Dawg House

[k4kyv]

I have finally come to the conclusion that it is time to replace the box at the base of the tower that contains my antenna tuners.  This was supposed to have been temporary, to be replaced in a couple of years.  It's been over 25 years now. Believe it or not, this was originally a console floor model radio cabinet.

I just moved it a few feet from its original position to make room for the new construction.



View of tuners


Front View


Rear view


Rotten wood


To be continued...

[KB2WIG]

looks ruff



klc

[N3DRB The Derb]

I was wondering if that was gonna be on ur agenda during static season.

Time to run some buried PVC out there and get some 1 rpm motors.

A little remote from the shack action. Maybe a big NEMA wx proof box?

[K5UJ]

Yeah Don that doesn't look too good now although the hardware inside looks nice.

I was planning a dog house for the feedpoint here and I thought I'd construct a wood cabinet on four posts with a slanting shingled roof.  a hinged door with a latch would swing up and lock to give me some shelter in the rain and there would be a shelf inside with enough room to make manual adjustments until I motorize everything, and hold a lantern and a feedline stub to connect to.  

Then it occurred to me that such a shelter would be very inviting to critters and I'd open the door one night to find a 'possum or raccoon in there or maybe a skunk.  Maybe a family.   Keeping out animals presents another challenge.

So for me, the trick is to make something that protects the tuning components, but does not offer enough shelter to be comfortable for animals.  I want it up high enough off the ground so i don't have to crouch down in the snow.

Rob

[N0WEK]

That's a shelter what don't owe you no money! 

[N3DRB The Derb]

heres the nema specs-


http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/nema-enclosures-d_919.html

[N2udf]

Derb,
Maybe you can rent the old one to some illigals...Lee,N2udf

[WD8BIL]

Yeah Don that doesn't look too good now although the hardware inside looks nice.

Whatayamean? It looks great!!

Replace some wood and slap some paint on it and go another 25 years, Don!

[Superhet66]

Look at all the nice wood on the interior. Just turn that baby inside out.  

25 years is a damn good stretch.

[k4kyv]

The new one will be a little like the "tuning shack eastern long island" shown above, but from the photo, mine will probably be a bit smaller.  Up on stilts 2' off the ground, built with pressure-treated timbers, exterior grade plywood, rustproof fasteners, and critter-proofed as much as possible. 

One critter proofing measure will be to use a ring of metal flashing round each leg of the stilts, extending out horizontally, sort of a cone facing about 45° downwards.  Ants and  mice can't crawl out onto the under-side of the flashing and then climb up over the sharp edge to get to the top side.  I have seen farmers use that technique to keep rodents out of grain storage bins.

There will be enough room to accommodate one additional tuner, to run the vertical on 75.  I plan to gang all the tuning capacitors together and remotely tune with one reversible DC motor and gear drive.  Eventually plan to replace the buried co-ass with open wire line to the shack, probably run as a flat transmission line to feed the existing tuners.

I have concluded that the run is too long to operate as a tuned line on every band all the way to the shack, since the QSY tuning error that occurs at each quarter-wave length of line adds up and accumulates as a total.  For example, to go from 3.5 to 4.0 mc/s would most likely require shifting from series to parallel tuning somewhere along the way, with a transmission line feed point midway between a current and voltage maximum at some frequency.  From my experience the odd eighth wavelength is very difficult to tune because of the large reactive component and I don't like the idea of switching tuner circuitry over a single band.

I could use some fresh ideas on a door latch.  The house will have double doors, but I don't want a post in the middle.  I picked up some garage door opening hardware and a couple of  spring loaded bolts and plan to have a rotatable handle and  mechanism to pull open the bolts, but it looks like all that stuff is going to be hard to Rube-Goldberg together and will require some metal-work fabrication.  I could not find any kind of ready made latch locally.  I want to have a bolt at the top and bottom of one door, and rotate a handle to disengage both bolts at the same time, and have that door overlap the other one to hold it closed and seal the gap between doors to moisture and critters.

