Leveling a portable pier

[chouet]

Hi

I need to make some pads for my iOptron pier for use on grass and to act as risers on uneven ground (so I need more than 3). The obvious choice is wood, but does anyone have other (lighter) ideas?

Nick

[L8-Nite]

You might find what you need in your kitchen cabinets, drink coasters.

[Bizibilder]

Maybe bricks sunk into the ground "longways in" with a small depression chiselled into the top surface - just drop the tripod legs into the depressions for repeatable positioning. if the bricks are just below the surface you could still run the mower over them and they are far less conspicuous than paving slabs.

[Carbon]

Perhaps you can modify the legs by installing adjustable levelers.

[chouet]

It's a portable setup, which is why I'm looking for something fairly light. The pier has about 30mm of adjustment on the feet, which isn't enough in many cases.

[IanL]

A stack of wooden or metal plates might be prone to sliding around on each other, so you should try to give them a non-slip surface at least. Would be simpler to have a bunch of different thickness single blocks, but if the ground is really sloping (as opposed to being just a bit uneven) you might find that the legs/blocks slide around too much.

My best idea would be a pair of big wooden wedges with a series of shallow holes for the tripod feet drilled up the slope (angle the holes towards the centre of the tripod). If you wanted to get really clever you could drill a through-hole at the shallow end and the thick end of each and hammer through a metal spike/bar/big tent peg to stop them slipping. (Or more simply just a bar/spike hammered in to the ground behind the thick end of the wedge would work just as well).

Combined with the existing leg adjustment you should be able to get a big levelling range for two of the legs (third one just goes on the highest point of the ground).

[IanL]

Sorry just noticed you said pier, so the wedges might be better without holes and maybe a non-slip surface instead. Depends on the design of the pier feet, and obviously you couldn't have too much of a slope on the top surface in that case, depends on the nature of the ground so you might want several wedges with steeper and shallower slopes to try to get a reasonably flat top surface!