SICUDREW: September 2007

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Lifting the tower.

Sterling, my youngest son came to help us raise the tower. The gin pole is connected to the opposite side of the tower base from the hinge. The gin pole is 20 feet long and weights approximately 300 lbs. The gin pole is secured to the tower base with 3 bolts and has a cable that connects to the other end. The cable is connected to the tower at about 15 feet from the top of the tower. This cable will off set the stress of the pull from the winch at the base. The gin pole has a second cable that runs down to the pulling source. I connected this end to my winch on my Jeep. For extra stablity I put 8x8 timbers in front of my wheels. The 9500lb winch had no problem pulling up the tower. Sterling is shown here watching, to make sure the foundation holes line up with the bolts, so we don't damage the bolt threads. Rena is on the winch, and watching the tower so it is going up safely. I am maning the gin pole and waiting for the tower to get to the balance point so I can slowly lower the foundation base over the bolts. Debbie, our friend is documenting the raising with pictures and video. We had some difficulty with getting the gin pole securing bolts to clear the washers and nuts. We got the middle bolts on first. Then the gin pole was loosened and the bolts where placed on those bolts. We had to loosen the hinge plate slowly and lower the hinge side of the foundation base to get the bolts placed on the last three bolts. The tower was then leveled with small torpedo levels on the base. Then later, we readjusted for level after watching the turbine head.

There was no wind that day so the only rotation of the Skystream was when a bird landed on the blade and it's weight made the blade turn. The first of these three picture shows the windturbine from the back yard and the second is a view from the front road. It shows our hybrid system of the solar and wind.

Attaching the blades to the Skystream.

We have taken the blade plate and hub off of the Skystream. Rena is torquing the blades onto the hub to 50 ft/lbs. I picked up the entire assembly and placed it on the rotor shaft. Then I attached the nose cone. Here is the final product with Rena at 5 ft 1 and 1/2 in.