Permanent Installation,part 1

[Scotth]

Pulled my first 11' mill off the 18' test tower a couple weeks ago and have since installed the base and anchors for my second version,another Dan B clone mill with a couple improvements,mainly in the strength of the materials used.For the tower I'm using a free TV tower,one of the heavier available.My first mill was up for almost a year on a very old,slightly rotton TV tower of way less substance than this one.The base is 1/2" plate steel with three 8'schedule 40 pipes welded to it.These pipes fill the bottom section of tower to give it a little extra strength.The whole thing is hinged to a pair of 5" c channels that are pounded into the clay and filled with about 700 lbs of concrete.Two anchors are 1 1/4" steel bars with lots of rebar welded to it,pounded into the clay and backfilled with a bunch more concrete.The third anchor is a hunk of 9/16"x4" flatbar with the obligatory rebar welded to it set in yet more concrete.I'll be using this one to attach the winch for raising and lowering the whole thing.The tower itself will be about 40' high ,maybe a bit more.I can't go too high as I want to keep the neighbors happy.I was making good power with an 18' tower so this one should be a big improvement.More to follow as work progresses.

[iFred]

I have one of these heavy built tv towers out back and have been thinking of using it

, but I could'nt come up with a simple way of doing it, seeing how you have done it now makes some sense.

Thanks for sharing that one and keep us posted!

[Scotth]

I think it should work fairly well.I'm going to add another piece of pipe along the side I'll be pulling it up from,just to beef it up a bit more.I'll be hauling the whole mess up with a 1800 lb hand cranked winch attached to that massive hunk of flatbar.

-Scott

[luv2weld]

Looks great!! My back hurts just thinking about all that digging in heavy clay to get that much concrete into the ground!! Looking forward to seeing the rest of it.

[Scotth]

The digging was the easy part!I thought I'd be smart and rented a "one man" gas powered post hole auger to do the holes for the anchors.All it did for me was nearly broke my hip when it caught a rock part way down one of the holes.I ended up digging them by hand anyway because along with the clay there were so many small rocks that the auger couldn't get a good bite.