[TowerTalk] guy rod aligned!

DMartin560 at aol.com DMartin560 at aol.com
Sun Sep 24 08:40:27 EDT 2006


Good looking job, Dick.
If you wanted to plumb up that equalizer plate, use two pipe wrenches.
Place one on the bottom of the plate and one on the top and give a twist.
The rod should twist with no problem with large enough wrenches.

GL,
Dwayne,  KG4ADM

Following up on my previous post, the overwhelming consensus was to bend the
misaligned anchor rod. This turned out to be much easier than I expected --
I could have done it with one hand. It also took very little bending to
align the rod. Pictures and more details are now on my website at
www.wc1m.com. Click on Big Tower Project and scroll down to the section on
the South guy anchor.

Thanks to all who offered advice on this one. Gerald's math made utter sense
to me, and I realized that so much of the rod was sticking out of the
concrete that it would provide plenty of leverage and be real easy to bend.
It was. I'm sure Gerald is right that the rod would have been bent by the
guy pretension anyway. That's what convinced me it was OK to do it by hand.
I figured it would be better to do it before the backfill so the dirt
wouldn't be moved by the rod bending.

I later got an email from a tower worker who has retired after 30 years. He
said the pros would bend the rod. But he also told me to wait until the
concrete was cured to avoid the possibility of a crack in the surface.
Unfortunately, that advice came to late. The concrete has hardened, but of
course it isn't anywhere near fully cured yet. But the amount of force
required to bend the rod and the amount of movement were so small that I
think the concrete will be OK.

73, Dick WC1M


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