Bill Komanetsky

Note that the Pier measurements were done before the final flooring was installed. I did it in that order to make sure placement of the structure was correct before committing to anything.

Since a cement base was already installed at the site, and a much smaller telescope pier permanently cemented into the base, I had to:

• Cut the pier off of it's L-bolts which were mounted into the cement
• Cut the bolts down below the cement line and then fill the resultant holes with cement epoxy
• Drill three new holes into the cement using a circular hammer (bought for $79.00 - one time use)
• Epoxy the new bolts provided to me by the telescope pier manufacturer

That all seems rather easy, but it took about an hour to cut out the old pier, another hour to cut the bolts below the cement line, about 5 minutes to fill the small holes, then about three hours to drill the holes for the new pier bolts.

The manufacturer sent a template for the base of the pier. I centered that on the cement base, then placed the new pier and mount onto the base. I then waited for night, then rough polar aligned the pier/mount and drew a 'dot' where the bolts should go. Doing it this way made my polar alignment adjustments after the bolts were in much smaller and easier.

So, as can be seen above, the bolts set in the cement base with the cement epoxy were nearly perfect because of my measurements. I thing, during polar alignment of the mount after it was attached to the base, I only had to make about 3-4 millimeters of adjustments.

By the way, the straight bolts sent with the pier were about 12 inches in length. I drilled an eight to nine inch hole for each and then epoxied them into the cement base. The deeper the hole, the greater tactile strength the bolt will have.