Played at Home Depot today… When I got to the plumbing department, I had everyone wondering what I was doing… The combination of what I was putting together did not make any sense plumbing wise.
When I checked out the cashier turned out to be photographer that chases lightning storms and was very interested in the Boltek device.
Attached is an image of what I came up with. It will be mounted on the bottom of the downslope of the front of the house trim. So it won’t stick up above the roofline, but will be above all the floors of the and most of the noise.
I had planned on painting it the same color of the trim, but that was when I thought it was going to be white PVC… This is all black and I might leave it that way. I am hoping that it won’t stick out too much where it is mounted. My wife is already giving me snipes about what else I was going to be attaching to the house. I’ve not mentioned the 150ft ham antenna tower I’ve got my eye on :lol:
I’m a bit concerned about heat, but the bottom will be completely open and its a 3" pipe.
The cable run to my office will be less than 10ft.
I will have pictures of the parts and it fully assembled when I get done.
Looks good. I got the Nexstorm and map today, still waiting for the Boltek. Not sure where I am going to mount mine yet. I am planning on mounting it in pvc pipe as well. Did you get your Boltek yet? I am wondering if there is room for the Boltek mounted to a 2x4 inside the pvc pipe?
yes, I’ve got the Boltek. I took it with me to make sure it would fit in the pipe I got. It is a good thing I did, because the size pipe I ended up with was larger than I thought it would be.
As for a mounting it to a 2x4 inside a pipe, that would mean it would be a pipe larger than 4 inches… that is a very large pipe. That would also add a lot of weight to the system.
I plan on mounting it to the pipe itself using plastic screws. I will mark the pipe after I mount it, so that I know where it is in the pipe so when I install it, I know it is pointing North. After it is mounted, I don’t plan on needing to adjust it, but just in case, I am not going to seal the pipe with pipe stuff. On the verital pipe, I am going to just snug fit it. The rest will be put together with pipe stuff so that it doesn’t move.
As for software… I’m still not decided. I really like the way I can setup the system to show a much closer area with Lighting 2000 over NexStorm. I can set it up for say a maximum of 150 or even 100 miles centered around my location. Nexstorm can be zoomed in, but not that close from what I can tell.
There is already another Boltek in town less than 5 miles from me and he is showing an area of 350 miles. When a storm comes in, it is hard to track it inside of town because the map at that point is so small you can’t get any detail. I figure that if I use a much tighter zone, combined our two sites will provide good coverage. Since I host his site on the same system as mine, we can share the data between the two sites. He is not a WD user though.
If I decide to get Lightning 2000, I’ve got to wait for it to show up… as you can’t down load the software. I’m pretty sure that I can order and download NexStorm from Ambient.
You’re right to be concerned about heat. The antenna runs warm normally and I’ve read a couple of posts on different forums where the antenna has failed because of that.
Mine is in a white plastic container - picture attached - and although we don’t get the temperatures here that you do I’m still a little concerned about it. The container is a toilet brush holder mounted upside down, in case you wondered!
Maybe not a 2x4 #-o I went back to the boltek site and looked at the user installation photo’s again, one guy used what looks like a 1x4 to mount his sensor inside of the pvc pipe. My favorite is the guy who used a bracket to mount the sensor to the cap and left the cap un-glued so he could adjust the alignment as needed.
The book advises you to have it above solid objects such as houses etc. so I have mounted a 5m aluminium pole (2 " o/d) on two stand off brackets on the wall, and then added a 1.5m section of 2" i/d pvc milking machine vacuum line on to that, followed by a 2" female x 3" female pvc adaptor, with a 300mm section of 3" pvc milking machine vacuum line, in which sits the antenna, tie-wrapped through two siliconed holes, with a 3" pvc end cap on the top.
The mast is tied down to ground by a 35mm2 copper conductor, onto a 3m long earth electrode should we take a hit.
It works for me.
(Don’t worry too much about not pointing dead north. as both Nexstorm and WDL have the ability to add an offset to take care of this)
We have a local satellite installation firm. They sell galvanised stand off brackets to clear different size soffitts, (from 8" up to 24"), and galvanised mounting poles from 3’ to 10’ (1" o/d). The aluminium pole they had to get in for me, at a cost of
That is true, but they also show several installations in attics and I am at that level.
so I have mounted a 5m aluminium pole (2 " o/d) on two stand off brackets on the wall, and then added a 1.5m section of 2" i/d pvc milking machine vacuum line on to that, followed by a 2" female x 3" female pvc adaptor, with a 300mm section of 3" pvc milking machine vacuum line, in which sits the antenna, tie-wrapped through two siliconed holes, with a 3" pvc end cap on the top.
The mast is tied down to ground by a 35mm2 copper conductor, onto a 3m long earth electrode should we take a hit.
I could do that in the back of the house but the other half will never let that be in the front of the house.
In the back, I would have to wire all the way around to the front of the house where my office and monitoring is.
I’m going to try the planned way first and see how it does. Still dealing with the mount part though.
If you put an 90 deg corner in that 1 1/2 " then you can adjust the angle of the verical part easily. In other words it starts horizontal and perpendicular to the house, makes a right or left turn to be parallel to the house and the vertical pipe then mounts to the end of the parallel to the house part and you can set the angle to anything you want.
Just a note about Nexstorm maps and zoom… you can have a separate map image for every zoom level (14 in total I think), closest view is 25km radius… If you dont have them the image is just scaled from the base maps
We have bets to see which neighbor asks first … “What is that?”
I need to take some more pictures… but this one is of the unit looking under the eve. the part that holds the Detector is 20" tall and can be see attached to the tee on the right.
The mount point on the eve is a weird thing that screwed in with 4 screws, and the outside then attached itself to it. The whole thing is solid even though I didn’t use any glue on the main tee so that I could adjust it. I will eventually, but a screw in the bottom of it to prevent it from falling over in heavy wind.
I took a shot of it from the front of the house, but the plant you see in the picture almost completely covers it so its almost like its not there.
I currently have the demo version of the software running on my main workstation so I can play with it. I’m outputing pictures at 1 per minute to a temporary URL: [b]REMOVED[/b]
The real package showed up today at the house so I will start with that tonight and see if I can make a map that makes some sense.
Looks good. I think I would block the bottom opening of that tee, maybe with window screen if you don’t want to just plug it, otherwise I suspect some critter is going to think it’s a dandy place to call home.
… might want to think about screening that bottom.