Disaster Strikes

[kane]

I thought that my tree was pretty solid, but got some very strongs winds today, and just had a call letting me know it has toppled over
From my ip camera, I can see the acrylic star has been smashed - I'm just hoping that there is no more damage
Not a happy camper!


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[garyh]

man that's terrible, it's even worse that you can only look at it and not do anything about it :-\

 

[fasteddy]

Thats my nightmare, the tree falling. Your lucky it happened when it did as it could have caused some damage to your car if it was parked in the driveway. I hope its fairly easily recovered (except for the star)

 

[ryanschristmaslights]

Oh dear! Not good. Was the star home made or bought from somewhere(china?)

Adelaide suffered some bad winds (and horizontal rain!) a few years ago in December. Another display close by to me had their steel support pole of their mega tree buckle and smash into their roof.

The one positive, if you can call it that, at least it wasn't vandals or naughty kids (you won't see a repeat again, hopefully!)

Hope it is easily fixed! From what I can see, I still see straight lines (of lights) so that is a plus.

 

[ShellNZ]

aww gawd, sorry to see that Kane, hope its not as bad as you think

 

[fasteddy]

Just wondering how you had this braced, did you have guy wires hooked in to hold it as i cant see any evidence of any guy wires how was the tree actually held to the ground.

I have my tree with 6 guy wires, three guy wires are 3/4 way up and 3 guy wires are about 1/4 way up this helps with stoppung the pole from bending in the middle due to the wind stresses from the star above.

We had excessive wind last week which hit when i was on the roof, it blew the little step ladder i use to get onto the second story across the roof and smashed a tile. I sat there watching the tree thinking if its going to come down then it will come down now. But I was happy to see the design worked well as I have a large corex star up top that acts like a sail. I decided not actually mount this directly to the pole but instead i used two pieces of conduit attched to the pole, what this helps do is when the wind become too excessive the star will actually twist and help deflect the wind better but then go back to the correct position when the wind dies down. I was actually very surprised it worked as i designed it

 

[kane]

Stars were custom made - I do actually have a smaller one spare that I can use, so will stick that up there for this year..

All of the strings are cable tied to the bottom of the tree (the tree is a pyramid alluminium structure), so in theory, I may just be able to get a few people to help tip it back up.. I think it'll be pretty heavy though - the 64x 5metre strings were put up after it was put upright..

And no, I didn't have any bracing - d last year we had a big storm that came through and it had no issues at all - so I figured it'd be okay.. The idea of the tree was to be freestanding (as I have the fake lawn), and having the relatively wide triangle base meant that it really needed to be some strong winds to push it over.

Oh well, it's not the end of the world, is it!! Will head home early and see what I can do to fix it up..

 

[fasteddy]

That would explain it then. never under estimate the power of wind with objects that are not braced to the ground. Ive ended up with the neighbours trampoline in my backyard twice already and a dog kennal through a window from high winds
The fact that it is a triangle shape means you only need something simple to brace it to terra firma to stop it from tipping in the wind.

 

[David_AVD]

If you don't want to bolt it down, how about some sandbags disguised as presents?

 

[kane]

If you don't want to bolt it down, how about some sandbags disguised as presents?

Yeah, I think I'll get some long tent pegs and peg it down in several locations (through the fake turf), and also get a couple guy ropes happening as well - don't want it happening again!

 

[Boof63]

Bad Luck, hope it's just the star that suffered terminal velocity impact.
Best of luck getting it up and running again.
Cheers Boof63

 

[lithgowlights]

Hope things go well in the repairs. My tree is braced in 4 directions - 2 to 1.2m steel poles hammered into the ground and 2 back to the house to a metal anchor point screwed to the facia. So far it has survivled 100km/h wind gusts, but it does move a bit, and the pixels are not anchored hard at the base, allowing them to give a bit in the wind.

Next year I plan on concreting the base better and replacing 2 of the 3 anchor points with large concrete pads with steel reinforcing and a stainless anchor point bolted to it.

 

[kane]

Have replaced the star, and one of the 6 pixel string outputs on the Pixad8 isn't working, so I'll just do without that (too hard basket to get the enclosure open to fix it).

Also, a couple of the other pixel strings developed issues, so had to pull a couple pixels out to get them working again..

So tree is back upright again, with some ropes to secure, plus a bunch of tent pegs to hold the base down..

On a positive note, I've realised that the tree isn't actually that heavy, even with 640metres of strings on it.. We were able to tip it back up with just two of us.. This means that next year, I could fix all the strings to the structure while it is flat, which would save me several hours of setup!

 

[aussiexmas]

Sunday before last (18/11/12), our local area in Brisbane (Centenary suburbs), copped a hum dinger of a hail storm. Hail up to cricket ball size, many houses badly damaged & cars written off. I was lucky and just caught the edge of the hail (to big marble size); lost fairy light bulbs and some plastic tube lights, but I am now running. (4KQ judges came tonight).

Others in our area were not so lucky - a big static display in Jindalee (200,000 lights) was badly damaged and with no time for repairs they have pulled down their display for this year.

The sound preceding the storm's arrival was something to remember. The sound built up to a roar as the storm approached and was heard well before the first drop of rain fell. This roar is the sort of memory that is experienced at most only a few times during a lifetime.

Kane, I have deviated from your topic. Hope you are able to get up and running. Regarding bracing/guy wires, I learned a valuable lesson regarding wind and bracing wires/ropes when I lost my mega-tree just before Christmas 2009 (the 100mm PVC sewerage pipe I used as a pole snapped). I still run with 100mm PVC piping, but now use 3 levels of guy ropes to 6 fixed points in my yard. So far this has prevented any damage.