Preparations for raising the tower

Once the piling caps were set, the tower pipe was ready, and the lightening protection was in place, we needed a calm day to raise the tower. A friend of ours showed up on Labor Day weekend and his intention was to help my husband raise the tower. Since neither of them had done this before, they wanted to practice raising and lowering the tower several times before they put the wind generator on the tower. There were a few more tasks that needed to be done before they started. One was to cut the cable for the guy wires. The other was to bolt the base angles to the tower base. Once the base angles were in place, the tower pipe and the gin pole were connected to the tower base. Next, the guy wires were installed and connected to the side anchors. To raise the gin pole they put a block on the front end loader, used some of the guy wires and followed the directions in the manual that came with the tower kit. After the gin pole was raised, they attached the guy wires from the gin pole to the tower, which was on the ground, and pulled the gin pole down which raised the tower. They practiced this several times. One time, before raising the tower, they set it up to drop a weight with a string attached to it down the tower as it raised. The string was later used to to pull the electrical wire through the tower. At first they used the tractors to raise and lower the tower, but that was later replaced with winches, which was much safer.