Wind question?

[Buckdog122]

I was wondering what your feelings were on lowering the Martin box in heavy winds. U have an S&k barn on a tri tel pole and also have 6 gourds hanging underneath. I’ve only had birds for a couple weeks and things are going good and was nervous about lowering the pole a section. It’s going to be 40mph gust subsiding just a bit tonight. As I watch the pole swaying in the wind I can just envision the worst.
Do you think it would be wise or are they rated for higher winds and I’m just being paranoid?

Thanks
Buckdog

[CapnJack]

Lowering the Housing will not cause any problems at all.....
I do it frequently and have actually left it only 4-5' off the ground for
more than 48 hours at a time (blizzard conditions).

[jpp77]

Weather here in Kansas has been absolutely nuts. I have a Gemini with 3" square pole and I lower it about 1/3 of the way when weather looks bad. I've had it lowered that much for days now and they don't seem to care at all. I think you will be fine lowering it some, especially once you have an established colony. Better safe than sorry.

[flyin-lowe]

I too started with an S&K barn and tri tell pole. I wanted to make sure I could even have visitors in my area when I first started before I made a bigger investment. Unless they have make big improvements on those poles you will definitely want to lower it, or make some modification to stiffen it up. I have a Tri Tel pole and the only thing I have used it for is a perching station. it has the small S&K perch topper on it and 2 decoys and it is bent from the wind with basically nothing on it. If it had a house (and gourds) on it it would be destroyed by now. When it comes to sturdy poles it is hard to manufacture something in that price range that is strong enough to not have to worry about.

I think S&K definitely does good for the martin community. They have a lot of good products at a good price that give people options. My experience with the tri tel pole is that it is not their best product.

[Brad Biddle]

430am and saw the radar and warnings and ran outside to slowly lower the system during gusts and thunder so the PM's wouldn't get scared.

Martins deal with wind, thunder and lightning very often. They "overwinter" in the rainforests of Brazil.

Lowering a gourd rack or house at night spooked them much more than the storm would have.

Lowering a system is never a bad idea when storms are forecast but it should be done during the daylight hours.

[Dave Duit]

As Brad mentioned and is very important; do not lower a martin house at night.

[CraigMo.]

I would just leave it lowered year round . My martins never cared that it was lowered. I'd rather not worry as much by leaving it down.

[Brad Biddle]

430am and saw the radar and warnings and ran outside to slowly lower the system during gusts and thunder so the PM's wouldn't get scared.

Martins deal with wind, thunder and lightning very often. They "overwinter" in the rainforests of Brazil.

Lowering a gourd rack or house at night spooked them much more than the storm would have.

Lowering a system is never a bad idea when storms are forecast but it should be done during the daylight hours.

I wasn't worried about the Martin's getting scared in the least, dealing with wind and storms is something that is natural for them. I was worried about them losing the house they live in if I got a strong enough gust to knock it down.
Unfortunately these storms were predicted to die out long before they reached me, so I had no other option which is why I said I lowered it very slowly during the wind gusts which were happening at the time so they would not get spooked.

I was just going by what you wrote in your first post. I added the bold font to it, for the quote, in this reply.

[Brad Biddle]

All of my 5 gourd racks have 2" SCH 40 steel pipe for poles. One was hit by a direct lightning strike in late summer probably 10 or so years ago. Luckily it was after the Martins had left. It blew an arm completely off the gourd rack.

Last spring in late March one of the racks took a direct hit from an F1 tornado. That tornado took 90% of the barn 100 feet from it down, took about 15% of the barn closest to it down, then scattered 20 beehives in my back yard, then took 100% of the last barn and scattered it halfway across the community. That pole leaned at about a 5-10 degree angle for the remainder of the season. I replaced it this winter, with another 2" SCH 40 galvanized pipe.

I may have a T'storm knock one down next week, but if you use heavy enough poles on your racks, there really isn't much risk of them getting blown down. My colony is living proof of that. I started it in 2003 with the first gourd rack,and it hasn't happened yet. All my poles are 3' in the ground, in a PVC ground socket, surrounded by at least 160 pounds of sackcrete.

[Brad Biddle]

One benefit that I have is all my poles are one piece, not multi sectional poles. Any sectional pole is going to be more likely to fail in high winds than a one piece pole. That's primarily due to the "slop" needed between the sleeve and the pole sections so they can be assembled by the end user. When you add up those few 1/1000th's of an inch per section, then add up all the sections, the multi section poles have more "whip" to them than a single pole. That is also compounded by the length, or lack of, of the sections of pole being short. Shorter means stiffer. Those short sections, 4' or whatever length they are, won't flex, in a typical high wind situation. That compounds the stress on attachment points. My poles sway in high winds but the entire length of the pole is flexing. When a multi section pole sways it concentrates all that movement to the joints where they're slid together. Not everyone has the ability to haul and install a single 21' pole but being a farm boy with trailers and front end loaders has many advantages. Owning a metal fab shop doesn't hurt either.

[Brad Biddle]

Any square pole should be able to be bolted together without effecting lowering and raising of the rack as long as you drill a "countersunk" hole in the pole and use bolts with a countersunk head. Use a tap to thread the sleeve. Practice tapping aluminum before you jump in there and do your pole. It takes lots of lube and half turns in, with full turns out to tap aluminum. I don't know the thickness of the metal that sleeves are made from but if they're 1/4" I'd use a fine thread 3/8" tap (3/8 x 24). If the sleeves are thinner than that, bolting together is going to be hard to accomplish. The fine thread tap and bolt will give you more threads and holding ability than a coarse thread bolt. I'd suggest using stainless steel bolts in an aluminum pole. Those dissimilar metals will cause galvanic corrosion where the bolt meets the pole and corrosion is normally bad, but in this case it would mean those bolts would never come out. You'd also need to use two bolts per end, per section, on each "face" of the pole. That would eliminate most of the flex at the joints of the pole.

[Brad Biddle]

You could definitely do that but it would take a lot room to accomplish that. If you use small bolts it would work but you need strong bolts. I wouldn't recommend less than 3/8" diameter.