We live in a barn conversion with beamed vaulted ceilings, which looks very pretty, but among its many shortcomings it has a very active population of cellar spiders (*). We are doing our best to eliminate them, or at least get them under control, which is working (one piece of good news is that they are very easy to kill). But, they spin huge shambolic webs up in the roof spaces, which are hard to get at. We have a couple of "tribbles on a stick" dusters, but they tend to smear the webs over the beams where they're impossible to remove (the beams are rough cut).
So ... what I want is a length of thin wall tubing, about 5 metres or so long (or shorter pieces which can be joined together) and 30mm-ish in diameter to put on the vacuum cleaner so I can vacuum them up without having to climb on a ladder. The thinner and lighter, the better, so long as it is self-supporting.
Can anyone suggest where I might source such a thing (or the materials to fabricate it). It doesn't have to be pretty, just functional.
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looks possible, but a 2.5m piece of 28mm with a 1.2mm wal thickness is £21! And then I need a way to join two together.
Another thought might be to use some kind of lightweight corrugated hose and tape it to a pole?
Can you tell I'm thinking out loud here?
(* Arachnophobes may not want to click on this link.
It sounds like you need a length of plastic waste pipe and suitable fittings or bodgery to adapt it to the vacuum cleaner hose. Cheap, lightweight, a large range of adapters and couplers, etcetera.
Yes you can get thin wall ones and they are very light. They are much stronger and less flexible than plastic waste pipe, so are better for this application. ODs are 1", 1¼", 1½", 2". They are easy to join without reducing the inside diameter. If anyone really needs to know how I'll explain.
I would use this as an excuse to buy a quad-copter, to see whether flying it near the rafters produced enough of a downdraught to pull the spider webs down. :-)
Now *there's* an idea! And it's my birthday soon. And Herself pulled a face when I mentioned a "sous vide" machine.
BTW, I ordered a 3m length of 40mm PVC waste pipe on Screwfix (as suggested here). Only a couple of quid and it should fit over the nozzle on the vacuum cleaner.
I'm planning on refurbishing my TV aerial come the Winter Hill frequency drop this March(?). The top pole took to swivelling in the breeze after last Autumn's gales as a result of the jubilee clip rusting through. It hadn't occurred to me that I might want more than 30 years of service out of the installation otherwise I'd have chosen a stainless steel clip instead.
At the moment, I've got it held in position with washing line cord and a longish garden cane which has stabilised it ever since (unlike my first bodge of using just a cord to hold it against the prevailing westerlies which proved to be insufficiently prevailing, hence my giving it "a good caning" as well).
I noticed a few of these in the living room and kitchen, I just left them to get on with catching the occasional fly. They seem to have gone somewhere else at the moment[1], and their webs are gathering dust so I'm about to remove them. SO prefers not to have them wandering around above the bed, so those are relocated when they appear, but the ceiling is only nine feet high so they're easily tackled.
[1] There's also some sort of funnel weaving beastie in the corner of the kitchen window, behind a plant pot, but I've not noticed him for a while either.
Why are there two (or more?) poles? Are they different diameters? What is the total mast length? What is the loading (aerial at the top and any others lower down)? Was your grandmother a communist?
Three poles in total. A 6 foot aluminium scaffold pole mounted with two lashing kits to the chimney stack with a 1.5 inch 8 foot section held alongside with a couple of U clamps and a 1.25 inch 6 foot tube clamped into the top of that with said rusted through jubilee clip. I'd cut 4 lengthwise slots in the top of the 1.5 inch pole to allow the clip to close it shut against the inserted 5 or 6 inches of the 1.25 inch pole.
I'd estimate the whole length from the bottom lashing kit to be around
18 feet with the second lashing kit set about two or three foot higher.
The topmost pole has the Winter Hill beam mounted near its tip whilst the pole section below carries another aerial pointing in a different direction. The scaffolding section was used to allow me to get the required elevation for the WH antenna without compromising the integrity of the whole structure by using overly long TV antenna mounting poles that would otherwise snap at the topmost chimney lashing bracket in the first Autumn gale. Effectively, it was a tapered mast construction to minimise stress concentrations from wind loading forces along the whole of its length. The fact that the only failure was a rusted through jubilee clip after some 30 years of service is testament enough to the basic soundness of its design.
As far as I know, neither of my grandmothers were of the communist persuasion.
