with stuff like that
can get harry.
Phil.
K0NX
|