DIY Pier Questions

[Synchronicity]

Hi all

I've been playing at designing a pier for my setup and am looking for some input.

I'm thinking about a box section as in the picture, mainly because it there's some local fabricators that do cutting and bending, though I don't know about costs yet.  It's 150mm square and 1150 high excluding the top piece.  The material choice is presumably aluminium or stainless steel and I'm wondering how each of these fare outside after a few years.  This will be in a prominent position in the garden so I don't want i looking grotty after a couple of winters.

I've got an EQ5 pro and am likely to upgrade to an EQ6 at this location - any more and it would be an obsy elsewhere so a new design all round.  Would 8mm steel or 10mm aluminium be strong enough to avoid flexing?  I know that'll be a risk with a bolt together design but hope well tightening and maybe some loctite in the threads will mitigate that.

Thanks for any input

Michael

 

[Davey-T]

I used square steel tube, a lot easier than bending stuff and coated with Hammerite will last for years and you can always repaint it.

Dave

[ollypenrice]

On 20/08/2020 at 02:18, Davey-T said:

I used square steel tube, a lot easier than bending stuff and coated with Hammerite will last for years and you can always repaint it.

Dave

Agreed.

Olly

[lenscap]

Hi Michael,

I don't know your budget but you might be shocked by the cost of sizeable pieces of fabricated Stainless Steel or Aluminium. As said, Carbon Steel  will be fine. If your fabricator works for the Marine or Oil industries he can suggest a suitably robust paint job.

I would keep an open mind about the cross section of the column & see what's available. An offcut of 6" Sch 40 pipe would be good, or an equivalent rectangular hollow section as suggested. I would also consider using a piece of Rolled Steel Column, (like an RSJ but with a symetrical cross section ). Or you could use 2 pieces of back to back Channel section to give the same result. These last 2 options would allow you to run cables within the column, but still accessible from outside.

A column made from rolled sections can easily be disguised with timber cladding. You could even pop a bird table on top to complete the camouflage. 😀

Good luck!

[x6gas]

or... I used a section of 150mm diameter circular plastic air con ducting filled with concrete.  Now admittedly I poured it at the same time as the slab with rebar bridging the two but it works a treat, looks smart enough to keep the Financial Director happy and was very cheap.

[gorann]

Have you for some reason excluded concrete? I have three obsies with a reinfoced concrete pier in each. Very cheap to build compared to steel. For the last two I used a 20 cm roaddrum but for an EQ6 sized mount 15 cm would probably be more than enough. At the bottom I have a 60 cm deep concrete cube of about 500 kg, but you could probably get away with less but I want to be able to put my Mesu or EQ8 on it. Here are images from this summers build.

[Skipper Billy]

On your choice of material - I would avoid both aluminium and stainless steel.

With both metals almost anything you fasten to it will be a dissimilar metal and corrosion will set in rapidly. You could use isolation paste but its a temporary and partial solution at best.

Also the cost of either will be eye watering.

Plain old carbon steel with a suitable paint scheme will be more than adequate plus its easy to weld and cheap.

 

[tooth_dr]

19 hours ago, lenscap said:

An offcut of 6" Sch 40 pipe would be good

👍🏼 I planned on this too, but the local steel place had a 4ft off-cut of schedule 80 so I used this instead. With a hole cut at the bottom I can feed wires through it too, and it’s sturdy 

[Synchronicity]

Thanks for the input everyone.  Concrete is out due to the location.  The base effectively replaces a slab at the edge of our patio so the pier must be easily removed if not needed any more.  I'm already thinking about how I fix plant baskets onto it for disguise purposes 😀

I had thought about a pipe but the designs I found browsing all had it burried in the concrete so again, not easy to remove.
My budget is less than the £400 a new manufactured unit will cost but I'm thinking that might be where I end up!  I'll pop a 'wanted' ad on and see if anything comes from that

Thinking cap back on...

Michael

[tooth_dr]

24 minutes ago, Synchronicity said:

Thanks for the input everyone.  Concrete is out due to the location.  The base effectively replaces a slab at the edge of our patio so the pier must be easily removed if not needed any more.  I'm already thinking about how I fix plant baskets onto it for disguise purposes 😀

I had thought about a pipe but the designs I found browsing all had it burried in the concrete so again, not easy to remove.
My budget is less than the £400 a new manufactured unit will cost but I'm thinking that might be where I end up!  I'll pop a 'wanted' ad on and see if anything comes from that

Thinking cap back on...

Michael

Mine is bolted to concrete. Is this an option for you?

It’s custom made, cheaper then off the shelf. Can you find a local welder to knock one up for you?

 

 

[Synchronicity]

That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.  I don't know anyone who could do welding, which is why I started on the path of getting plate cut and bent for self assembly.  I'll price my idea anyway and ask around to see if anyone I know knows anyone who knows someone 😉😉

Do you have a sketch or plan for that which you'd share?

Thanks

Michael

[ollypenrice]

34 minutes ago, Synchronicity said:

That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.  I don't know anyone who could do welding, which is why I started on the path of getting plate cut and bent for self assembly.  I'll price my idea anyway and ask around to see if anyone I know knows anyone who knows someone 😉😉

Do you have a sketch or plan for that which you'd share?

