Raising a wind generator

[Shadow]

 According to the Jacobs manual you should raise your 300 lb (440 lbs all assembled) Jacobs wind generator by bolting an 11 foot- 2 inch pipe to the top of your tower. They probably used a chain hoist or rope hoist. We used a hand winch, geared way to low, took what seemed a thousand turns to get there!

It actually went very easy one guy winching and one guy on the ground useing a rope to pull it away from the tower if needed.

This tower is only 22 feet, and this was a 32 volt Jacobs we used for practice.

 The 110 volt Jacobs is almost ready to go up, I will probably use this method to hoist it up to 60 feet.

[Shadow]

Sorry for the poor quality photos, when I resized them they went all goofy.

[dlenox]

Shadow,

I feel your pain (and pleasure) with a fixed tower.  I have a 70' free standing lattice tower for my 17' wind turbine that I constantly have a love/hate relationship with.

The main difference with my scenario is that I constructed a davit crane that I use for lifting/lowering my turbine sections back to/from the ground level to the top of the tower, and a rotatable boom at the top that uses an electric winch.  This is rather than using the static pipe that you mentioned.

Perhaps if you put a short 24" (or so) 90 degree top extension on your 11' pipe that it may help in clearing the tower when raising the turbine, 2' can make a world of difference for banging against the sides of the tower.

Dan Lenox

[TomW]

When I had to hoist my considerably lighter & smaller conversion up on my 65 foot 4 leg tower alone I used a half inch rope strung from the bumper of my truck to the top of the tower at a shallow angle like 45 degrees or something. Added a pulley on this rope and clipped my parts to that pulley with a carabiner and then pull it up the rope with another line. Solved the wide tower issue and can be done by one person. A winch could be used, also but at the size I had to deal with hand over hand was adequate.

Due to vector forces the "ramp" rope has to be tight or it sags pretty bad and may not clear the catwalk if too loose.

Just an idea.

Good Luck with it.

Tom

[SparWeb]

Tom, with a 300# genny, your method could pull a free-standing tower right over!  I think there are guy wires on your towers, but on Shadow's (and Dan's too) that's not the case, so they are much more sensitive to thrust loads.

Neat idea though.  Maybe someone with a freestanding tower could use it if they put in a bracing line on the back side of the "clothesline".

[TomW]

Spar;

Well, it was just how I did mine.

My tower is free standing 65 feet with a 10X10 foot base but my load was no where near 300#.

I did mention vector forces which will add a substantial tipping force to the tower. How much I do not have the skill to calculate.

I do most stuff solo style so I come up with non standard ways to get it done. This was one of them.

Tom

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Cute system.  I like it.  (I STILL learn more stuff on this board all the time.)

"Geared way too low"?  Sounds like a job for a battery-powered hand drill...