Anchor Headache

I finally got an air compressor (more on that in a post yet to come).

It’s a 60 ga vertical tank that’s top heavy and weighs 200 lbs or so.

Needless to say it needs to be anchored to the floor.

It has three feet, therefore three anchors to install. Should take an hour I figured.

Drill three holes, place anchors and tighten.

First problem was that the 1/2″ concrete bit I had could only manage concrete block, not a poured concrete floor.

Off to the hardware store to buy a 1/2″ concrete hammer drill bit.

Fine. Whatever.

Get home start drilling.

The anchors that came with the compressor were lag anchors. Parts #1 and #2 in the picture above.

With the holes drilled, I dropped in the anchor part, walked the air compressor over the holes and dropped the bolts through the feet and vibration padding into the holes.

Hmmm. There’s no resistance when I turn the bolts to tighten them. The damn bolts that came with the compressor kit were too short.

Head back to the hardware store and buy longer lag bolts. Part #3 in the photo above.

Pull out the short bolts and drop in the longer ones. Turn to tighten with wrench.

Turn, turn, turn, turn.

Hmmm. Is that tight?

Stand up (I’m kneeling half the morning on cold concrete. Seems like if I’m not driving back and forth to the hardware store, I’m kneeling on cold concrete.) and try to move the compressor. It moves – alot.

What the hell?

Unscrew and pull the longer lag bolts out. For some reason they were threading straight through the anchors, not expanding to fit the holes and anchoring like they were supposed to. They were the same diameter lag bolt as what came with the kit. The holes were 1/2″ like it said to drill. Why it didn’t work I had no idea.

Back to the hardware store for better/different anchors – part #4 in the picture above.

Unfortunately these required more work. The needed deeper holes and would require the vibration plates to be drilled out a little to accommodate the wider anchor application.

By this point my bit was dulling, but I wasn’t going back to the hardware store. I did what any cheap stubborn person would do when working with dull bits, I pushed and pushed all my weight and force on the drill to make it work, though going to the store and getting a sharper bit probably would have been faster.

With the three holes drilled to what I thought was the adequate depth, I walked the compressor back over and carefully lined up the feet with the anchors, holes and vibration pads.

Two of them weren’t deep enough.

I could have sworn I measured and checked at least twice that all of them were adequate depth. Somehow I was wrong.

Walk the compressor out of the way and push and push with all my might some more.

Finally the proper depth walk the compressor back over the holes. Line up the anchors, vibration pads, feet and holes.

Now the one that fit fine the first time appeared a little too shallow. How that happened I have no idea and am now entirely too annoyed to care. I throw a washer over the little bit that’s sticking up and crank them all down.

Three hours to do three anchors!

With that kind of time, there’s no hope in getting it wired, the oil changed, broken in and plumbed.

I just don’t know why I bother.

– b