Yesterday was tower trial day here. As per usual, Rich was thinking one step ahead. When I ordered the pipe for the turbine the instructions called for four sections, a 24', two 21's and a 4' section. The 24' and 21' would be coupled together to form a 45' tower. The tilt over part would utilize the second 21' pipe as a gin pole and the 4' would help as part of a fulcrum. Unfortunately I could only find 21' lengths of schedule 40 galvanized pipe...at the time I thought, geesh', what the heck, so what it will be a few feet shorter, no big deal. Ah, but that few feet would change the force vector dynamics, and, I wouldn't find that out until our tower trial..thanks Rich for thinking one step ahead!!!!! Rich sent Mike and Jason over to run the test. The trial run was minus the extra weight of #2 AWG and the turbine. The wire itself is a LOT of weight, 42 feet of positive, negative and ground wires plus the weight of the turbine, so the trial run was a superb idea. The Air-X comes with PRE-set support lengths that stabilize and support the tower as it's lifted, and those PRE-set support lengths are key to keep the tower from bending. By shortening the length of pipe we had excessive slack as the tower is raised...not good for the overall health and integrity of the tower. Mike was right on the money when he caught it almost right away....good job Mike!!!!!! Mike was able to do a temporary work around for the time being but Rich will come up with a permanent fix so that the tower will be easy to raise and lower by us!!!!!!! Again, it's so cool to have tremendous support with a project like this and have Freedom Renewable in our corner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And today was a big day here!!!!!! Unitil gave us the "green" light to proceed with the first installation step!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the first of a few steps before we are interconnected to the grid with net-metering.
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