Thankfully it's not ours...

[DL Signs]

First storm of springtime rolled through yesterday, not massive, or severe, maybe 40-45mph winds, should have handled that easily. It took a 16'x16' head off a pylon at a large truck dealership, flex face didn't blow out, it just took the whole thing down. Looks like the interior center support separated from the match plate, person I got these from said interior support was way undersized and the welds were garbage, no gussets... Luckily the dealership was closed so no one was injured or worse, unknown if it hit any of the new semi's they usually have parked around the base of it. They had already dragged it over by the building to get it out of the way before these were taken. It was just put up a few fears ago, an in-house fab by the company who put it up.

Not gonna call out the company, but I wouldn't want to be the guy who got that phone call this morning. That's a sign shop's worst nightmare.

 

[Stacey K]

And this is why I don't do any kind of signage that is over my head...I'm not smarter than an engineer.

 

[DL Signs]

And this is why I don't do any kind of signage that is over my head...I'm not smarter than an engineer.

The mainstay of our business is this, and why we farm out the fabbing to companies who have the expertise & experience, because the liability is massive. Anything we do in house is double, triple checked for quality, welding is done by certified people. When I design them, I used to be told I over-engineer things, here I'm encouraged to do that, no corners are ever cut. If someone wants to be cheap, and it'll affect quality, we send them down the road so we don't end up in this situation.

 

[JBurton]

Clearly the fabricator forgot to slap her after he was all done and say "that ain't going nowhere." Doomed from the start!
But really, you say the inner pole broke free of the base plate? I don't see a bend to that pipe at all, garbage welds indeed!
So, I've looked into this sort of thing, after those couple of signs in Kentucky fell and killed somebody or their car. The only court case I've ever seen concerning signs and damage was a rather convoluted case in mississippi, where a trucker stopped on a highway at an overpass after he noticed a sign saying welcome to clarksdale that was installed to hang below the bottom of the bridge. Another driver ran into the semi.
This sign had been in place for 4 years, the charges against the sign company were brought a couple years after that. In MS, the statute of repose states

No action may be brought to recover damages for injury to property, real or personal, or for an injury to the person, arising out of any deficiency in the design, planning, supervision or observation of construction, or construction of an improvement to real property, and no action may be brought for contribution or indemnity for damages sustained on account of such injury except by prior written agreement providing for such contribution or indemnity, against any person, firm or corporation performing or furnishing the design, planning, supervision of construction or construction of such improvement to real property more than six (6) years after the written acceptance or actual occupancy or use, whichever occurs first, of such improvement by the owner thereof. This limitation shall apply to actions against persons, firms and corporations performing or furnishing the design, planning, supervision of construction or construction of such improvement to real property․

So, at least in MS, as long as your welds last 6 years, you're golden.
Keep us posted on how this shakes out.

 

[Black Star]

That's scary. Thanks for sharing!

 

[MGB_LE]

The mainstay of our business is this, and why we farm out the fabbing to companies who have the expertise & experience, because the liability is massive. Anything we do in house is double, triple checked for quality, welding is done by certified people. When I design them, I used to be told I over-engineer things, here I'm encouraged to do that, no corners are ever cut. If someone wants to be cheap, and it'll affect quality, we send them down the road so we don't end up in this situation.

Legit question: if this is the mainstay of your business, why not develop the resources to do it in-house? Seems you're at the mercy of vendor quality and schedules if you farm out so much.

 

[JBurton]

Legit question: if this is the mainstay of your business, why not develop the resources to do it in-house? Seems you're at the mercy of vendor quality and schedules if you farm out so much.

because the liability is massive.

Additionally, staffing a shop full of certified welders, experienced painters, plus an engineering costs, all really add up in the event of downtime. DL probably doubles his cost when buying cabinets, and makes another half of that putting poles in the ground and hanging the cabinets.

 

[Bobby H]

My workplace has been building large, lighted pylon signs in-house for several decades. It takes having at least one or more people on staff who can do things like compute a section modulus for a pylon sign design. For signs over 30' tall a lot of towns around here require us to have an independent engineer look at the shop drawings and put his stamp on them.

Winds in here Oklahoma are just unforgiving. It's possible to get away with securing a sign to a pole with just a match plate if the cabinet is small and light weight. We would never do that with a large flex face sign cabinet. Instead, the support steel would be run thru the cabinet inside pole cages built into the steel frame. If smaller diameter support steel was attaching to larger diameter steel below the cabinet that smaller support steel would be scoped into the larger poles.

