[NLRS] Tower installation detail question
John Toscano
tosca005 at umn.edu
Sun Feb 5 17:58:17 EST 2017
Looking for an opinion on my tower installation...
I just installed a US Towers HDX538 tilt-over crank-up tower. There is a
T-shaped metal plate with three humongous bolts that are embedded into the
concrete foundation and hold the plate an inch or two above the top of the
concrete foundation. The bolts each have one nut below the plate and two
nuts threaded onto them above the plate. Before the tower was attached to
the plate, I did my best to level the plate by adjusting the nuts below the
plate and tightening the nuts above the plate. After the tower was
installed onto the plate, fastened with a total of 9 nuts and bolts, and
cranked into the upright position, I re-checked the level against the tower
itself instead of against the plate. The tower was very slightly out of
perfectly vertical alignment, so I adjusted the nuts one more time to get
it as close to perfectly vertical as I can with my level.
According to the manufacturer's installation instructions, once the tower
is leveled, the installer is supposed to fill in the space between the
bottom of the plate and the top of the concrete foundation with "grout",
although the description of the consistency of the grouting material sounds
more like more concrete. Anyway, I mentioned this to one of the hams at the
Roadrunners Microwave Group yesterday and he asked, "why bother?". My only
response was, (a) because the installation instructions say so, and (b) to
prevent any future change from the current (level) setting.
What do y'all think about this? Should I fill in the space with "grout" and
thereby permanently set the position of the nuts underneath the plate, or
should I leave the space open so it would be possible to make future
adjustments?
More information about the NLRS
mailing list