Mounting a pole in the ground.

[Robbo]

Right, I have spent the day chopping down some trees, so I can finally get my 90cm dish motorised.

I'm intending to ground mount it with a scaffold pole concreted in the ground.

The dish centre and the motor will be about 5 foot off the ground.

My question is, what is the easiest way to get the hole dug, and the pole absolutely vertical?

I can imagine lots of effort involved, and end up with a wonky pole

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks

Robbo

[johnwilliam1]

Originally Posted by robbo71

Right, I have spent the day chopping down some trees, so I can finally get my 90cm dish motorised.

I'm intending to ground mount it with a scaffold pole concreted in the ground.

The dish centre and the motor will be about 5 foot off the ground.

My question is, what is the easiest way to get the hole dug, and the pole absolutely vertical?

I can imagine lots of effort involved, and end up with a wonky pole

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks

Robbo

well i have 3 poles in the garden two which are 2'' and one which is a 3'' pole. The 2'' poles are roughly 3ft in the ground and the 3'' pole is 4ft in the ground and both rock solid, you need a 2'' pole about 3ft under and i dug the holes myself, use a spirit level i did and thats about it, a bit of graft, but you are ok, you only have one pole to do

[Caravan72]

Originally Posted by robbo71

Right, I have spent the day chopping down some trees, so I can finally get my 90cm dish motorised.

I'm intending to ground mount it with a scaffold pole concreted in the ground.

The dish centre and the motor will be about 5 foot off the ground.

My question is, what is the easiest way to get the hole dug, and the pole absolutely vertical?

I can imagine lots of effort involved, and end up with a wonky pole

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks

Robbo

I plan to dig a hole about 2 to 2' 6" deep and have three bags of post crete (over doing it maybe) the pole will be within 2.5m of a fence in right angle directions so i plan to use plastic string round the pole and attached to a nail on the fence in 2 places and adjust until plumb then another at an opposite angle to stop it falling away. With this idea I can adjust the plumb and keep it steady until I have the crete in the ground.

[Robbo]

Three foot seems along way to dig down by hand. Is there some sort of tool to make this easier?

I'm thinking of making a concrete block instead, to save me any digging.

[Jimdefruit]

Hi robbo, the depth very much depends on your soil and ground conditions. In my case it is sandy and nothing is firm until I get 18" down so I have to go down at least 3 ft to get any support.

As for allowing adjustement, the best arrangement is to sink a larger bore pipe into the ground, say 150 mm dia and concrete it in and allow to set.
Then the dish mounting post can be set in a concrete mix inside the larger pipe with plenty of time for wedging and adjustment.

[Robbo]

Cheers JIm,

My soil type is not sandy, the sub layer is chalk, not sure how far down it is though. I remember digging a hole once before at a different property in the same area, and it gets rock hard.

[AceB]

Hi Robbo, I have similar ground here, we've got about 9" of top soil then it's solid chalk, when I dug a 3ft hole I went down as far as I could using a pick axe then used a 25mm masonary bit in my rotary pneumatic drill to make a series of holes before digging it out by hand. The hardest part is reaching in to remove the spoil when you get that deep, I guess a fencers hole digger would be useful at this point. As my post was scaf pole I used a couple of swivel clamps and shorter poles to cross brace it while the concrete went off.

[Robbo]

Thanks Ace,
What do fencers hole diggers look like, can you hire them?

I think I'll go just go down about 2 foot, The motor will only be about 5 foot off the ground, and it is very sheltered.
Hopefully picking up the pole tomorow.

[Caravan72]

I'll have about 60KG's of postcrete in the ground along with a couple of shovels of chuckies in the mix will bring this up a bit, I recently put up a 2m fence using 1.5 bags of crete per post as I did'nt trust the instructions and it worked fine.

Get digging!

[Yorks]

Originally Posted by robbo71

What do fencers hole diggers look like, can you hire them?

I think this is one ..........