Thanks

Michael

Have you considered welding yourself? I'd never done any at all but my pal and car mechanic said, essentially, MIG is so easy that even an idiot like you can do it. (I never knew what I saw in him as a pal but there you go... 🤣)  But he was right. With a low-end Machine Mart welder I made a pier, then several other piers, then a chassis for a roll-off observatory, then a load of railings to protect the drops around our house, then a couple of roll-off roofs, more railings... and so it goes on. Just the other day I welded up a repair on one of the corner jacks of our caravan. Talk about a good investment. But my welding ain't pretty! I had a new guest years ago who said, 'Did you weld this pier up yourself, Olly?' I said that , yes, I did. Then I asked him what he did for a living and, after a short pause, he said... welder!  After we'd both stopped laughing I think we enjoyed a beer together...

😁lly

[Ken82]

Thats funny Olly! 

I had a similar experience some years ago when i needed to do some "easy" welding ! I borrowed a set of equipment from work which is never used really.

Its not pretty on the eye but it did the job, full respect to welders 😉

[Adam J]

8mm steal? Hope you have a crane to lift it into place. Mine was 1/8 of an inch and worked just fine, and I know how heavy that was. 

[Davey-T]

Made this mostly from stuff I had around, it's just bolted to the patio with chemically bonded steel rods.

You can hire MIG welders and one with Argon rather than CO2 is easier to use.

Dave

 

 

Edited August 23, 2020 by Davey-T

[tooth_dr]

8 hours ago, Adam J said:

8mm steal? Hope you have a crane to lift it into place. Mine was 1/8 of an inch and worked just fine, and I know how heavy that was. 

Just to expand on this - I have not long fitted my pier, it’s made from ordinary steel - 11mm schedule 80 pipe and 10mm base and 8mm fins. Total height was 1.2m

The guy who made it lifted it onto the trailer himself, drove round here and the two of us carried it 50m, up some stairs and into my dome.

The pipe weighed 51kg and the total weight was 65kg. That’s the weight of a small adult.  No cranes needed 👍🏼

[saac]

Michael, I had my pier made about 4 years ago, square section mild steel tube about 8 mm thick from what I remember.  I had it made by a local agricultural blacksmith. It cost just over £300 for which he welded the base plate, webs, top plate, cut a circular "owls nest" access, red oxide painted and also fitted it to the concrete base (chem bolts). I'd try a google search for a blacksmith in your area then drop by an discuss what you need.  If you want I can give you a photograph of mine with dimension.  

Jim 

Edited August 23, 2020 by saac

[Adam J]

3 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

The pipe weighed 51kg and the total weight was 65kg. That’s the weight of a small adult.  No cranes needed 👍🏼

Because I completely meant that literally...

[Starflyer]

This is mine, designed in SketchUp, I had a local steel fabricators make it up for me.  They hot dip galvanised and powder coated it for the grand sum of £120, zero signs of corrosion after four years.

150 X 6mm steel pipe with 10mm plate and M16 stainless nuts and bolts.

[tooth_dr]

23 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Because I completely meant that literally...

You implied it was going to extremely heavy, and I know based on actual hands-on experience, that it’s an easily manageable weight that 2 people can manoeuvre.   And thus there is no need to be worried about using 8mm steel.  

[Synchronicity]

There's no way I'm trying to explain bringing welding equipmet  (or a welder!! ) home - my wife already tolerates me spending lots of time with "...whatever the hell all that stuff you play with is..." so I'm not rocking the boat 😃. 
A friend thinks a blacksmith he knows might help so I've drawn up plans for something more traditional (I like playing with Freecad anyway)  Thanks especially to tooth_dr, Davey-T and Starflyer for pictures and information.

I notice that most piers have a mount adapter plate fitted but I thought I'd achieve the same effect with an extra plate at the top cut out to suit the mount.  All being well I get one made for my EQ5 and another sized for an EQ6 head which I plan to upgrade to at some point.

Edited to add it has a 'Slenderness Ratio' of 43 from Kevs spreadsheet using 150mm diameter 6mm walled pipe.

 

All the best

Michael

Edited August 24, 2020 by Synchronicity
Added slenderness ratio

[Jonk]

I may be a bit late to this party, but I've designed my own pier for the AZ-EQ6 ('copied' and expanded another design actually!) which may help?

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/276494-permanent-custompier-installation-has-begun

 

 

[Gfamily]

On 22/08/2020 at 23:17, ollypenrice said:

. With a low-end Machine Mart welder I made a pier, then several other piers, then a chassis for a roll-off observatory, then a load of railings to protect the drops around our house, then a couple of roll-off roofs, more railings... and so it goes on.

I went to a talk about work being done by the University of Sheffield at the Zaatari refugee camp in Lebanon, and one of the comments was that there's nothing that a farmer needs that can't be made with a welding kit and an angle grinder.

[Davey-T]

21 minutes ago, Synchronicity said:

I notice that most piers have a mount adapter plate fitted but I thought I'd achieve the same effect with an extra plate at the top cut out to suit the mount.  All being well I get one made for my EQ5 and another sized for an EQ6 head which I plan to upgrade to at some point.

Depending on equipment you may need to angle the corners of top plates

Dave

[saac]

Michael as you are having it made for you why not dispense with the separate top plate and bolt arrangement  altogether and ask the blacksmith if he can cut a circular access hole at the top.  So called "rats nest" v "owl hole" arrangement .  Most blacksmiths will be equipped with a plasma torch so it's a straightforward operation for them. 

Jim