Jim,
Boy can I tell that you have been living in the islands for a while!!!! Ha
Ha. Out here in the American Siberia, we have to worry a lot more about hard
freezing than corrosion with this type problem. I once installed a couple
Rohn 25 sections on top of my roof when I first moved here to MT. It turned
out that the bottom section collected some pasture clay in the bottom of one
leg without me noticing it. Needless to say the leg collected some water and
it froze one night and split the tubing with a slit that was about an eighth
of an inch wide and about six inches long. Not a pretty sight.
This problem brings to mind a simple test that we should all perform when
installing towers..........funny that the manufacturers don't recommend it.
Why not pour some water down each leg before you pour the concrete to make
sure you have good flow. It is also a good idea to test AFTER the pour so
that if necessary you can run a garden hose down the hole and do away with any
dirt that might be plugging things. Only a long masonry bit will go through a
concrete plug however.
There is no way that I would ignore the problem and "Hope" it doesn't lead to
a catastrophe, no offense intended to anyone, but coming from someone that has
learned the lesson the hard way.
73 all/Mike, N7ML.
Jim Reid wrote:
> Hi Richard, you wrote, in part:
>
> >My question is whether anyone has a feeling of how serious a problem this
> >lack of water drainage is. Will this prolonged exposure of the steel legs
> >to water likely cause any structural integrity problems?
>
> Need Oxygen also.
>
> Only if more Oxygen can get into the legs. After what is dissolved in the
> water in there now has reacted with the steel, nothing more should
> occur, unless more O2 can get in there. Not sure how it is together,
> you can judge that. That is why there is still something of the Titanic
> left at the bottom, the O2 which did the original rusting went "down"
> with the ship, and there is no way for more to get down there now,
> otherwise the Titanic would be long gone; same for the Yorktown
> under some 3 miles of ocean out off Midway Island.
>
> 73, Jim, KH7M
>
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