?The costs giv­en re­cent­ly for the flag­pole and foun­da­tion for the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um flag of $.9 mil­lion each seem to be to­tal­ly out of pro­por­tion.

I would have thought that a piled foun­da­tion de­sign would have been the ob­vi­ous so­lu­tion in this lo­ca­tion, with costs rang­ing be­tween $175,000 and $200,000 for sup­ply­ing and dri­ving the piles and con­struct­ing the pile cap. Al­so, I won­der if any­one thought of us­ing high-yield steel drill pipe dis­card­ed from the oil­fields for the flag­pole. The cost would have been min­i­mal.

In­ci­den­tal­ly, tests done in the US to AS­CE-7 stan­dards sug­gest that de­sign wind speeds above 80 miles an hour when cal­cu­lat­ing the drag­force from the flag are not valid, as no flag can with­stand wind­speeds high­er than this, as it will shread. The wind pres­sure on the flag­pole is then rel­a­tive­ly small.

William Agard, Eng

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