Scaffolding towers

[mattcamp]

Can anyone recommend any burner-friendly scaffolding vendors?
Preferably in Reno or nearby, and preferably that would do rental gear.

I'm looking to build a 20-foot high observation tower for my camp next year and would like to consult with someone about the required parts and costs involved.

Also - does anyone know if you require the OSHA scaffolds certificate to rent scaffolding in Nevada?

Thanks!

[torrey.smith]

Personally, I think it's more fun to build your own tower!

Scaffolding does work very well, though

[mattcamp]

Personally, I think it's more fun to build your own tower!

I would love to, and your tower is awesome!

Unfortunately I and my entire camp fly in from Australia, NZ and the UK only about a week before the burn so we're extremely limited on how much we can build ourselves... I'm basically stuck with off-the-shelf parts.

[torrey.smith]

You fly in AND you want to build something? You rock!!!

[mattcamp]

We've built something every year for the last three.... the scale is just going up a lot

[torrey.smith]

Super cool. Very efficient way to enclose a space AND get you high!

[Dr. Pyro]

We've built something every year for the last three.... the scale is just going up a lot

Not only are all of the women in that rendering all dressed the same, like Catholic school girls, not one of them is topless. And you call yourselves burners.

[theCryptofishist]

Is Rodia Logistics still over on Kietzke?

[spacetime]

Did you design this in second life?

[mattcamp]

Did you design this in second life?

All done in sketchup... hence the bland looking people.

Someone should definitely do a Burner model pack for better realism

[mattcamp]

Not only are all of the women in that rendering all dressed the same, like Catholic school girls, not one of them is topless. And you call yourselves burners.

Fixed.

[LionsNzebras]

This looks like an amazing design, you could just use cable and cloth for the tent type structure.

Use rebar and attach your cable to it, then run your coverings with rings on the cable, would be super cool.

[vachot]

That's quite a piece of cloth, well, four pieces of cloth. What would you use? Would it be durable enough to withstand the winds? Strong enough to be stretched tight over such large areas without sagging, or would it have plenty of added support? Light enough to wrestle with? Waterproof? Sunblocking? Aluminet? Ag-cloth? Poly? What about the anchors strong enough to hold the tension?
Just asking 'cause I would like to use more than just an old parachute!

[FossaFerox]

It's hard to tell from this angle, but is the scaffolding along the rear edge of the structure? If so you're introducing a potential problem.

The sum vector force created by the guy lines appears to be extremely uneven and the guy lines appear unable to resist the net effect of this uneven force as you have nothing pulling in the opposite direction. Worse yet, this force is being applied to its top edge which will make the whole thing inclined to fall forward onto your camp's shady relaxation space.

This force will be ever present since those front guylines will have to be under tension to hold up the covering without sagging too much, and the force will spike in any gusty conditions since even the thinnest shade cloth picks up some amount of wind load.

Make sure you're using sufficiently thick cable and please change up the design a little to stake the thing out backwards somehow. Bonus points if you make the rear cable visible or otherwise obstructed like your front ones so that no one clotheslines themselves.

Oh, and make sure the two adjacent sets of scaffolding step frames are bound together properly since otherwise the front one will just want to pull away from the anchored back one.

[The Rod]

Try United Rentals. Google says there's a few location in Reno/Sparks.

The location in Medford we rented our trailer and scaffold planks from was very reasonable and Burner friendly.

[mattcamp]

That's quite a piece of cloth, well, four pieces of cloth. What would you use? Would it be durable enough to withstand the winds? Strong enough to be stretched tight over such large areas without sagging, or would it have plenty of added support? Light enough to wrestle with? Waterproof? Sunblocking? Aluminet? Ag-cloth? Poly? What about the anchors strong enough to hold the tension?
Just asking 'cause I would like to use more than just an old parachute!

Planning to use heavy-duty white tarps....

The weight is definitely still a worry, but hopefully using steel cables we can tension them enough to support it without too much sagging.

[mattcamp]

It's hard to tell from this angle, but is the scaffolding along the rear edge of the structure? If so you're introducing a potential problem.

It is.

Make sure you're using sufficiently thick cable and please change up the design a little to stake the thing out backwards somehow. Bonus points if you make the rear cable visible or otherwise obstructed like your front ones so that no one clotheslines themselves.

Yep, it's not visible on the 3d renders but there are actually another set of guy-lines out the back to even out the force.

On the following top-down diagram the red lines are all guy lines... currently planning 1/4" steel but this may be upgraded once we do a few more calculations. (the front of the pyramid is towards the right. The shaded areas are the tarp 'sides'.

Oh, and make sure the two adjacent sets of scaffolding step frames are bound together properly since otherwise the front one will just want to pull away from the anchored back one.

Absolutely!

[EspressoDude]

looking good. Unless you tension the cables with several thousand pounds, they will sag, or form arcs, with wind loading. Particularly the transition from shade to no shade (vertical line in your rendering). Look at some of the tensioned star tents, or forestay and luff sag in sailboats.

Ground anchors will also be an issue.

[mattcamp]

looking good. Unless you tension the cables with several thousand pounds, they will sag, or form arcs, with wind loading. Particularly the transition from shade to no shade (vertical line in your rendering). Look at some of the tensioned star tents, or forestay and luff sag in sailboats.

Ground anchors will also be an issue.

Some sag will be inevitable I think... We're just going to try to keep the material as light as possible and just live with it I think.

