[TowerTalk] Tower base/Ufer ground

[Jim Lux]

On 5/16/14, 9:16 AM, Jim Lux wrote:
> On 5/16/14, 8:44 AM, Mike Reublin NF4L wrote:
>> Thanks Dave. It's a crank-up and has a rebar cage that the tower bolts
>> to.
>
> Then you don't need to do anything special for a Ufer.. the tower bolts
> to the cage which presumably has many feet of rebar in it, and that
> makes the connection to the concrete, which in turn contacts the
> culvert, which in turn contacts the soil surrounding the culvert.
>
> I

It occurred to me that you may want to add a 20+ foot AWG 4 copper wire 
or two into the concrete (you can weave it into the rebar cage) that 
sticks up from the top of the concrete to give you something that is 
easier to connect to for electronics you might put at the base of the 
tower (e.g. if you put some transient suppressors, or a motor controller 
or something), rather than trying to figure out how to make a good 
connection to a bolt or the tower itself.  It's a heck of a lot easier 
sticking a wire into a clamp terminal than cobbling together something else.


You might also think about having some pieces of Unistrut put into the 
concrete sticking up that you could later mount an enclosure to (to hold 
remote antenna switches, control electronics, who knows what).  Or not.. 
Drilling a hole and putting a chemical anchor in is also pretty easy.