When I bought my retirement place, the original owner had Line-of-site internet, using a 60' antenna. I tried it briefly and it was horrible. We were able to swap to fiber and now I have an unused tower. My buddy wants the tower, so we're going to take it down ourselves. We're both comfortable working at heights and have the necessary tie-off equipment. We'll take our time, think each step through and make safety the number one priority.
I've been researching it and it looks like we need to build a gin-pole. I found this plan on-line and it looks simple enough,
(Gin pole fab) I've also seen some plans using a length of uni-strut and some pipe clamps, which also seems feasible. It also looks like we need a modified scissor jack or similar jack, to help unseat the sections, if they're stubborn.
Anybody tackle this themselves? Any pointers or words of wisdom?
Do you want to save the tower or scrap it?
If scrapping, and there's enough room to drop it on it's side, I'd just tie a cable 3/4 of the way up in one face, cut a couple wedges out of the front legs with a sawzall, then cut the back leg from the back and pull it down. It'll hinge at the wedges. WHUMP! and you're done.
Of course, and you know this.... watch for power lines. We had a guy get killed in our neighborhood many years ago when a family hired him to take down a tower, and he dropped it on power lines and electrocuted himself.
I had a friend that unbolted the standoff on his TV tower that held it to the side of his house, thinking he was going to take the tower down to his right. As soon as he unbolted it, the tower, which unbeknownst to him was rotten inside where it met the ground, slipped down a few inches and fell to the left, bouncing off of power lines, arcing, and setting his garage on fire.
I knew someone else that dropped a tower on power lines and took out the lines to several houses. No injuries or serious property damage, but he had to pay to have the lines put back in working order.
I put up a 30 foot tower, but I used hinges and walked it up myself. Don't think I could have done 40' by myself.
As I recall, when watching towers assembled, they are in 10' sections. They's use U bolts to anchor a 10' pole to one leg about 6' higher than the top of the first section. It had a pulley on the top. They'd tie the rope to the second section just a few inches past the center of gravity of the second section and pull it up. It would hang down. When they got it to the top, they'd swing the bottom legs over the top legs of the first section and set it down and bolt it on. You don't need to pull it up from the top, just a couple inches past the center. If you've done tree work, you know that.
Don't remember if they had a leg sticking off the top of the pole or not to ease with centering.
When I took my 30' tower down, I just walked it down myself. I had quite a bit of difficulty getting the legs apart between sections. 2x4 and a hand sledge hammer was used, as I recall.
Anyhow, good luck with your project.
