UK rental company Select Tower Cranes has developed its own wireless anemometer and weather station after finding nothing on the market to meet its needs.
Developed in conjunction with Swiss company Irdam, which makes weather monitors for Alpine ski resorts, the system is now being marketed by Select under the brand name Coriolis.
Select’s John Winson explained that the company wanted a wireless wind speed indicator because on taller cranes the length of cable often impaired the reliability of the reading displayed at the foot of the crane. ‘The taller the crane, the less reliable the read-out at the bottom,’ he said. He added that the cables were also vulnerable to damage.
The Coriolis system was developed initially as a wireless wind speed indicator with radio linked readouts for the crane cab and for the site manager’s office. In development, other functions were added, measuring barometric pressure, wind direction and dampness in the atmosphere – all functions that may prove useful for other activities on a construction site (such as concreting), and that help with weather forecasting. Weather data gathered can be logged on a PC or a laptop computer, Winson said.
He said that the system had also been designed to withstand life on site. ‘We wanted something that was rugged enough to meet our needs. We’ve got 150 tower cranes. Every time we take one down, the anemometer gets broken. This one, you can just unplug it. It takes 20 minutes to fit it, instead of six hours. There are no moving or spinning parts so no calibration is needed.’
The Coriolis weather station is to be manufactured by Irdam under licence from Select, which will market it, either for sale or hire. The price is expected to be about 20% higher than cable anemometers, but Select expects the pay-off to come in the ruggedness, reliability and versatility of the system.
The name Coriolis stands for ‘Climate Oriented Radio Integrated Outstation Link by Irdam & Select’. It also reflects the work of Gaspard Coriolis, an 18th Century French civil engineer who postulated the theory that the earth’s rotation created a lateral pull in falling objects. Certain types of swirling winds are attributed to the Coriolis effect.
