Let's talk towers

[Cyrcle]

My wife and I are looking at a house already setup for passive solar heating with 14 acres of land and excellent wind potential. The house is up on a nice little knoll and Google Earth shows nothing else taller for several miles, but a bunch of other knolls around the same height. A neighbor has measured 12 MPH average before, but of course we'll do some checking ourselves.

We'll need to get it up above some trees which I don't yet know the height of.  I'm willing to cut most anything that's taller than the house, but I want to keep the house sheltered from the north winds. So to get some rough guess of what we're looking at for cost, let's say we'll need 60ft, as the house is about 30ft tall and we'll need the machine 30ft higher than that.

First machine will likely be fairly small, around 10ft, but if we're going to build a tower we might as well make it to work with something bigger, say 16-20ft or so.

As you can tell, this is all still really rough planning, I'm just trying to get some ballpark info here  

Is it possible to do a tilt-up of that size? I'd prefer to not have to climb the thing.

What have you all done for towers and how much did they end up costing?

[freejuice]

I built one for my 17 footer on a 65 foot tower.
 I used surplus 4 inch sch 40 pipe and surplus 1-5/8 od pipe.
 Here is a crappy youtube video of it made by a cell phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbEHrWTHh0M
 

Just before the test raise:



Another shot of it:


Total cost about 1500 bucks.
 If you can scrounge good surplus metal helps, can you weld?...thats another plus...are you willing to dig anchor points by pick and shovel and mix and  pour concrete by hand is also a big plus.
 Its like anything else... the more you can do yourself the more you can save.
 Orginally I had an 11 footer on the 4 inch sch 40 pipe...then I built the lattice work around it as I upgraded to the 17 footer...this is a tilt up tower... it ended up a a little unorthodox looking but not terribly ugly either.
 All the best,
 Gavin

[cdog]

My opinion is the placing and number of guy wires is as much or more important than large pipe.
I would also be looking for larger diameter pipe than opposed to heavy wall, jmho,
Cdog.

[Volvo farmer]

If I was going to spend real money and get up over 60 feet, I'd build a tower like DanB did. He's got a 20 footer on it and it hasn't fallen down yet!

I did a little searching and came up with these 2 entries. I wish he would make a page on the Otherpower site about this tower he built, because it certainly is a beauty!

http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,137984.0.html
http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,136704.0.html

[freejuice]

I will parrot what Volvo Farmer says.
 You work will be reduced quite a bit if you can get hold of some larger diameter pipe or tubing.
 I'm far from being an engineer, but the pipe/tubing diameter keeps the flexing to a minimum in high winds, even with lots of guy wires.

[B529]

How tall are the trees?

[poco dinero]

As others have said, your 60 foot tower cost will depend a lot on access to cheap materials and your ability to do the work yourself.  It'll also depend on the local codes and regulations.  My permit cost $1,550.  The wind turbine (12.5 foot diameter exmork, 2,000 watts at 22 mph) cost only $585.  I have the cadillac of towers and it is available for around $3,000.  More about that later.

If you want to build your own tower, and if you are anywhere near an area where they have oilfields (Alberta, Wyoming, Texas, Bakersfield, etc) you can obtain really good salvaged oilfield pipe for peanuts.  I was going to use this approach, and was able to buy enough pipe for a fifty foot monopole tower from a place in Bakersfield for less than $500.  The local authorities shut me down though, so I had to take a different approach.  The pipe is now being used for various other projects.

A guy in Wyoming called "Adobe Joe" built his own monopole from salvaged oil field pipe.  He posted pictures on this forum.  Maybe you can find it if you do a search.  He put a 10 kw Bergey Excel (26 foot diameter rotor) on it.

My own tower (actually I have two of them) is a 56 foot tall monopole tower that is hydraulically opertated, and for my money it is the cadillac of towers.  It came with a huge hydraulic cylinder.  After I hook up the hydraulic hoses from my small Kubota tractor and remove the 22 flange bolts, it takes 22 seconds to lower the tower by pushing and holding a hydraulic lever on the tractor.  It takes 45 seconds to raise the tower again.  You can buy one of these towers from a chinese company called SWG for only $3,085 including ocean shipping into Los Angeles.  If you don't feel comfortable sending money to china, you can buy the same tower from Allan at Magnets4less in Plano, Texas, for $5,800, including customs fees, warehouse fees, etc.  You can also buy it from a Manitoba company for about $8,000.  SWG has pictures on their website.  Google "chinese hydraulic towers".

As in most things, you pays your money and takes your choice.

poco

[Hilltopgrange]

I prefer lattice type towers! I use three of them, they all tilt down but if need be you can easily climb them.

From a maintenance point of view it is easy to inspect and grease the turbine with out lowering the whole tower.

I built a new lattice tilt tower from scratch last summer. See the link for more detail.

http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,143821.msg968663/topicseen.html#msg968663

Cost depends on height, turbine size and site conditions.

Russell

[SparWeb]

Cyrcle,

I noticed that you have enough strong winds (like me) that you are looking to shelter the house somewhat, yet to expose the wind turbine to as much wind as possible.  Oh the choices to be made!

Those trees deflecting the north wind will save a very large amount of energy from being lost in the winter, so I wouldn't be hasty to cut them.  They may be (indirectly) necessary in the "passive solar heating" system.  The previous owner may be able to confirm this.  Some improvement in turbine energy production can be wiped out by having to burn more fuel to heat the house.  What this leads to is a compromise, the kind that forces the wind turbine to be a considerable distance from the house in order to stay away from the turbulence.  And even at a reasonable distance there will always be some direction from which the turbine will be affected.

I built a tower from 3" Sched 40 pipe.  It tilts up, and I've learned about tower raising safety along the way (the hard way) and if I do it again I'll probably go higher and with a lattice (maybe of my own construction).  I spent several thousand dollars on it because I bought the pipe new, and all the cable and hardware with "brand name" quality.  Otherwise built myself to keep the cost down.

[wooferhound]

Dan describes his tower in the first link on this page . . .
http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php/topic,143653.0.html