cemented dish blowin loose

[gopher2]

i installed my 90cm dish onto a 2.5" 10 foot pole
the pole is 5 feet in the ground
there is gravel in the bottom the rest is cement probably 8" or 10" inches in diameter

Went to go check it today, tried to rock the pole with my hand and i could see the entire chunk of cement rock back and forth in ground!!

The soil here is really wet, when i was digging, about 5 feet down the hole just started to fill with water...

This has got me bummed out, im sure when the summer winds pick up its gonna be blowin my dish off center.

My plan is to get a 8.5' BUD but now i am concerned if the ground will support that big of a dish.

Suggestions?

 

[Tron]

I don't have much experience in planting poles in the ground for dishes (so far, my dish farm is entirely on NPRMs), but I will be planting poles for my next dish project this summer. My plan is to use box-like (square) molds for the concrete in the ground. This would prevent the entire pole with concrete base from turning in the soil. We have a high water table here as well, which I've seen when I was involved in a BUD install for a friend awhile back. Seems the box mold method might work well.

 

[Cadsulfide]

If you can compact the dirt aound it, you may be ok, otherwiseyou'll have to reset it. I always try to bell the bottom of the hole for a little extra stabilty.

 

[gopher2]

yeah i think its gonna have to come out....
im on the lookout for a 8 to 10 foot BUD
theres some people on craigs list that have them...
i think im gonna make the bud hole deeper and larger in diameter
just hope my land lord dont mind .....

 

[phlatwound]

If it's not your property you may be limited in what you are allowed to do, but you might try pouring a 3"-4" thick flat concrete slab (3'x3' or larger?) around your pipe.

You could recess it into the ground so it didn't stick above the grade. If there is no rebar or mesh in it it could easily be broken out with a sledgehammer if you needed to remove it later.

 

[Sadoun]

try pouring a 3"-4" thick flat concrete slab (3'x3' or larger?) around your pipe.

That's what I would do as well. Probably make it even thicker ~6" and use rebar to reinforce it.

 

[starman345]

That's what I would do as well. Probably make it even thicker ~6" and use rebar to reinforce it.

If you are in the south this would work fine but if you are in a colder climate where the frost line goes below the thickness of your slab it would just heave with the frost making even more problems.
If you do it over, I don't think you need to go any deeper, 5' should be fine(unless you live in the artic), but if you can make the hole bigger at the bottom than the top it will be more stable and if you do have frost to deal with there is nothing for the frost to get ahold of.

 

[gopher2]

well im gona pickup a BUD today !! whoo !!
so i do need to pull this old one out... suggestions on complete removal?

 

[Cadsulfide]

After the dishectomy, look at the post and see if it is a TON of work or if it is rusted away. If it is in good condition and you can get a loader or skidsteer to pull it after digging around it yahoo! Otherwise, breaking and removing a lot of concrete is chain gang work.

 

[AcWxRadar]

If it's not your property you may be limited in what you are allowed to do, but you might try pouring a 3"-4" thick flat concrete slab (3'x3' or larger?) around your pipe.

You could recess it into the ground so it didn't stick above the grade. If there is no rebar or mesh in it it could easily be broken out with a sledgehammer if you needed to remove it later.

That's what I would do as well. Probably make it even thicker ~6" and use rebar to reinforce it.

I would agree with these recommendations. With your water table so high, you will have a difficult time keeping this secure and level. The greater the surface area you use with concrete, the better off you will be.

If you are in a location where the temperature gets below freezing often, then you will really want to reinforce this. In frost prone areas, the ground will "heave" and throw your base off and affect your plumb of the mast.

If you can provide some sort of a flange above this concrete to attach your mast to that allows you to shim it or adjust it, that might be a good thing to plan ahead for, especially with a BUD.

RADAR

 

[gopher2]

i live in Michigan so cold weather is inevitable. i like the idea of a flange, any pics or links?

 

[B.J.]

i installed my 90cm dish onto a 2.5" 10 foot pole
the pole is 5 feet in the ground
there is gravel in the bottom the rest is cement probably 8" or 10" inches in diameter
...

