Demolishing a 300-foot electrical tower by cutting the guy-wires - GIF

[Jon]

Demolishing a 300-foot electrical tower by cutting the guy-wires.




Previously:

Electrical tower fire and collapse on busy street - GIF
Excavator chimney demolition gone wrong - GIF
Chinese tower crane collapse - GIF
Perfect controlled demolition of twin chimneys - video

[DIYSwede]

Umm - rather a transmitter antenna tower (probably a redundant Aero NDB).

[Frank S]

And folks that is a demonstration of just how vulnerable communications and repeater towers are.

[jimfols]

I heard the Ya Hoo. Would have rather heard Tim Ber.

[Paul Alciatore]

Classic method or taking a tall tower down; IF the area under and around it is clear. But someone has to clean up the mess. It is best to have that arranged FIRST.

As a former TV chief engineer, I hate to see this on the internet. Not everybody knows just how vulnerable these towers are. A 1000 foot tower can be a million dollar investment and unfortunately not all of them have open fields or woods around them. I have seen them in the center of a trailer park. If those came down there would be many deaths. A tall tower falls in a relatively small area like a wet noodle, but the guy wires (think 1" diameter steel cables under a lot of tension) can whip around quite a bit. A trailer would be cut in two by one of them without slowing down. That city was nuts to allow that.

[jdurand]

I had a room mate who was in the transmitter shack when some guys working on the tower took off too many cross supports and the tower twisted straight down all around the shack. One guy on the tower killed.

A lot of underwear needed to be changed.

[Jon]

Another way to go about it.

[Frank S]

Another way to go about it.

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the Brother-in-law of a good friend of mine does tower inspections when he finds one that he deems unsafe or non repairable this is what he does to them.

[Hoosiersmoker]

Doesn't look like they're too worried about the building... looks like it missed it by only inches!

[awright]

I hate to show my ignorance of mechanics, but I do not understand how cutting the guy wires results in a vertical collapse straight down into its footprint instead of starting to tip over away from the cut wires and then buckling into a tangled mass of steel over a large area. I was not able to detect any explosive event at the base of the tower in the video. ]

I would think there would be no need to cut the guy wires. Rather, I would have expected that a small array of explosive charges or cutters like used on the wire anchor in the video at the tower base woulld better control the descent of the tower over a minimum area.

Help!