[TowerTalk] Tower Foundations, II NA6T

[Bob Smith]

I can agree 1000% with Steve as to the price of the engineering drawings.

I live and work in California and below are two different tower examples
as to the engineering charges:

I had 70' of rohn 25 with a 24dbi 2.4ghz grid antenna at the top, 
bracketed at 50'
on a water tank with an overdesigned bracket and concrete base that the
  engineer charged the City of Fort Bragg $900.00.  He basically took my
plans and wrote his calculations on them and we submitted them to
  the City of Fort Bragg Building department for approval,  yes even the
city needs a building permit.

I also had set of plans i've had done for a Trylon 100' tower in a county
zoning district, outside the city, in farmland was $1200.00

This was a steal because the engineer has to lay his reputation on the line
when he stamps the drawings .  I gave him all the Trylon Engineering drawings,
he made his calculations on those drawings and I submitted the package to
the county building department.

Then, in about 30 days I had the permit.  The only change to the drawings
was that the county required 3500# concrete and for this I had to have a
service come in and pull 3 test concrete cups of concrete and do the normal
tests for the correct composition of the concrete.  The testing was 
an additional
$700.00.


Bob Smith
NA6T
Robert Smith Consulting
Fort Bragg, California

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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 07:45:20 EST
From: K7LXC at aol.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Tower Foundations, II
To: towertalk at contesting.com, brentbaum5323 at msn.com
Message-ID: <cd2.a98a20f.33045e60 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"


In a message dated 2/12/2007 4:01:33 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
towertalk-request at contesting.com writes:

 >  Zoning is clear, my small community here in Utah even has a  version of
the
PRB-1 on their books, in addition to county, state and  federal exemptions!

 >  My stumbling block is the building  department; they want an engineer
certified drawing of the 3x3x4 (or 5 or  6) reinforced concrete block. The
real problem are the PE's, the least  expensive quote I have received so far
is $350, and that's if I do the  drawing and spec the rebar cage!!


     $350 is pretty reasonable but I'm not sure how  you're going to spec the
rebar cage yourself unless you use the factory  specs.

 >  Suggestions, ideas, on how to persuade the building  department that most
of
the nationally published drawings are virtually  the same and reflect good
engineering practices?


That's what their building regulations are for.  Their codes reflect
habitable buildings and they've probably never encountered  a tower 
application before
so you're expected to comply with everything, even  if common sense tells you
it's not really necessary. And a lot of times it  isn't.

 >  Are there good sources of generic drawings in addition to  the one in the
ARRL antenna book?

     The Rohn catalog is an excellent source of  factory specs and drawings
for guyed and self-supporting towers. Even if your  tower isn't a 
Rohn, you can
still make some educated inferences.

     Most building departments require PE stamped  packages these days. It's a
cost of putting up a tower any more.

 >  Finally I know our building department will accept an  already "stamped"
drawing from another source, at least they did for my  house which is only
vaguely similar to the drawing they accepted, i.e.  it's rectangular and has
a basement.

     That might be helpful but it's still THEIR game  and rules.

Cheers,
Steve     K7LXC
TOWER TECH -
Professional tower services for hams
Cell: 206-890-4188







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