Spiral Tree Engineering Question

[namecipS]

I'm adding a 14' spiral tree to my display this year.  I plan to start putting it up this weekend. 

 

I may be overthinking it, but wanted to see what others thought about the base/pole setup.

 

I'm using a portable hole II setup for the base and a 10' and 4' metal plumbing pipe for the pole.  I plan to have at least 10 support wires.

 

My question is does it matter which pole is inserted in to the base?  I'm thinking the 10' section first and the 4' on top. 

 

Thanks in advance for the help/advice.

[dgrant]

I do two megatrees. Both are 15 foot types. I'm currently using 1 inch black pipe and I put the 5 foot section on top. I only use 4 guide wires for the pole itself. The pole is screwed into a metal screw on base thingy which is screwed onto a piece of wood. Now the piece of wood, I bored a hole through it and hammer down a piece of 1/2 pvc to place the black pipe over. This keeps the bottom from moving, just in case. So the bottom is held and the pole has four tie wires to hold it up.

      I'm going to try a different product this year, in hopes of keeping my string guide wires tighter. I found some screw-in type screws/clamps/stakes that you bore into the ground which the base ring sets on top of and gets clamped onto each. This will hopefully provide a strong base ring support so that I can tighten up the string guide wires which are not the pole support wires. Then I can lay the strings, 32 in my case on each tree.

[Buckeyelights]

Correct, shorter piece on top reduces the moment force at the junction of the two pieces.

 

Good luck!!!

[Stingray]

I have done mine the last two years with a 20' flag pole.  I just drove a concrete form stake from home depot in the ground and sit the flag pole over it.  I then bought three screw in dog stakes from harbor freight.  The 3 guy wires are aircraft cable with turnbuckles in them.  I fabricated a metal sleeve with hooks welded on it that slides over the pole.  String up 3600 lights and hoist them up.  It has endured two very windy Kansas seasons and is soon to go up again. 

[Mega Arch]

Stingray,

Sounds interesting. Have any pictures of the metal sleeve and how you hoist the light strands up?

Thanks

[Old Sarge]

mine is only 12 ft tall but I made a complete frame out of PVC with 8 up rights from ground to about 1/2 way up.

put a complete ring around the center as well as the bottom using PVC and 45 degree elbows and T,s on the bottom with cross pieces in the center,

after adding the uprights from the center  to the top made a ring using 45 degree pieces and short PVC in them to glue them together,  I just use zip ties to hold my lights on the top, went 16 strings around it and spiraled them to the bottom and zip tied them at the bottom. to help keep the lights lined up I also zip tied them in the center where they cross the center ring.

 

a few stakes over the PVC ring at the bottom..... to hold it down against the 50 + mph wind that is common in the antelope valley in S. Cali.

 

took me one complete day to fabricate, cut assembly and set up my tree.  16 channels two color

 

I am a newbie also and seemed like a pretty easy way to do it. found the basic plans on u tube do not remember the site and did a couple modifications on it.