[TowerTalk] Any harm in pressure washing a tower ?

[Earl Morse]

Have at it.  

I bought my Rohn 45 as a used red/white painted broadcast antenna.  I rented a commercial power washer to blast off the paint and clean up the few rusted chip spots prior to painting it with zinc/galvanize paint which was painted right over bare metal, bare galvanized areas, and areas with paint still on them.  That was almost 20 years ago and the tower still looks great.  The cold galvanize is solid and not peeling. 

Basically, the galvanize is impervious to pressure watching and would probably need sandblasting to get it off.

Earl
N8SS

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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 09:41:54 -0700
From: "Jim Thomson" <jim.thom at telus.net>
To: <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Any harm in pressure washing a tower ?
Message-ID: <5565671F225E4746A5E1655EF2F9573C at JimPC>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="UTF-8"

Any harm in pressure washing galvanized tower?s, or steel bases, masts etc ?
I have bird crap and stuff on some portions of mine.   Mine is just a small electric
one... but its capable of ripping the paint off of wooden steps  etc, if  too close 
or wrong attachment wand used. 

It would save a lot of time, but I don?t  want to damage the galvanized  surface etc. 
The idea was to use just enough pressure to clean it  without  damaging things. 
I suppose I could use a soft nylon brush and soap and water too...then rinse.  

later... Jim   VE7RF 

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