I'm curious... how did you get down 5' with only a 8 to 10" hole? Not easy to get that deep, and that narrow with a hand post hole digger. Or did you use a power auger or something? No way I could get that deep and that narrow up here, with all the rocks we have.
I assume you just put concrete in the bare hole, and didn't use one of those fibre tubes? I never liked those things. It makes the concrete too much like a big nail. I have a deck that was built on fill dirt (so it wasn't quite so rocky), and the builders used those tubes for the foundations for the deck posts. Well the weight of snow in the winter just drove a couple of those tubes right down into the ground like hammering in a nail. Darn deck sunk a good 5 inches in one winter, even though the ground was frozen around it. I always thought it better to pour concrete directly in contact with the dirt and rocks, as it kind of gets locked in place.
You must have very loose soil if 5' of concrete moves around. But I agree with the above suggestion about trying to make it bell shaped at the bottom if you can. Do you really need 5' to get below the frost line? I really think you'd be better off with a shallower/wider bed of concrete. You might be able to stabilize the pole you have, by digging along side of it, maybe down to 30" (unless you are way up north) and pouring more concrete in to lock it in place?
I don't have any problems with concrete moving up here. There are so many rocks, that I can dig down, and my holes kind of have these big rocks on both sides of them, so my concrete locks into the big rocks, that aren't going anywhere. But I guess if you've gone down 5' with only 10" width, you must not have any rocks at all.
Anyway, good luck, but if you can't get a small dish stable with 5' of concrete, you're going to have a hard time with a BUD.

 

[gopher2]

i used a post hole digger, and a ice fishing auger
no rocks at all, just dirt and mud and watery clay. its really wet in the bottom
when i was digging the bottom was filling with water like i could put in a well
i was digging up watery clayish mud it was nasty
when it rains bad my yard floods like a lake
like i said im renting, but i am determined to setup a BUD

 

[Cadsulfide]

Look around, I have found several tripod mounts while dish hunting, essentially a short pole with 3 wings. If you know a welder, it should be no trouble at all to whip one up.

 

[AcWxRadar]

I'm curious... how did you get down 5' with only a 8 to 10" hole? Not easy to get that deep, and that narrow with a hand post hole digger. Or did you use a power auger or something? No way I could get that deep and that narrow up here, with all the rocks we have.
I assume you just put concrete in the bare hole, and didn't use one of those fibre tubes? I never liked those things. It makes the concrete too much like a big nail. I have a deck that was built on fill dirt (so it wasn't quite so rocky), and the builders used those tubes for the foundations for the deck posts. Well the weight of snow in the winter just drove a couple of those tubes right down into the ground like hammering in a nail. Darn deck sunk a good 5 inches in one winter, even though the ground was frozen around it. I always thought it better to pour concrete directly in contact with the dirt and rocks, as it kind of gets locked in place.
You must have very loose soil if 5' of concrete moves around. But I agree with the above suggestion about trying to make it bell shaped at the bottom if you can. Do you really need 5' to get below the frost line? I really think you'd be better off with a shallower/wider bed of concrete. You might be able to stabilize the pole you have, by digging along side of it, maybe down to 30" (unless you are way up north) and pouring more concrete in to lock it in place?
I don't have any problems with concrete moving up here. There are so many rocks, that I can dig down, and my holes kind of have these big rocks on both sides of them, so my concrete locks into the big rocks, that aren't going anywhere. But I guess if you've gone down 5' with only 10" width, you must not have any rocks at all.
Anyway, good luck, but if you can't get a small dish stable with 5' of concrete, you're going to have a hard time with a BUD.

i used a post hole digger, and a ice fishing auger
no rocks at all, just dirt and mud and watery clay. its really wet in the bottom
when i was digging the bottom was filling with water like i could put in a well
i was digging up watery clayish mud it was nasty
when it rains bad my yard floods like a lake
like i said im renting, but i am determined to setup a BUD

B.J.

One of my other hobbies is installing wells (shallow sand point wells).
If there is not too much rock and not too much loose sand, you can dig a well 20-30 feet deep without much trouble. It all depends upon your soil and water table. Around my cabin, I can normally auger a 8-12 foot deep hole with a hand auger. At 9 foot I usually reach water so the sand and clay start to collapse in on the hole that I am drilling.

