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Reply to "Continuing Saga …"

The photographer and Heaven Hills' communications people came today. The photographer represented a Louisville magazine Traditions Transitions, it's a quarterly publication for the over 50 age group. We spent a good half hour going through all the machinations that I go through to create this stuff. The article will appear (if it does) in the Fall.

While waiting for this to occur I continued working on the cooling tower. I got the box built and the "structural steel" support frame. The last thing I did was to create the faux concrete base and pedestals.

I use those corner clamps that are advertised in all the magazines to hold the mating pieces square. I then went back and added corner bracing both as mitered square pieces and some styrene bar stock. 

Cooling tower casing

I added the floor using thin styrene sheeting. To give it more support I installed some angle x bracing.

Cooling Tower Floor Bracing

The way these towers work is the hot water is cascaded down through the air flow and collected at the bottom where it is pumped back into the system. So the bottom would be the tank for this "water".

I then built the structural support frame. I didn't have a lot of Evergreen I beam stock so I built the minimum believable frame. The cross pieces have to be coped to nestle into the joint with another I- beam at 90 degrees. I use the digital calipers as a measurement transfer device (I've told you all this before many times) to measure the flange width, mark if off on the piece and then use the super-fine razor saw to cut away the flange on the the mating piece. 

Structural Steel Coping

Here is the array. I didn't have I-beam for the not-visible internal beams and used a piece of styrene H-beam.

Cooling Tower Structural Steel

The concrete base is a piece of European ply that I had laying around. It has a slight warp, but I'm hoping that it won't matter.

Cooling Tower Concrete Base

The pedestals are pieces of the same material cut on the scroll saw. In looking at the original photo they look pretty tall since the outgoing cold water comes off the bottom from an underneath feed. I'll need enough height to get the pipe out of there. Doesn't look like much now, but that's where I ended up today. Tomorrow I have a car repair appointment and a haircut so I may or may not get some work time. There's always Friday. I will probably have to make more of these since I think it's not enough height.

Cooling Tower Feet Gluing

 

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Images (6)
  • Cooling tower casing
  • Cooling Tower Floor Bracing
  • Structural Steel Coping
  • Cooling Tower Structural Steel
  • Cooling Tower Concrete Base
  • Cooling Tower Feet Gluing
Last edited by Trainman2001

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