[TowerTalk] Guy installation question

[K7LXC@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/21/00 9:28:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time, ndavis@vt.edu 
writes:

> I hope I am coming to the end of my continuing series of questions on my 
>  tower expansion....  Please bear with my tower-novice questions... 

    No sweat. We ALL had these questions at some time. 

> I am 
>  adding a section of Rohn 25 to my existing 30'  house-bracketed tower to 
>  bring it to 40' (40' is as high as I can go before running afoul of my 
>  town's set-back requirements for my lot size).  There will be enough tower 
>  above the bracket that I need to add one set of  guys for stability.
>  
>  Guy wire ground anchors are in place.  I want to use perform grips to 
>  attach the guys to the turnbuckles down at the anchors and I have borrowed 
>  a come-along and cable grip to pull the guys during this process.  Once I 
>  install the last tower section (with guys attached to it), how should I go 
>  about the process of connecting the 3 guy wires to the anchors and then 
>  tensioning them?  Would hope this could be done without having to adjust 
>  the perform grips once they are attached!

    You cannot adjust the Preformed grips once they are attached. You can 
remove them twice and attach them three times so you've got a little leeway 
but once they're on - they're on. 

    The easiest thing to do is to have the turnbuckles opened up almost all 
the way and have one person pull the guywire while you guesstimate where the 
grip should go. Put the grip on and attach to the turnbuckle. Repeat on the 
other two legs. 

    One person pulling might put 50 pounds or so pull on the guywire so you 
just want to get them all attached with 'some' initial tension. Now plumb the 
tower by looking up each face (you'll see if it's out-of-plumb easily) and 
adjusting the appropriate TB. Once the tower is plumb, go around and adjust 
each TB the same number of turns; i.e. 4 turns on each, 3 turns on each, etc. 
That way you'll be increasing the tension the same on all guys. When they're 
adequately tight (a little slack in the guy but not "bar tight"), you should 
be done and the tower should be plumb. Using a Loos guy tensioner will give 
you more accurate tensions but I'm not going to worry about tension accuracy 
of 40 feet of 25G. A little over or a little under isn't going to cause any 
problems. 

    Using one comealong makes it too easy to put too much tension on one 
guywire and then you have to go back and slack the other ones off. Using 
manpower to pull the guy is more reasonable and works fine. 

Cheers,   Steve   K7LXC
Tower Tech

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