My Megatree is under way - actually two

AussiePhil

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Canberra, ACT, Australia
Mate came round today to watch the football and we went and dug a couple holes in the yard.

For the technical.

Poles are 60mm Aluminium Poles at 6.5M long

PVC that has been concreted in is 65mm, the aluminium slides in with a couple mm on each side but very easy to wedge into place.

There is 1M (3' 3") of PVC concreted in. They have been checked for vertical alignment with the poles in place

One tree is planned to be the full 5.5M high, however the other one will use the lights from last years tree and be limited to around 4M.

More info and pole construction info as i do some more.

Cheers
Phil
 

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mrpackethead

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Jun 12, 2010
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Wellington
little hint for everyone.. When you put your pipe in the ground, use some strong tape ( gaffa is good ) to mask off the end of the pipe.. Stops any concrete / rubbish from entering the pipe.. Also, get a cap for the pipe after your finished for the year, and keep the muck out.. Little bit of dirt and stuff become annoying obstablces later..
 

AussiePhil

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I agree with Andrew about capping the pipe both to stop concrete and to stop water, I will use normal end caps to cap the top, at the moment they have disposable plastic glasses covering them to stop water.

In my case the bottom wasn't capped but was driven around 100mm into a clay base, this actually simplified the vertical alignment and stopped concrete getting in.

Here's some more photos of what we are doing.
IMG_0115.png
The hook head piece, 65mm pvc pipe and a 65mm inline joiner along with 10 pegboard hooks

This combination fits over the 60mm Aluminium pipe really quite well
IMG_0116.png
The extended 65mm pipe stops twisting and binding on the pipe.

The following shows how neat the fit is, the metal from the pegboard hooks has a few thou clearance :)
IMG_0117.png

Here's the rope cleat mounted along with the rope, going to use a hose clamp around the 65mm PVC pipe to hold the rope, just tied of with a bit of wire atm.
IMG_0118.png

And here's the top.
Rather than use eye bolts or pulleys i just cut a couple of links from a chain and bolted them to the pipe, this gives no failure points. well maybe the rope.
IMG_0119.png

More....................
 

tuppet

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May 12, 2010
Messages
84
Location
Kew, Victoria
very nice - having built our tree we are deciding very quickly there needs to be a Star (even mum asked why there wasn't one!). It may be relatively small (3.2m), but testing inside has some advantages when it is hailing outside.
 

fj

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May 7, 2010
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89
hi phil,

can you post up a picture of the top mast head with the lights attached? i'd like to see how you took care of securing the RGB strings.

thanks, scott
 
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