More Tower Upgrade News

[freejuice]

Hi Folks,
 Today I finished up a majority of the welding. The tower is about 65 feet tall and you can see all the added do-dads I welded to it. All together I used about 40- 50 lbs of welding rods attaching the 1-5/8 glavanized pipe and the 1/2 inch rebar to the main 4inch schedule 40 pipe.

In the next day or two I will replace the upper guys with 1/2 inch cable.

 In this photo you can see the chain fall and my grip hoist attached to two concrete pillars in the ground...the pillars are about 10 inches in diameter and about 4 feet deep....hard clay soil here in South Carolina. There are three pieces of 1/2 inch rebar which are welded together and bent  to splay the legs of the rebar out before I poured the concrete. It held like a charm.

 In the next photo I told my buddy who was helping me to stop and move away...if something let go he would be catapult bait....look where the chain is in relationship to his leg...dangerous!


 
On the next test raise I will extend the cable and do away with the chain fall all together...it was a temporary measure to get the length I needed....Oh the grip hoist from Northern Tool worked flawlessly.
Here is the tower as the gin pole begins to overcome the weight of the tower...I think its just past 45 degrees...the gin pole is 40 feet long.


 These other two photos are the tower when its about 75 degrees...at this point I could really feel the tension off the grip hoist disappear. My friend and I could have probably finished pulling it vertical by simply pushing down on the lifting cable....but the prudent thing was to let the grip hoist finish it off nice and easy.
 



 If time allows I will hoist the assembled generator minus the blades tomorrow. A lot of work in these beasts! The tower upgrade was the biggest time consumer....and I still need to paint it...groan!

[TomW]

That grip hoist looks like a true beast of burden. Should be able to tilt up whatever you have to pull .
up. The chain fall seems redundant?

Nice setup coming together.

Always somewhat envious of you guys who weld.

Tom

[freejuice]

Thanks Tom,
I miscalculated... I made up a cable to attach to the gin pole which would take up the diffence for the grip hoist...well that short extesion cable ended up being too short....so instead of going to buy some chain  I just used the chain fall I had on hand...the next rasie will have a longer extension cable from the gin pole to my grip hoist...no more chain fall  I'm not a big fan of a chain fall when it is horzontal like that, the chain is troublesome, it keeps getting kinked and hangs up...so its a stop and go type of thing.
 welding is not too bad, dont go to fast dont go too slow and burn a hole through your pipe, you want good burn in but not so much it blows through. I just play withthe amps until I get a good a burn in without is blowing through or being too cold and not buring in well enough.  I just watch the puddle and make little orbital or weaving movements with the welding rods.
 My troubles always seem to be when welding overhead...those are some of my worst welds, I can get them to burn in well enoguh but they are Gorilla welds ( Big, Bad and Ugly)  ....kinda reminds me of abstract art.
 All the best,
 Gavin

[freejuice]

Hi Folks The beast is finally up!
 After a blade balancing and a fresh coat of paint I hoisted it up!
I noticed when I was painting the blades, fabricator had a good point about blade blancing with paint. When I painted a blade I would paint about half of it then rotate it and paint the other blade and so on. After each blade was painted there was a noticable effect on the balance.  A person could probably  paint "away" about a 1lb difference or more in weight!

Paint will tweak that balance right in!

 So of course I followed my invasion stripe theme, Dont worry, those timbers are not supporting the tower persay, they are a safety factor.... just a little extra cant hurt when working in close proximity of a tower. I had pallets and those timbers in place, then I eased off the tension on the grip hoist to see if these supports could handle the full weight of everything. After which I tightened the grip hoist back up a bit :



"Upsiy-dasiy" at 65 feet:





Crappy cell phone video on youtube...about a 4-5 mile an hour wind probably approaching a stall
I couldnt resist in hooking it up to my 24 volt bank... yes I'm a pig...I need to get the other batteries on line and up to 48 volts today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbEHrWTHh0M
 Tom, I did a lot of walking back and forth loosing the tension rope, so the gin pole would not overcome the tower and rattle things a bit....this is always a scary moment for me, so I piggy backed off your idea for the next tower rasing...I will have a pulley mounted to the back of the trailer hitch on the truck. From there l will lace a rope from where I'm raising the tower with the grip hoist, down range past the tower ; through the pulley and back to me with a boat winch. So as I raise it a bit I can feed a bit more slack into the rope and toggle back and forth from grip hoist to boat winch, without walking back and forth... at the current set up I must have walked back and forth 25 times trying to fiugre out when the weight of the gin pole was going to overcome the tower

[TomW]

freejuice;

Glad the tip helped!

I find myself always on the hunt for "less walking" solutions. Some have helped others have not. The have nots generally actually created more work but I learn from them. The helpful ones usually involve ropes, pulleys, clamps, pallets and blocking!

Nice setup and I like the picture with the high clouds behind the turbine!

They always look better with something in the sky besides clear blue.

Thanks for the share and good on you for the get er done attitude.

Someone(s) here have added an arm on the down side of the upper tower to act like a kick stand when the turbine is down so when its lowered it keeps the prop from hitting the ground.  I am pondering a nice fat railroad tie set in the ground like a fence post to support the lowered tower but until then a step ladder seems to work on both the 10 and 12 footers. Your 17 footer is considerably heavier so most common step ladders rated 300# or so may be too weak?


Tom

[freejuice]

Tom,
 On the support, I took a post hole digger and made a hole about 10 inches deep and drop a treated 4x4 post into it. I did this in several locations to help support this beast.
 I figue when I'm done I can take the post out of the hole and throw the dirt back in. When I want to lower it I  will take the dirt back out again and drop my post back in....in this hard clay soil, I will be going back to the same spot again and again. After you intially punch a hole in this stuff, it easier to keep going back to the same spot