[Bill, KD0HG]

"Exterior Grade" plywood is crap, It's awful. My experience is that it won't last 5 years. It's simply interior grade plywood with one ply of waterproof glue. It splits, warps and cracks. It's often made with the softest of wood. I suggest using treated 1X12" planks and a couple of coats of oil base paint. Or consider marine grade plywood.

[WA1GFZ]

You can get pressure treated plywood or T111. Exterior grade is not rated as exposed siding it is sheathing. It will fail in a couple years.
How about 5/4 decking?

[Superhet66]

Check out a Home Creep Show product called "Smartside".
It's pre-primed, takes paint in one coat, wood textured, easy to handle, nailable / screwable (    ) and a 4X8 ft. sheet is about $18 to $20.
I use it all the time and swear by it.    D.

[N3DRB The Derb]

hey man, bring that shed on over hyar.  I got some stuff gotta go in it. 

[k4kyv]

I have never had any problem with exposed exterior grade plywood as long as, like any untreated wood in building construction, it is kept painted.  I have a piece that I used to make a shallow box for hauling dirt from under the house when I was doing some excavating, and it has set outside off and on for over 15 years with no signs of delaminating. The wood on the old dawg house is made from some scrap plywood I had lying around.  The doors and the back side were never painted, and the deterioration is from the UV attacking the wood.  The first ply is  literally crumbling, but it hasn't come unglued.  I think they make all plywood with better glue than they did a generation or two ago.

The interior of the old box is the original plywood used in the radio cabinet.  A close look at the photo shows that it has come completely unglued and delaminated.  The older stuff often wouldn't take a good soaking even once before it came apart.

On this project I am using 1/4" exterior grade plywood for the sheathing.  It will be painted, and if it begins to show signs of deterioration, it will be a simple matter to cover it with an additional layer of some kind of exterior siding.

Some of the "exterior siding" sold at the big box stores is nothing but exterior plywood with fake grooves cut in the outer layer to make it resemble planks, or it is wafer board with one ply of solid wood on the exterior face.

The only pressure treated plywood available anywhere locally was thick 5/8" or 1" stuff, and it was twisted and warped so badly that it would have taken a lot of nails or screws to make it lie flat.

BTW, just as the customers in the food market are being quietly short-changed by stealthily reducing the quantity in the box of ice cream (the half-gallon is now 1.5 quarts) or jar of peanut butter (the plastic jar is the same size but there is a huge dimple in the bottom kind of like the one on a wine bottle), the same thing is happening with building material.  You can no longer get 3/8", 3/4" or 1" plywood. It now comes in 11/32", 11/16" and 15/16" thickness.  I picked up some 1 X 2's and they actually measure 5/8" X 1 3/8".  They never were really 1" X 2", but not too long ago they were at least 3/4"X 1 1/2" in size. Of course, the price is the same or higher than the old  larger size.

Why can't vendors and manufacturers of products just be up front and honest about it.  They have raised prices.

[WA1GFZ]

smart side is T111 usually made of SYP rather than crap wood.
White pine 2X4 trim will rot quickly.
Yea I bought some 1/2 inch plywood Monday that was .45 thick.

[DMOD]

Unless it's leaking, I'd keep it as is.

Where would you find another exterior Patina like that?

Ok, ok, I have to admit I do like old barnwood.

Phil - AC0OB

[flintstone mop]

Ohhh crap!!! I bet if you make it look purty your dB's will go down.   


Your Bird watts will be meaningless!!!

[k4kyv]

Work has started on the new dawg house.  Notice the base of the tower to the rear and the old box to the left.


Here are the 4 X 4 stilts, sill and floor




Each leg is anchored to the ground using a 24" screw-in anchor designed for fence bracing.  This allowed a firm and stable foundation without disturbing the buried radial system underneath.




The framing has begun:

[Superhet66]

A man of action! and "Comfort height" tuning. Schmart.

