Mounting, side of house, vinyl siding over foam insulation

[wmorrison65]

Anybody have experience with mounting an antenna pole on the side of a house, buried a couple feet deep, bracketed up the wall on vinyl siding over foam insulation over underlying siding (I think mine is cement board?)

Have a Cape style house, metal roof, solar panels on both sides of roof. No room for tripod among the solar panels as far as I can see, and don't want any leaks from penetrating roof.

Old chimney, don't want to mount there and risk strong wind breaking the chimney, also hard to access as surrounded by solar panels.

So pretty much decided on mounting with a pole on the side of the house from ground to the top, but can be convinced of a better way.

Problem is, vinyl siding over 3/4" foam over cement board gives nothing solid to connect the brackets to. If the pole is to the ground and buried a couple feet deep, the brackets shouldn't need to support vertical weight, but I worry about wind ripping off the brackets sideways.

Are there any wall brackets that are 16' wide that could span two studs? Failing that, any way to mount a board across two studs and anchor brackets to that? Ways to stabilize the board with the foam underneath, or does some foam have to come out and have the crossboard against the studs? Then there's water leaks and expansion/contraction of the siding.

I've googled this and found many people asking about the same thing (vinyl, foam, clapboard, etc.) but no good solutions, just mentions of the leaking/expansion/contraction issues I mentioned. But there's got to be a way.

[eclipsme]

I would think the simplest, and possibly best solution would be to mount a horizontal 2x6 to the studs with carriage bolts and bolt the pole supports to that.

As an alternative, and depending on the construction of the building, move the pole foundation away from the wall, in line with the eve and bolt to that.

[rickbb]

I've done a few, my son just put up a forty footer for his cell repeater. He ordered brackets for this purpose. Made it easy as he has about a 18" eave 2 1/2 stores up for the post to get by.

You need to find the studs in the exterior wall. Drill small pilot holes, (just smaller than the lag bolts), and fill the holes with a good 30 year rated caulk just before mounting the brackets.

[wmorrison65]

Originally Posted by eclipsme

I would think the simplest, and possibly best solution would be to mount a horizontal 2x6 to the studs with carriage bolts and bolt the pole supports to that.

As an alternative, and depending on the construction of the building, move the pole foundation away from the wall, in line with the eve and bolt to that.

No eave to speak of, just a few inches overhang. And what looks like boards at the peak of the eave is actually hollow L-shaped plastic trim pieces. I verified this at the gutter. There's wood a few inches behind them, but I'm not sure I want to fiddle around with finding a solid way to mount a bracket through that, one-handed, at the top of a 20-foot ladder. Planning the top bracket just under the triangular vent at the peak where the siding starts, and lose a couple feet maximum antenna height.

As far as mounting boards to the studs, that's what I'm thinking, but with the foam being 3/4" thick, that's as thick as the board could be under the siding, unless you mean over the siding with four thick strong bolts, two per stud, so the board could "float" over the siding without squishing it. If I cut the siding and mount a board thicker than 3/4 directly to the studs, I need to know how to keep water out. Not sure cutting siding is a good idea.

Getting a little pushback from wife that "stuff" on the house will be ugly, but I pointed out it's no different than the solar equipment and conduits already on the wall, or the electric from the street on the other side of the house. Still, want to make it look as "clean" and nice as possible, but sturdy.

I'm not an engineer, so I may tend to "overengineer" or "overthink" things because I don't want my assumption of "good enough" to result in my new antenna lying on the ground in the middle of winter and ripped siding on the house.

Here's an interesting mount I just found while looking for alterative brackets, that looks like could be easily built from angle iron/aluminum, with custom dimensions to hit studs. The geometry appears pretty solid. I might consider something like that before continuing with the pole-to-the-ground approach.

http://www.rohnnet.com/rohn-pole-wall-mount

[wmorrison65]

I eventually used 1/4" toggle bolts through the innermost siding (with longer bolts than came with the toggles) where I didn't hit wood under the bracket, and construction lags where I did. The highest bracket has both sides in solid wood, so that's good, the middle both toggles, and the lower near a window one of each. The pole is 2' in the ground so secure on that end.

An idea I thought about, but decided against, was to use short lengths of the shallow Unistrut/Superstrut across studs, then mount the brackets to that with the square washers as a base for the bracket. That would have allowed sliding the brackets left to right for alignment. But I couldn't find studs that deep even with a good stud finder. Still, maybe this idea would be useful to someone else.