[TowerTalk] Tower installation costs

[Dick Green WC1M]

The cost will vary quite a bit with the type of tower you plan to install,
antenna compliment, the location, the terrain, etc.

For comparison, here are some of my site prep costs for the installation of
a 110' Rohn 55 tower on hilly, rocky terrain in West Central NH:

Description				hourly/unit	 total

Excavation 				$86.75		 $347
Concrete Shuttle / Backfill	$65.00		 $390
8 yards concrete delivered	$97.94		 $784
Cable and Radial trenches				 $635
Misc labor				$10.00		 $200

	Total site prep			     	$2356
	
This is somewhat misleading, as I did a lot of additional labor myself and
with the help of a friend. We squared up the base and anchor holes (more
work than you might think), built and installed the rebar cages, built the
base form (in addition to building a top form, the hole was irregular so we
had to build a partial form below ground), and churned/smoothed the
concrete. There was considerably heavy lifting involved, so I paid my friend
$10 per hour (the "Misc labor" charge above.) He declined payment for
helping with erection of the tower, building/raising antennas, etc.

Note that the concrete had to be shuttled from the driveway using an
excavator. That accounts for about 2 hours of machine time and labor.

The trench fee included a 225' cable trench plus labor to help me lay the
cables (which featured two runs of 1 5/8" heliax, a bear to work with), plus
three 50' ground radial trenches at the tower. In retrospect, I think the
guy overcharged, so if I were to do it again I'd shop around. But it wasn't
easy to find a trench digger here in my rural area.

My friend and I did all the tower erection and antenna mounting (with an
electric winch, which made it quite a bit easier, but I still had to climb.)
It's hard to estimate costs for a professional installation. Prior to
deciding to do it myself, a professional rigger who specializes in ham
installations estimated my tower would cost around $3,000 to erect. My guess
is that would equate to something like two guys at $350-$400/hr for 8-10
hours. It took me and my friend 2-3 days to erect the tower (not full days),
and I expect pros could easily have put it up in a day. The price assumed I
would cut and prep all the guys myself (not a small task, especially since I
used Phillystran with EHS leaders), and probably assumed I would prep the
sections, too (debur and straighten legs as necessary.) 

My original antenna compliment was pretty complicated: a 40-2CD at 110' with
Tailtwister rotor, and three 4-el SteppIRs at 96'/64'/34' on TIC rings. The
professional estimated $5,000 to mount the antennas and rotors, but said
that it was not a firm estimate because he hadn't seen the site and
sometimes unexpected conditions, design issues or parts problems increase
the cost. I don't doubt it would have taken him and his assistant at least
two days to do the work, and possibly three. It certainly took quite a while
for me and my friend to install the rotors and tram all four antennas. It
was done over a period of several months. I'm sure we put in a lot of hours
doing it (not to mention tramming down a SteppIR that had a broken motor and
tramming it back up, plus replacing the 40-2CD with a Cal-Av 2D-40A.)

If you're building a more modest tower, then the site prep, erection and
antenna mounting will be considerably less expensive. For a 100' Rohn 25
with a tribander on top, I think you would be looking at maybe $1,000-$2,000
for site prep, $1,500-$2000 for tower erection, and maybe $1000-$1,500 for
antenna/rotor mounting. Total would be perhaps $3,500-$5,000, depending on
who does the work for you. After all, there's a recession on and I would
expect some people would be glad to have the work.

Hope this helps.

73, Dick WC1M



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve [mailto:steve65 at suddenlink.net]
> Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 9:20 AM
> To: TowerTalk
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Tower installation costs
> 
> I'm considering installation of a tower and would like to develop a
> reasonably good estimate of cost. I can probably work through the
> materials part of the cost and feel comfortable with that part of the
> estimate.
> 
> I don't think I can do much of the work myself and so need to get a
> sense of the cost to have others do the installation.
> 
> Are there any rules of thumb that might be useful in estimating mandays
> needed to install foundations and erect a guyed tower? To install a yagi
> with feedline?
> 
> Other ways to estimate mandays and dollars?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Steve K8JQ
> 
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