Concealed Towers Need Less Maintenance  

During the Stealth Tower panel at the South Wireless Summit, Tom Fedderson of Larson Camouflage and Chris Hills with STEALTH Concealment spoke about the longevity and maintenance of these concealed towers. You would think that concealed towers would require more work like repainting, adding panels, or replacing branches, but that’s not the case. Hills explained, “Maintenance really hasn’t been thought about when it comes to concealment. You hear allot of about tower maintenance but you don’t hear much about it when a tower is concealed.” Fedderson agreed and explained that they built a monopine in 1992 and they only just recently refurbished it in 2013. “We’re starting to see the industry mature to that level, but we’re getting pretty good life on them,” Fedderson explained. When it comes to the snow that had been piling up this year, no problems were reported to the manufacturers of these structures. W“e’ve not heard any reports of issues related to the snow. We did install some trees recently in the Rockies,” Fedderson noted. “We have a tree at over 1,400 feet in elevation, and it seems to be doing well. One monopine was located in a shadowy area, and we got a curious call about it because if you looked at the tree, one side was green, and the other side was covered in snow. The branches were fine, but the steel had folded under the pressure of the snow.”  More and more municipalities are becoming familiar with camouflaged towers, and often require them in residential areas.