If there is any doubt add temporary rope guys and check the tower itself
before climbing. My preference would be to replace all those clamps and
insulators with Phillystran. Philly install would go really fast and you
would not have all those clamps and insulators to worry about as they
rust. I have two towers guyed with Philly and the install was really fast
and clean. Using the pre-formed guy grips it is really easy.
-Dave NN5K
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Donald Chester <k4kyv@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> My 127' Rohn 25G tower has now been up for 29 years. I put it up myself,
> single-handedly. It has 4 sets of guys, each using 3/16EHS guy cable, broken
> up every 18' with strain insulators. I live in middle TN, so we are not
> subject to salt spray, but we have had some pollution from a near-by coal
> burning power plant. They claim to have cleaned up their sulphur dioxide
> emissions.
>
> I have noticed that some sections of the guy cables are completely brown
> from rust, while others appear only partially rusted and some still show few
> signs of rust. The rusting seems to be completely random, although the
> sides of the wires facing southwest, towards the prevailing precipitation
> seem to be worse. The tower itself is in a similar rusty condition.
>
> I have not climbed the tower for several years, so my observations are all
> made from the ground. I am open to suggestions to what would be a good
> indicator that it is time to replace the guy wires with new cable. I
> believe the rust is still mostly on the surface, but I wouldn't want a cable
> to fail unexpectedly because it has rusted through. I haven't tried
> scraping any of the rusted spots to see how deeply the rust has penetrated
> before reaching bright metal. I feel it would be a waste of time and money
> to replace the rusty guy wires on a rusty tower, if the original guy wires
> are still mechanically sound, and I don't have the physical stamina that I
> had 29 years ago, although I think I could still do the job but at a slower
> pace.
>
> I recall reading a few years ago from Rohn that corrosion of the u-bolt
> cable clamps should not be a cause for concern, that even when they appear
> fully rusted there is still some active galvanising protection, but they
> said nothing about the guy wires themselves. One set of guys uses Guy-Grip
> pre-forms at the strain insulators, but the rest use cable clamps.
>
> I have seen severely rusted guy wires in which the strands appeared to
> actually contain small cracks. I would be leery to even climb such a tower.
> Mine don't appear to be in that condition yet.
>
> Don k4kyv
>
> _____________________________________________________________
>
> This message was typed using the DVORAK keyboard layout.
>
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