Attaching a pole for a weather station to a brick wall

[NY]

What is the best way of attaching a 2 cm metal pole to a brick wall. The pole is about 1 metre long and will have a weather station mounted on top of it, so it could experience quite a lot of buffeting due to the wind.

I need to move the pole sideways from the wall so it clears a gutter, so I thought of attaching some wooden battens (eg 10 cm square) to the wall, and then screw the mounting brackets into the wood. I already have half-round brackets and coarse-thread screws for attaching the pole to a batten, having done this at a previous house where I could clamp the batten to an existing concrete clothes-line post.

What is the heavy-duty equivalent of a Rawlplug for drilling into brickwork and then fastening wooden battens to it? How easy is it to drill large holes into brick? I've drilled holes of about 5-6 mm for Rawlplugs, but I imagine I'd need something much thicker and longer to take the weight and wind movement of the pole and weather station. Does brick tend to crumble when a large hole drilled into it with a masonry drill? I presume the advice is to drill a series of larger and larger holes, rather than trying to drill the final hole in one go.

[charles]

It all depends on how hard the brick is. Nowadays, I tend to use an SDS drill and sutable bits. I usually start with a small sized bit, for accuracy - then enlarge it; the number of stages again depending on the ease of drilling.

'Rawlplug' is a trade name, there are plenty of other makes around. Have a look at the Screwfix website. You might find that insatead of screws and plugs you could use expanding bolts.

[Andy Burns]

Or concrete screws, I used them on my dish, very firm fix.

[Steve Walker]

That should work, but you could also take a look at aerial mounting brackets and possibly cranked poles. They are designed for exactly this sort of scenario.

I'd look at sleeve anchors.

You can get 10mm sleeve anchors. 10mm is easy enough with a even a basic hammer drill.

Unless you are too close to an edge, 10mm is not normally big enough to cause problems and a hammer drill is not that damaging to brickwork. If you were to use an SDS drill then drilling would be easier, but the impact is faar greater and you would run the risk of breaking the brick.

SteveW

[Bill Wright]

ring Justin at ATV Sheffield.

Also

Bill

[Bill Wright]

No, Rent or borrow a big SDS drill. It will piss through brick. Drill

10mm holes. Use 10mm expanding bolts.

Bill

[charles]

Bunnings tried to make their fortune in the UK - instead they lost about £3M. Barbeques in December aren't really right in the UK.

[newshound]

+1. ISTR you can get "cranked" poles for TV aeriels too.

[alan_m]

I think you may have to add at least two zeros to the £3M figure. They wrote off close to 1 billion Australian dollars. They sold the business for £1 and in the first year of trading lost £54M

Yep, they got conned into buying a half-arsed failing DIY chain and they completely misunderstood the UK marketplace.

[harry]

You would be best to get a pole with a crank in it. TV arials use this sort of thing. Also the brackets.

[Harry Bloomfield]

TV antenna (aerial) brackets, you will probably need a pair of them. Rawlbolts for fixings will work.

[Brian Gaff]

What you need are stand off brackets as used quite a lot by Aerial riggers, but please space them apart a good way since the leverage on it is going to be much more than you anticipate I think.

Also its worth checking you are allowed to do this in your area. As many people can attest conservation areas do not allow such things as tv aerials and poles. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes the bolts or whatever are better, plugs tend to work loose due to the side to side rocking as the pole gets buffeted.

Personally I'd not use wood, but its up to you I guess, you know how heavy the station sensors are and what the local weather conditions are going to be like. Brian

[PeterC]

An 18V combi will do 10 mm into brick - perhaps use a 6mm first. Into Rustic bricks, I used 10mm rag bolts for a 65cm dish, still OK after about 15 yeras.

[Dave Liquorice]

gutter,

That implies that the top of the pole will not be a metre or so above the ridge. If the weather station has wind speed/direction unless they are mounted in the relative clear the readings will not be a true reflection of reality. I forget exactly what the spec is for the location of a wind vane and/or anemometer, standard height is 10m above ground level for certain. Then about 3 times the height of any obstruction away from that obstruction.

If you have a gable end top of the gable would be good but you'll need a longer sturdier pole to get the mounting brackets fare enough down so they don't pull bricks out of the wall...

Good page, shows what happens when things aren't done right. Better it gives the reasons for the failures.

[Andrew]

Although what they did was correct. The booted out all the home furnishing tat and turned the stores back into proper DIY stores. Unfortunately they did it 20 years too late, because generation rent doesn't do 'home improvement'.

The Chichester store was brilliant after the Bunnings makeover. There is always Dunelm and other places for the 'tat'.

[charles]

some of the Home Furnishing 'tat' was in spaced they rented out. Locaslly, then never re-filled the space. The store will be cloingb soon.

[Reentrant]

Also if it's just above a tiled roof you'll get a fair amount of re-radiated heat from the sun, and the temperature sensor will overread.

Our weather station lives on a 6ft pole (surplus piece of steel gas pipe) in a clear part of the garden, which doubles as support for bird feeders.

[Bill Wright]

I don't like cranked masts. They can twist in the wind. I much prefer wall brackets with enough stand-off to allow a straight mast.

I think the OP might be best to use a 1.5" or 2" aerial mast.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Yes, very true.

Bill