Tri Tel pole questions

[Buda Martins]

Hello,

Thinking about getting a 15' Tri Tel pole. I guess it's too late to get a new colony started near Austin, Tx so maybe this will be for next year??

Could I put 2 gourd racks on the pole?

Is there some thing I can put on top to keep rain water from going inside the pole?

Thanks

[Jones4381]

you can. It adds additional weight and makes it a little more difficult to raise and lower. The added weight will also cause additional stress on this small pole. I've had 3 of them up for 3 years now with no failures. I would guess in the flat lands the winds may be more detrimental to these poles as some have posted about theirs failing in stronger winds as I'm in the mountains and are shielded by tall trees, also they are located below the top levels of my property. I currently have 2 SK houses on top and 6 gourds underneath 2 of them. Last year I had Bo9's on top and Bo11's underneath and it swayed a lot and was a bear to raise and lower (those Bo11's are pretty heavy). Good luck and I'm sure you'll get additional opinions on this.

Duck tape...flex seal are a few things that come to mind putting on top of the opening.

[flyin-lowe]

I love the idea of lower priced martin housing but there is a fine line between price and durability. I know some people have had luck with Tri Tel poles. I started out with a Tri Tel pole and a single barn style house. The first year it was up it bent from the wind. The store I bought it exchanged it for me and I put the new one one and it bent as well. The next year I went to a T 14 so I exchanged the Tri Tel pole one more time and used it with only a perch on top. Based on the bad experience I have had I wouldn't recommend one, especially if adding additional gourds to it. The single barn house is very light and it still bent, I imagine that multiple gourds would weigh quite a bit more.
I was young when I first got started and wasn't sure there were even martins in my area so I put the S&K up just to see if any would show up. Once I saw some in the area I switched to a T 14 the next year.

[Conrad Baker]

Just a suggestion, but I only raise the 2nd section of the pole. I leave the inner (smallest) section inside the 2nd section just to make it more sturdy. Of course the house isn't as high as it would be if all sections were extended, but I have all of my S&K houses at the same height and it doesn't bother the birds at all. I'm going on 16 years with the same poles. I converted them all to the pin securing the elevated section as opposed to the plastic buttons. The new poles all have the pin.

[h2y]

Hello,

Thinking about getting a 15' Tri Tel pole. I guess it's too late to get a new colony started near Austin, Tx so maybe this will be for next year??

Could I put 2 gourd racks on the pole?

Is there some thing I can put on top to keep rain water from going inside the pole?

Thanks

Buda,
Are you in the heavily populated area of Buda or rural? Can you shoot a pellet rifle at your planned site without hitting anything beyond your target? If it's not safe to shoot, you'll need to trap the awful sparrows that will try to populate the new house before any martins find you and will forever be destructive. I wouldn't want to have to raise & lower a Tri-Tel pole often enough to run traps on that housing. A winch or pulley system on a square or round pole would be much easier.

If you are able to shoot, & thereby, use Tri Tel poles, they are weak at 15' high in high winds. Martins are fine with 10' high housing so nest the tri poles similar to what Mr. Baker recommended and the TT poles will be fine. They will hold 2 gourd racks of 6 but how many gourds on each rack are you planning?

To keep the water out, consider putting the S&K 16 room house on top. Besides, Buda PMs might come to a house instead of gourds. For the sake of the martins, make the house 2 room suites and be sure and have a snake guard from the beginning for the chicken snakes roaming your area. I don't have any luck with gourds 60 miles east of you but have added 10 new houses this year and the PMs are on them, including 3 of the 5 I just raised 2 weeks ago but it's getting close to too late.

[Kandacarlson]

I will admit I don't know anything about tri tel poles and don't have personal experience with one.
I did just put in a new 15' martin house pole using a helical pile system. Company I used was technometalpost. It was surprisingly inexpensive for what I got. I had the company drive in the helical pile (schedule 40 galvanized steel) and then I used some cut off sections of scrap piles I had from the foundation job we were doing at the same location and stacked /welded those to get to about 15'.
If you have a company that does small helical pile installations near you, it might be worth calling them and asking what they would charge to install a similar system. Most places just scrap the cutoff sections and so I got those for free. The piles come in different sizes and strengths and diameters and are designed for supporting buildings. So axial load capacity on these is quite substantial (20,000 lbs +) installed price was a couple hundred bucks, but it requires no excavation or concrete and took the guy about 5 minutes to install. Install time is probably dependent on your subsoil conditions though. The guy told me they had never done a birdhouse pile before, and I told him they should market this!
We've had winds as high as 90+mph at our place last year, so I wanted something that would withstand that type of force that I wouldn't have to replace after a big storm. It works well for our particular situation so far!

[Conrad Baker]

I will admit I don't know anything about tri tel poles and don't have personal experience with one.
I did just put in a new 15' martin house pole using a helical pile system. Company I used was technometalpost. It was surprisingly inexpensive for what I got. I had the company drive in the helical pile (schedule 40 galvanized steel) and then I used some cut off sections of scrap piles I had from the foundation job we were doing at the same location and stacked /welded those to get to about 15'.
If you have a company that does small helical pile installations near you, it might be worth calling them and asking what they would charge to install a similar system. Most places just scrap the cutoff sections and so I got those for free. The piles come in different sizes and strengths and diameters and are designed for supporting buildings. So axial load capacity on these is quite substantial (20,000 lbs +) installed price was a couple hundred bucks, but it requires no excavation or concrete and took the guy about 5 minutes to install. Install time is probably dependent on your subsoil conditions though. The guy told me they had never done a birdhouse pile before, and I told him they should market this!
We've had winds as high as 90+mph at our place last year, so I wanted something that would withstand that type of force that I wouldn't have to replace after a big storm. It works well for our particular situation so far!

Really nice, and seems like it should last forever. How do you do nest checks and control HOSP from taking over?

[Kandacarlson]

The pic is the old house on the new pole. The old house was on a swing down 4x4 system and I just put it up there temporarily on the new pole when I left the cabin for the winter last fall.
New house is going up in a few weeks if the lake ever gets around to thawing (Minnesota). Our place is on an island, so until the lake turns to liquid, it's hard to get to this time of year since I don't have a hovercraft. New house is a T-14 on a cable /winch that will travel up and down the pole for checks and cleaning, etc
I had to make a larger central attachment system to accommodate the 3.5" O.D. pile I chose, used 2x8's for that and reinforced the cable tracks with copper ferrules i made, hammered into 5/8" holes in the ACQ lumber. Probably overkill for everything, but I wanted to design and build all this to last 50+ years if possible and survive any significant weather in that time.

[Conrad Baker]

Really well thought out and solid construction. Not sure of the market for it, but if local, I would certainly be interested in purchasing a similar setup. Thanks for posting and the pics.