20 or so years ago Best Western was operating a hotel off I-44 in Lawton. They had a beautiful sign cabinet with open face channel letters and a channel border all filled with exposed neon. An out of town sign company installed it. One night a severe storm tore that cabinet off the steel support structure. The cabinet pancaked face down into the parking lot. It turned out a match plate was the only thing holding the cabinet onto the poles. Luckily no cars where the cabinet fell.

 

[JBurton]

It's possible to get away with securing a sign to a pole with just a match plate if the cabinet is small and light weight. We would never do that with a large flex face sign cabinet. Instead, the support steel would be run thru the cabinet inside pole cages built into the steel frame.

My understanding is that a matchplate's strength, with proper number of welding passes and gussets, will exceed the pipe/beam that it's welded to. For instance, we just did a 40' structure on I beams, the beams were plate mounted to threaded rod set in concrete. All of that windload is on the plates at the base, and it's 30'x12'.
I'm like you though, a through pole installation feels a lot more secure.

 

[DL Signs]

Legit question: if this is the mainstay of your business, why not develop the resources to do it in-house? Seems you're at the mercy of vendor quality and schedules if you farm out so much.

It works out well for us. Besides general signage and graphics, we're geared more for installs. We have large boom trucks, excavation equipment for ground work, do installs for everything from other area shops who don't have the gear, to national companies along with what we sell and install ourselves in the regional market. We do some fab work in house, but the cost to add all the equipment, inventory, skilled labor, more certifications, more permits/ insurance, and everything else to be fully self sustaining... Anything we lose by subbing out, we more than make up for with the installs.

The company has been in business for 52 years, still going strong, still profiting, last year was another record breaker, and we always have a good backlog of jobs. There are great vendors we use that provide quality sign cabs based on our specs and designs, and purpose built to not fail. Just no reason to.

 

[Bobby H]

My understanding is that a matchplate's strength, with proper number of welding passes and gussets, will exceed the pipe/beam that it's welded to.

A match plate by itself is strong as hell. The problem is wind transferring its load across a large sign cabinet down to that one single focus point on the overall structure. That point turns into a fulcrum. Wind is already a very powerful force. That force becomes much worse if it can bear down on a potential pivot point. High wind can literally tear a sign cabinet off of a match plate. That's exactly what it did with the Best Western sign I mentioned.

Running the steel through the cabinet helps spread the wind load out across a broader area of the support steel. The same goes for scoping smaller diameter steel sections into larger ones when a sign requires multiple sections in a support pylon.

 

[rydods]

There are a few in my town, pretty sure they were done by my former employer, that are leaning quite a bit. One blew over last week.
We were asked to replace the sign cabinet on one last year and I didn't feel comfortable doing so unless we replaced the entire structure, foundation and all because obviously it seemed to be improper foundation work.
We design the sign, get the permit, engineer drawings and use our lift to help secure the sign and bolt it on.

Everything else is done by sign fabricators, excavating contractors, welders, electricians and crane operators.

 

[DL Signs]

There are a few in my town, pretty sure they were done by my former employer, that are leaning quite a bit. One blew over last week.
We were asked to replace the sign cabinet on one last year and I didn't feel comfortable doing so unless we replaced the entire structure, foundation and all because obviously it seemed to be improper foundation work.
We design the sign, get the permit, engineer drawings and use our lift to help secure the sign and bolt it on.

Everything else is done by sign fabricators, excavating contractors, welders, electricians and crane operators.

Not surprising. Here in Wisconsin, you know things like the destructive ground frost we get play a massive role. Specs for foundations that will hold up here are pretty unique. We've had to replace a fair share from the ground up, especially those put up by national corporations who send crews up from down south to do their sign work, who don't even know what ground frost is. Within a couple-few years, they're leaning. Everything here almost has to be over-engineered, just because of the massive climate changes from summer to winter.

We operate a lot like you, do the designing, engineer drawings, permitting, and sub out the fabrication. We have the equipment to set and install up to about 70' before we need to hire additional contractors, and have equipment to do excavation, mostly reserved for monuments and low level structures, we leave the major stuff to the pros for the safety & liability factors, it's what they do every day. We're able to do a lot this way with a small, knowledgeable, manageable crew, and have never had a failure like this. And I'm good with that

 

[DL Signs]

Additionally, staffing a shop full of certified welders, experienced painters, plus an engineering costs, all really add up in the event of downtime. DL probably doubles his cost when buying cabinets, and makes another half of that putting poles in the ground and hanging the cabinets.

Exactly. 52 years in business, no failures like this, everything has a markup, the trucks alone turn great profits... Small dedicated staff, paid well, treated well. Downtime is almost non existent, on the rare occasion it does happen, Owner has never laid anyone off, your hours are guaranteed, even if it's just doing shop and equipment maintenance, or surfing signs 101