Therefore, I auger down to wherever I find the water table and then "drive" the well point in from that point on. You usually have to go further than where you initially find the water as you want the well point to be set in coarse sand or better yet, gravel. "Driving" the well point means a lot of work. You have to have a post driver and special fittings to protect the pipe threads. Then you just start hammering on the pipe to "DRIVE" it into the ground and into the water table where the water is good.

The well "driver" is a tube about 4" in diameter and the top is filled with lead to give some added weight. You need it to be about 80-120 pounds. Then you pick it up and slam it down on the pipe that you are driving into the ground.

This driving process may take hours or even a couple of days. It depends upon what soil and rock you have to drive the sandpoint into and through.

I know this seems unrelated to our endeavor of a satellite mast, but it may not be as far out as you might think.

RADAR

 

[Radioguy41]

When this subject came up before I got hammered by some folks because I said I always dig a hole about 2ft x 2ft x 3ft deep, slightly wider at the bottom, put a small segment of rebar through the pipe to prevent twisting, and fill the hole with concrete. High poles with larger dishes in windy areas can cause significant leverage problems and need substantial bases. What you could do is brace the pole and dish in four different directions with lumber, making sure it's level all around, then dig out a larger hole around the pipe and concrete it in.

 

[B.J.]

i used a post hole digger, and a ice fishing auger
no rocks at all, just dirt and mud and watery clay. its really wet in the bottom
when i was digging the bottom was filling with water like i could put in a well
i was digging up watery clayish mud it was nasty
when it rains bad my yard floods like a lake
like i said im renting, but i am determined to setup a BUD

I have one of those ice fishing augers. Never thought of using it in dirt, but it wouldn't work up here. I can't go down even a foot before I hit rocks. I have 2 post hole diggers. Got the 2nd one because the first one got the shovel points bent over from hitting rocks. I usually go down a foot, then have to move over a half foot to avoid a rock, or widen the hole enough to pull out the rock, if it isn't too big. I just put in a new hole for my Primestar, and got down about 30", at which point I had rocks on both sides of the hole, so I just stopped there, even though it isn't below the frost line. Only used 1 1/2 bags of concrete, and it's SOLID, because it locks into the existing rocks. If I had just dirt, I'd have to put a lot more concrete in there. I can't remember how much concrete I used for my BUD, but the hole for that was MUCH wider, but again, I was able to lock the hole into the existing rocks, some of which are BIG. Rocks make digging hard, but they make the pole more stable once you get it done.

 

[Cadsulfide]

I am working on an alternate solution to pouring a yard of cement. I got some 8" "sono-tubes" that are used for pouring concrete piers and cut them to 4', cut three pieces of 1/2' rebar to 5' and three more to 1'. Welded the 1' section to the 5' section 1' from the bottom of the rebar and three 4" x 3/4" bolts to the top. After the flooding subsides, I will dig 4' deep holes, belled out at the bottom. Going to toss 1 bag sackcrete in the bottom of the hole then tap the rebar in until it is just over 1' proud of the ground. After it sets, slip the cardboard tube over the rebar so the bolt to rebar weldment will be covered by concrete. Level the tube, backfill with some soil and fill the tube with concrete. This will allow me to fine tune the leveling of the tripod after the cement sets. Kinda like the support for a lightpost or traffic light. Won't know until next spring if frost heave will turn out to be a problem. It will be cheaper than pouring a slab. Going to do two, one for a 8-1/2 Birdview and one for a 10' mesh.

 

[caddata]

......When this subject came up before I got hammered by some folks because I said I always dig a hole about 2ft x 2ft x 3ft deep, slightly wider at the bottom, put a small segment of rebar through the pipe to prevent twisting, and fill the hole with concrete......

Not everyone is aware of the loads the post and foundation must overcome with only moderate windloading of a dish. Several thousand pounds of force can easily be applied to a ten foot solid dish by a high wind. Multiply that by the length of the post, which acts as a lever, and you're asking the footing to overcome two tons of load. On top of that, soggy ground just adds to the problem by not providing resistance that more solid ground does.

 

[gopher2]

hey guys thanks for all the information, as usual its been very helpful and insightful...

Cadsulfide: I like your idea. my landlord will probably crap if she sees a giant cement pad in the yard... Where do you buy rebar from? do places like home depot carry it?

edit:
anyone got a picture or link of a BUD tripod ? im gonna fab one up, wanna get some design ideas, google is not being to helpful...