Well, I am happy to report the test raise on the windmill tower was a success. This is the part of the project that has given me much anxiety, as you will see in the pictures that there is a house, swimming pool, and a 330 gallon propane tank in the crash zone of the tower.
The first picture was taken after the tower was rigged with a Gin Pole (The vertical pipe). The Gin pole is 15' tall. There are two sets of guy wires on the tower pole. There is also a set of temporary ropes tied from the earth anchors to the top of the gin pole. The whole gin pole assembly is temporary and will be removed once the tower is up. Notice that the tower is raised about 6 feet off the ground. We left it sitting there while inspecting all of the rigging, earth anchors, pulleys and such.
There is a wire rope from the earth anchor through the pulley at the top of the gin pole and back down to another pulley at the earth anchor, then to the truck. There is a length of chain connected to the top of the gin pole, this aides in connecting the pulling guy wires. Remember, this thing is 15' tall. I had Josh, 150#'s, hang on the end of the tower for a load test.
A look at the Pulling side earth anchor and pulley. The truck is towards the left.
A little last minute guy wire adjustments. This will not be the last for the evening either.
And She's up. We adjusted the guy wire tension and thought life was good.
It's a little hard to see in this next picture, but the side guy anchors are not lined up with the centerline of the tower when it's in the up position. After adjusting guy wire tension while up, when bringing it back down, the tension became extremely tight because the anchors are too far to the right of the picture. So basically, instead of the anchors being on a perfect circle, it more like an oval. While letting the tower down, I had to adjust the tension (Allow Slack) a couple times. I think I am eventually going to replace the earth anchors with new ones that are actually offset to the left of the center of the tower just a bit. This way, there will always be slack in the cable while raising and lowering the tower. I can add tension one set of guy wires at a time while the tower is in the raised position.
A pretty fuzzy picture of a guy that is not sure what he is getting himself into.
Ok, next thing is to finish tweaking the generator and raise it for real.
Here is a video of this thing going up. Brian, I should have listened to you and had a guy on a rope putting back force on the tower when it got almost vertical. When the gin pole got about three feet from horizontal, it started falling until the rear guy wires caught it. It rattled the earth around the footing a bit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg4vNT0tXYY