*A light colored paint on the inside will give plenty of reflected light. I go to the paint section of most places and get "screw up batches" for cheap or free. ( my favorite words )


re: Trex, It's expensive, droopy, and gets HOT in the sun.
( i've know some ladies like that....)

re: Smartside.
Now that I think about it, it might not be right for the Dawg house as you can't really secure things to it like you can with 5/8 ply or planks.

 
One last thing...( i promise   )
Next election cycle, grab those "plastic cardboard" election signs when the election is over.
That stuff is GREAT for projects of all types. The election commitees are glad to have them gone BUT ask permission. I'm out at 5am with a screw gun and prybar the morning after the elections.
I was thinking in this case you could line the tuner shack with it before the exterior wood. The back is pure white and insulative.
I could write a book on what other stuff I've used it for but I'll spare ya'  

  * sorry Derb, the shed is a stock pic I lifted to show the "smartside" stuff. I could use a dozen sheds me self...

[Superhet66]

ok, i lied, one more thing...

As far as the door and hinges....

I found an easy way to hang plywood doors in perfect alignment.
I've used this for duck blinds, sheds & boats.

Screw the door side plywood wall in place as one piece.
Draw the out line of the door as you would like it.
Plunge cut the hinge side line only first, then install the hinge ( a brass or stainless piano hinge is best and worth the few extra bucks. )
After the hinge is secured, cut the remainder of the pattern you drew and it will be dead on.
I cut 3 or 4 inch radius corners as it is stronger and looks nice, like a steel marine door.

Consider one door, big enough for access.  It would simplify things a bit. Run some strips of that 1x1 to keep it's shape like a shed door.

Also, screen door hardware is cheap, weatherproof and works well with plywood.

 

[N3DRB The Derb]

Don, your ATU is looking to be better made than my house.   

Yep it's rebuilding time all over.

I have 3 X 6 ft runs of 1" wide copper STRAP to deploy, 2 new ground rods  and some wider copper STRAP on the way.

2 advantages with the new layout: length of ground conductor from main inside grounding plate to mother earth: 4 ft.

Length of indoor feedline run from back of matchbox to outdoors : 10".

[k4kyv]

I found an easy way to hang plywood doors in perfect alignment.
I've used this for duck blinds, sheds & boats.

Screw the door side plywood wall in place as one piece.
Draw the out line of the door as you would like it.
Plunge cut the hinge side line only first and install the hinge ( a brass or stainless piano hinge is best and worth the few extra bucks. )
After the hinge is secured, cut the remainder of the pattern you drew and it will be dead on.

That's a good idea.  I never thought of doing it that way, but I Plan to make the doors a little wider and taller than the hole in the wall, so they slightly overlap the exterior sheathing on all 4 edges, using 2" wide strips of poplar moulding over the  sheathing to make a trim to encircle the doors, and the hinges will attach to those.  That will help keep out moisture and critters.  I  have a tool shed that is constructed that way. It must be 50 years old and is still in good shape, and rain never blows in around the door.

The tool shed is sheathed with 1/4" thick tempered masonite, except for the back wall, which is 1/4" plywood.  I have kept it painted and neither the wood nor the masonite have self-destructed, but the masonite has curled up a little near the bottom.  I'm not sure they even make tempered masonite any more. It was a popular material for making rack panels back in the 30's, and I am surprised at how well it has held up, exposed to the wx for decades.  Nothing in that shed was built with any kind of treated material. I think it was originally used to house a clothes dryer because the owner either didn't have room in the house or was afraid of fire.  It was purchased for $50 and relocated here some time in the 60's.

I had contemplated moving the tool shed and using it as the dawg-house, but then I wouldn't have any place to store my garden tools.

[Opcom]

You ought to put a couple of 50W incandensent lamps in there to keep it warm in the winter. Or, use 12V car lamps, so the buried cable is not high voltage.

[N3DRB The Derb]

I think he should put in a mini rotating disco ball with a laser pointer that activates every time he drops that maul.