Anyone in Telecoms/Wireless Tower Industry

QUESTION
What structure do you normally do? I do see towers on foundation and think that should be easy to do.

But do you install towers on top of existing roof? This would be something I may not be comfortable doing.

I’m thinking of moving to this industry to diversify my experience. I have an interview coming up.

REPLIES

Daywalker
I worked in structural retrofit of towers for a year right out of school (2014-2015). Carriers are constantly switching out/adding antennas to existing towers, and every change requires a full analysis/report. Adding an antenna the size of a refrigerator door at the top of a 300ft tower will make a big difference in wind-induced moment at the base. The thing about that industry is that carriers/owners want such a quick turnaround that most companies specializing in this have streamlined the analysis and typical design process so much that a lot of times it just felt like data entry; taking output from tnxTower and putting them in the same spreadsheet you’ve already used hundreds of times. I will say I learned a good bit about steel connection design and welding…also, foundation retrofit designs in the tight spaces of those compounds could get pretty interesting.

I don’t think I saw a single tower installed on a roof in the 100+ towers I worked on. I did see a guyed tower with one of the guy wires attached to a steel contraption on a roof though.

SOURCE
https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=411784
Above is a snippet.

I analyzed one 40 foot tower on a wood roof in three years. It was in downtown Tacoma, WA. Hard to marry the two codes, IBC and TIA, but I managed.

Tower design can be complicated. Saw a lot of mistakes made with Kzt factor for wind - ignored my many, making many towers fail under load in their current loading state. Rather unnerving.

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