staking down shade structures

[vic]

I know that rebar is popular, but it is far from ideal. The sharp edges on the top of the are a hazzard (it seems like somebody in our camp gets cut every year), long stakes can be difficult to remove, and unless you are careful, you will probably get soft steel rebar which is not very strong.

Screw-in "earth anchors" are much stronger. You can get them at farm supply places or they can be special ordered from most hardware stores. The smallest size is best for most burningman applications. They take some effort to put in, but they super strong. One big advantage of earth anchors - they are designed for a direct vertical pull. You can run a line from the top of your shade structure support beam straight down to the playa rather than extending a guy from your structure that will trip up some tripper, or you, in the middle of the night. The eye-bolt on the earth anchors is much nicer to deal with than a sharp-edged piece of rebar, and you can easily tie on multiple lines.

Earth anchors (screw anchor) are described on Bob's page
http://www.geocities.com/potatotrap/tech/rebarfaq.htm

If you want to use straight stakes such as rebar or concrete form stakes to secure a vertical pull, two stakes crossed at the ground works well. We have had good results with large nails (12 inch spikes, the largest we could find at a building supply place). Such spikes are cheap, easy to deal with, easy to pound in and pull out with an ordinary claw hammer, and two or three of them crossed at the ground are great for smaller structures. Tie to the crossing point. We haved used crossed spikes with good results over the past five years for smaller structures (small tents and shower structures). For our 10x10 shade structures we have had good results with a couple of earth anchors at key points supplemented with crossed spikes at other points.

[phil]

Everybody has their own solutions. Louise and I put 6' to 10' PVC pipes on our rebar that's out in the open; with PVC that tall, it's no longer a tripping hazard. We have a shade structure that sits on 4 legs made from the top rail of a chain link fence. We use to put the legs over the rebar, but eventually we got enough wind to lift the shade off, so now we drive the rebar in next to the legs and duct tape the leg to the rebar, covering the rebar completely. At the end of the burn, cutting the tape from top to bottom lets us peel it off in one fell swoop. Removing rebar with vise grips is an inconvenience, but no more than I'd guess screwing and unscrewing earth anchors.

For the rebar we use to stake our tents, we put solar lamps on the part of the rebar that sticks up. Few people walk close enough to our tent to trip, but if it's dark, we've got the tent pegs lighted for their tripping pleasure.