Pivoting Tower idea. Thoughts?

[eformx]

I have a site with rock everywhere, very difficult to anchor let alone dig a hole and then fill it with cement.  I have been thinking of using 50 gallon plastic drums (available from farmers/restaurants, they typically have canola oil in them) for about $10 cdn each.  When filled with water they are 500 pounds each.  You drill a hole on either side of them, near the top of the drum.  Stuff a pipe across the width of the drum, then feed the guy wire through the pipe to act as the anchor.  Place 4 drums (as described above) in the best strategic points (or more).  Fill with water giving you at least 2,000 lbs of weight.  This setup would take care of the anchors without having to tap into the rock and if you ever need to move the system just drain the barrels.

You could take a few more drums.  Drill a hole on either side of a drum, do the same for 4 barrels. Get a ladder, say a 30 footer (about $150 cdn).  Slide a 10 foot pipe through two barrels then through U clamps attached to the ladder (the tower) and slide the pipe through the other 2 barrels. The pipe through the barrels and ladder is the pivot.

Fill the 4 barrels holding the pivot in place with water, giving you an additional 2,000 lbs of weight (your tower is now supported by 4,000 lbs of water). You fabricate a gin pole out of 10' pipe attached to the ladder with U clamps.  Your wind turbine is attached to the top of the ladder with pipe and more U clamps (I have a TDM 90 vdc new motor with 6' prop).

Attach a winch to the gin pole or use some kind of motorized vehicle to pull the gin pole lifting the tower or should I say ladder :-)

I am working on putting up a tower as described above.  This may be a solution for those looking to install a tower in rocky or pavement type conditions (the parking lot tower .

Thoughts?

[DanB]

I kind of like to find rock - its fairly easy to anchor to if you have a hammer drill.  Lots easier than concrete in my opinion.

[electrondady1]

 i'm in the painting buiness and have a lot of extension ladders standing around.i have been thinking they could be used for a tower as well.  they are very strong and rigid and cheap for thier weight .  if the actual feet of the ladder could be secured to a pad with threaded rod you could have a tilt up / pull up tower. it wouldn't due for the big buggers dan builds but for a smaller mill they might work ok. it might be possible to secure a second ladder to the first in the shape of a "T"  for real strengh.

[Phil Timmons]

I sort of like your idea.  I enjoy the creativity around here.

I do think it should have some serious experimenting before hard-charging forward into, but I think it has some promise not only for windmills, but for other low-cost pop-up, portable tower models.

From what I think I follow of your application, you are talking about using dead-weight barrels in lieu of anchors for guys?  Those are the four barrels in the first paragraph?  Am I understanding that correctly?

If that is the case, a caution I would add it that for guy wires, side wind loads are not JUST pulling upwards against a dead weight.  There is a sidewards component of the force the guy cable creates.  In the model I think you are describing, one would rely on the friction across the ground surface to resist those sideways/horizontal components of the force.  Does that make sense?  If not, I can draw a picture?  Anyway, those friction factors will vary greatly depending on what surface the dead weight barrel is placed on, and even temperature.  That could make the modeling math get pretty wide ranging.

I guess a "test" could be to put an equivalent tower rig up and hook it to the back of the truck and give it a "pull it over" test that is at least a couple times the greatest windload.

I was pondering using a free-standing (no guys) tower with a water weight base here >>> http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/10/2/172335/302

But mine was more "thought experiment" rather than getting ready to build.  Dunno if that will give you any helpful ideas or not.

[Scotth]

I agree with Dan.It would be great if I could find big rocks to anchor my tower to-much easier than digging in solid clay as I am doing now.I'd be really careful anchoring anything bigger than a toy to a plastic barrell.There is a lot of stress and vibration going on there and I think the steel rods would eventually pull right out of that plastic,or at very least the holes that the rods would go through will start to stretch,causing slack in your guy wires,base pivot and the like.I'm no pro by any means,and could be completely wrong.Someone somewhere said you should count on spending almost as much on the tower as you do on the mill-seems to be the case with my tower and anchors anyway.

[Nando]

It would be cheaper and safer to buy a gasoline operated drill to anchor the cables to large rocks than to use drums with water-- which will require constant maintenance to insure water always filled -- in addition the water will need to have material to avoid algae or other growing materials in it.

A friend did the water drum idea, calculated for the tower needs, two years later the tower came down destroying the wind mill, during a very high wind season, the wind mill anchor the the rocks, same size and power survived without any problems.

Shortcuts sometimes become long and continuous problems

Nando

[Phil Timmons]

Well, after coming back from a bike ride and a hair cut to lighten the load on my brain, I think I have the ultimate po' trash folks windmill, dead-weight-anchoring system.

On the acerage out back we have (at least) several junk cars and trucks . . .

See where I am heading with this?

Doing a quick count totals up three trucks, two vans, an old golf cart, and two -- count them, two, old Mercedes -- so I can have a little German engineering in my rigging.

Just some pipe and cable and I am in business.  Red-Green would be proud!

[Barb]

Hope you don't have much wind. Your figures were working on all barrels full of water acting as a dead weight. In reality only one barrel is going to be the anchor with wind coming from any given direction at any given time.

One of the comments was about plastic having a creep factor from a constant strain. Ever see any bridges made out of plastic? Any sky scrapers with plastic girders? Even something as small as plastic shelves in the house will sag with time and weight. Then there is the Ultra Violet factor. Plastic rots in the sunlight, some more quickly than others depending on how much UV inhibitor the factory put in the mix when they blow molded that drum.

Your idea is feasible for a test. Not much wind and not for any length of time. There are places for plastic such as buried in the ground carrying water or electricity. We use plastic for proto types. Inexpensive, easy to work with, and light weight. If the idea is workable we use something more durable because we don't want to be doing this again next week or next day if the wind changes to a gentle eighty mph breeze across the high plains.

A percussion drill with bits cost around fifty dollars from Harbor Freight. Add another twenty dollars for the anchors you will need to tie those guywires into rock. Do you really want to mess with the plastic barrels even though they are free or cost next to nothing? Sometimes the lest expensive looking way is really the most costly.

[eformx]

Hi all,

thanks for the comments.  As per the following...

'From what I think I follow of your application, you are talking about using dead-weight barrels in lieu of anchors for guys?  Those are the four barrels in the first paragraph?  Am I understanding that correctly?'

That's right, 4 barrels as the anchors, a hollow pipe running across the width of a barrel, the guy wire slipped through the pipe and then secured.  Of course you could have several barrels, say three tied together to act as one anchor, giving you about 1500 lbs of weight at each 'corner'.

The ladder would be a 32 footer, one of those that is in two 16 foot sections (the one I have).  So you can have the turbine at the 16 foot level and then pull it up with the ladders rope, once the ladder is vertical, bringing the tower up to around say 28 feet ish.  I ran a test and it was fairly easy to lift the ladder/turbine into the air once it was vertical, and just as easy to bring down.  

This all started when I was thinking of creating some kind of elevator type tower, and something that any homeowner might have and could put up or should I say pull up.  

[SparWeb]

I use these plastic drums for various purposes around the farm.  I find they don't carry their weight very well.  Steel drums would dent if you kicked them in the same spot a few times, but these plastic ones will crack.  Once the crack starts, the whole thing can burst apart (or just leak slowly away).  Either way, you've lost a support for the tower.  Why not use steel drums?  Sure, they'll rust, but that's a degradation you can monitor, unlike a weeping crack in the bottom of a plastic barrel.  As for cost, my neighbour has about 20 empty drums kicking around.  They aren't hard to find.  People might pay you to haul them away...