[TowerTalk] Pea Gravel

[Tom Anderson]

Jeff:

My previous tower was 40 ft of Rohn 25.  When digging the base I used "river rock" in the bottom for drainage rather than pea gravel per se.  The river rock, which was available in 50 pound bags at Lowe's and Home Depot, lumber yards, and other home improvement centers, was just easier to "handle" as far as I was concerned.  Rather than having a sand and gravel company dump gravel on my driveway, I just used the unopened bags of river rock instead and wheelbarrowed them to the backyard.  If I needed a couple more bags as I was working on the standard Rohn 25 plans book standard 3 foot base, it was no problem to just go buy a couple more and the river rock I used was just slightly larger pebbles than gravel would have been anyway.   

The ham who bought my 4 sections of Rohn 25 five years later, wanted to make sure that the straight 10 ft. sections were free of corrosion, as was the base so we looked down each one with a falshlight and nary a bit of corrosion, even inside the base legs. No standing water either.

When I built my current tower a 50 ft TriEx crank up in 1993, gravel in the base wasn't needed at my new QTH so I just let it go and used a heavy duty concrete mix, supposedly the same mix they use on interstate highway bridges. The TriEx supplied base was made out of what "appeared" to be ribbed rebar.  I'm still using the same TriEx base and TriEx crank up tower some 16 years later with nary a problem, of course I do perform a corrosion and bolt tightness check a couple times a year as part of overall tower maintenance.

Tom, WW5L 

--- On Sat, 8/15/09, Roger (K8RI) <K8RI-on-TowerTalk at tm.net> wrote:

> From: Roger (K8RI) <K8RI-on-TowerTalk at tm.net>
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Pea Gravel
> To: jeff.freedman at comcast.net
> Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
> Date: Saturday, August 15, 2009, 4:50 PM
> 
> 
> Jeff Freedman wrote:
> > Any comments about using pea gravel as drainage on the
> bottom of a tower
> > base?
> >   
> This is what I meant (and forgot to included) when I
> suggested 
> supporting the tower while pouring the 
> base.http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/tower13.htm
> 
> 73
> 
> Roger (K8RI)
> >  
> > 73 - Jeff, K7JF
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > TowerTalk mailing list
> > TowerTalk at contesting.com
> > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
> >
> >   
> _______________________________________________
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TowerTalk mailing list
> TowerTalk at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
>