My usual method of achieving that mast length was to sleeve a 10ft x 1½" heavy gauge aluminium mast into a 10ft aluminum scaffold tube. I have never used handcuff clamps or anything else that holds one mast to another with an offset. The overlap was about 18". The 1½" tube is a slack fit in the scaffold tube, but not as slack as you might think because the ID of the scaff tube is 40mm and the OD of the 1½" tube is
38mm. The gap is filled with a few turns of decent quality insulating tape at the very end and 18" from the end of the 1½" tube. The last turn should overlap the side of the previous turns to form a 'lead' for the outer tube. Run a penknife around the inside of the scaff tube at the end to form another 'lead'. If the scaff tube has any internal flash remove it with a long rat tail file to a depth of 18". Put a turn of tape 18" from the end of the scaff tube as a marker. Introduce the 1½" tube into the scaff tube then put the former against a solid wall or post. Ram the scaff tube forwards to force the 1½" tube into it. Obviously you will have had to get the number of turns right, so you get a very tight fit. The tape that is 18" from the end of the 1½" tube should go just into the scaff tube and no further. Drill a 6mm hole through both poles, 2" above the marker tape. Insert a 6mm bolt with washers. Insert another bolt 2" higher at right angles to the first. Tighten and loktite both bolts. Don't attempt to deform the scaff tube by over-tightening the bolt because the bolt will snap a long time before the tube goes oval. DO NOT put a bolt through near the top of the scaff tube because that will introduce weakness just where you don't want it. Wrap/stretch self-amalg tape over the top of the scaff pole and overlapping onto the 1½" tube to form a waterproof seal.
The two chimney brackets should be 3ft apart minimum. Both must be on solid masonry.
If you want to run a cable down the inside of this mast (much better than taping it to the outside) put a 120mm cable tie on the cable every two feet and don't cut off the surplus length of tie. This will prevent the cable tapping on the mast when there's a wind.
My dad showed me how to join masts like this. I used this method for 40 years and never had a failure. The joint does not come loose and rattle. Every day I drive past one of the first ones I did and it still stands. I did it for a teacher at the school I had just left.
My grandad was. As a result he was blacked by the local colliery owner and had to go in a bus with the other bolshies to a pit ten miles away. It was called the Commie Bus. He died of miner's lung aged 55 and I always thought he had a point.
That looks a rather neat job. I'm surprised that you've used the type of wall bracket that you did. I'd have thought you'd have needed a "K" type bracket at the bottom to support the weight of the mast. I wouldn't have thought the brackets could have taken such forces but obviously they do.
Mind you, when I mounted a similar mast on the back wall of the house, nearly thirty years ago now, to support a 5/8ths wave 2 metre antenna, I used a 20 foot steel scaffolding pole with another smaller diameter 12 foot galvanised steel pole slid into the top. I think I used tape for the bottom end of the top pole but I think I cut slots into the top of the scaffolding pole with a large jubilee clip or an exhaust U bolt clamp, I can't remember which, probably the U bolt clamp.
This was very heavy so, as a consequence of the sheer weight involved, I played safe and used a couple of K brackets with a T bracket for the topmost one, about 5 or 6 courses of brick down from the top of the wall with a 3 or 4 foot separation between the brackets. Man handling the whole contraption was a bit of a faff to say the least and a two man job to boot for both erecting and lowering this rather weighty assemblage of aerial plumbing.
In the end, the 2 metre antenna blew to bits one winter's storm about 20 years ago by which time I'd rather lost interest in amateur radio and so never got a round tuit to either replace it with a 2 metre/ 70cms co- linear I happened to have to hand or else re-purpose it or even just simply to take the whole bloody lot down, so there it stands like a folly, bereft of any antenna elements to this day, a monument to my mast construction prowess if not my choice of (durable) antenna.
Incidentally, that reference you made in regard to the use of bolts to secure joined up poles against rotational forces needing to be placed where they're not subjected to bending stresses reminded me of a bolt hole induced failure of a very large CB antenna (an Avanti Sigma Four) which I'd bought 2nd hand where a previous owner had drilled a 6mm hole through the bottom tube section a foot or two from the end.
For one reason or another, I wasn't able to support the antenna above this hole and two or three years later, after retuning this monster to the bottom of the 10 metre band, I came home from work one day to discover it hanging off the chimney bracket by its RG213 feeder. If I remember rightly, it hadn't even been a particularly windy day but I wasn't too surprised to discover that it had failed at the (unused) bolt hole after hurriedly retrieving it before the co-ax had a chance to let go.
In hindsight it was an inevitable failure which I should have taken steps to forestall. That landed up stripped down and stored in our sizeable (23 by 10 feet) but rather ramshackle corrugated iron garage cum shed where the bits were slowly cannibalised for other projects over the years. A rather ignoble end for what was a deservedly famous (and expensive) CB antenna. Ho hum, easy come, easy go I suppose... :-(
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