I did consider having internal posts near the corners (roughly where the sound system is on the render) around 8' high to support it a little more but I'm not really sure how workable this will be. I suspect there will be a lot of engineering on the fly at the time to try to sort out any major sag issues.

Ground anchors is definitely something I'm still working on... I'm currently thinking some form of a steel plate with at least 4x lag screws in each, or large pieces of rebar.

[GreyCoyote]

There is a fine line, and you will have to determine where it is experimentally on-site, between having too much and not enough tension. IMHO you want to engineer a little give in the support line. During winds, this allows the structure to move a bit and spill some of the wind load as the lines give (think about how a sail works).

If you are using aircraft cable, you might want to pick-up a riggers guide and study how this stuff behaves throughout the load curve. Its funny stuff sometimes. At one end of the curve, it behaves more like a laid rope than a steel cable, while at the other end it behaves like a steel rod.

Building this structure will be a neat learning experience for you. Even if it isnt perfect, it will still be epic!

[mdmf007]

Anchor this thing good please and consider using shade cloth that will not act as a total sail. Sail force calculators will help a lot in determining what forces you can see. Remember the higher you go - the more wind you are going to encounter in general.

one of the many clculators online:
http://www.sailingcourse.com/keelboat/cal_wind_load.htm

In example - A 5000 square foot sail area in a 30kt wind is 19395 pounds of force. your 1/4 inch guy wires wont work. rule of thumb we use for BM - over build when in doubt.

[mattcamp]

Anchor this thing good please and consider using shade cloth that will not act as a total sail. Sail force calculators will help a lot in determining what forces you can see. Remember the higher you go - the more wind you are going to encounter in general.

one of the many clculators online:
http://www.sailingcourse.com/keelboat/cal_wind_load.htm

In example - A 5000 square foot sail area in a 30kt wind is 19395 pounds of force. your 1/4 inch guy wires wont work. rule of thumb we use for BM - over build when in doubt.

Unfortunately the is no way we can build this with shade cloth... it's far too expensive.

The biggest side has just under 1000 square foot of area, and is sloped at a 30+' angle. The largest vertical piece has an area of only around 400sq ft (and this rear side is protected down low by adjacent carports and EZ-ups for shade).

The current plan is to use 4x 1/4" guy wires on each of the front (entrance) and rear (the vertical piece), and at least 1x 1/4" wire guy on each side. I've increased the number of guy lines from the previous image just in case.

[mattcamp]

Oh, it's probably also worth mentioning the internal outriggers on the scaffold tower that are inside the pyramid but not visible on the render.

[FossaFerox]

If you use something that isn't wind permeable you're driving up the cost of your cables and anchors substantially. 1/4" cable won't be strong enough for canvas or tarp and your anchors are going to have to be insane...

[EspressoDude]

cables: they will fill with playa dust which is corrosive. over a winter they will rust like crazy if not properly cleaned and slushed.
larger individual strands will help, such as power line guy wires (7?strand) vs. 6x19

[mattcamp]

cables: they will fill with playa dust which is corrosive. over a winter they will rust like crazy if not properly cleaned and slushed.
larger individual strands will help, such as power line guy wires (7?strand) vs. 6x19

Hmm, good point.

I wonder if using 2-3" ratchet straps might be a better idea? Decent ones have a load capacity of over 5000lbs and would solve a few other problems (tensioning, and less likely to injure when people walk into them).

[Agaton]

cables: they will fill with playa dust which is corrosive. over a winter they will rust like crazy if not properly cleaned and slushed.
larger individual strands will help, such as power line guy wires (7?strand) vs. 6x19

Stainless? Or is that too expensive, or too stiff adn brittle?

[LionsNzebras]

On of your issues will be securing the tarp\cloth to your method of anchor, as well as lines.

If you use cable, you can sew in Velcro ties to attach. I suppose you could do the same with a ratchet strap too, just have it different.
Velcro will tare easily in the wind, snaps are a pita, grommets with zip ties would require a UV resistant zip tie with a large load rating.
I was just thinking you might be able to use high end climbing rope, i dont know the weights of these ropes though was just a though. If you used a bunch of them it would also eliminate some sag in your tarp\cloth materials.

IMO you should build this in a field by your house, do a little experimentation with it, try out different cabling\ratchet strap\methods, different wind loads and environmental conditions
Or put up one scaffold in your back yard and play with attachment types.
Different building methods, materials etc etc.

One thing that I would STRONGLY suggest is you over design it, if it fails on the playa you will be in a world of hurt. OR possibly hurt people and no one ever wants to do that, but if you can avoid it its a good idea.

E.G
With our dome project, I am going to build it on my drive way\front yard, play with a tyvek cover and get some real world data before I make the canvas tarp for example. Then it will sit there for a month in the real world while we watch it, check out the various connection methods (velcro, zip ties etc) and see what happens. The weather here is vastly unpredictable, and I would rather it fail on my drive way than on the playa.

[watchyourfeet]

I was just thinking you might be able to use high end climbing rope, i dont know the weights of these ropes though was just a though. If you used a bunch of them it would also eliminate some sag in your tarp\cloth materials.

Only problem with climbing rope is it's extremely stretchy so you would have to put a huge amount of tension in it to keep it from sagging significantly. I would buy a highly rated static rope rather than dynamic climbing rope.

[FIGJAM]

I use carabineers to attach my tarp grommets to my tensioned ropes.