At 1:38 PM -0800 11/18/97, Patrick Barkey wrote:
>I did precisely this for my self supporting tower base. The problem is,
>the act of pouring the concrete twisted and turned my anchor bolts in
>ways that I could not perfectly correct. Now that the concrete has
>cured, the bolts are slightly off. Big pain.
I hear you. I had a similar problem with my US Tower base. We used the
T-base as a template for the bolts, but they still moved. Imagine our
surprise when we removed the T-base to finish the concrete, only to find we
then couldn't get the T-base back on the bolts we had just removed it from!!
>If I had it to do over again, I would pour first and then set the entire wood
>template/anchor bolt assembly down into the wet concrete.
I am not sure that would work very well with the big J-bolts, especially if
you used high-strength (i.e., fast hardening) concrete. I think what I
would do next time would be to fasten the bolts to the T-base (not just
allow gravity to keep them vertical) and then get a concrete vibrator to
get rid of any air pockets and, at the same time, allow the bolts to settle
into their desired locations.
It is truly amazing how much stuff you learn the very first time you do
something like this. :)
73, Dick (who reserves the right to make every non-fatal mistake at least
once!)
--
Dick Flanagan W6OLD CFII Minden, Nevada (South of Reno)
Visit http://www.qsl.net/w7di/
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