Creating The Strongest Megatree on a budget!

One of the most iconic pieces of a light show is the megatree.  They're versatile in use, size, and ways they can be set up.  We've found one of the best ways to make a strong and economical megatree.

In the video we discuss how to set up an Antenna Tower based tree.  Some modification/fabrication skills may be required, or at least help to make the costs lower.

The items you will want/need are:

Antenna tower

Watch Facebook Marketplace (or other used items locally) as they will frequently come up.  Pricing can be all over the place as the style, size, condition, and how quickly the seller wants to get rid of them.  Generally 20-40ft can be found for $200 or less if you are patient!  Best if you find one with a top piece and enough to be taller than your desired overall height

Concrete

Once you have your tower determine the height and make the bottom piece as short as possible.  Using something to hold the bottom piece in place and that you can form concrete in (we used a 27gallon tub), pour concrete to encase the bottom piece.  We also used eye hooks set into the concrete so we could tie in straps.  This cost was around $35 (60lb bags for ~$4 ea and around 500lbs).  We also use concrete on our trampoline base - 4x 5gallon buckets (one per corner/leg) which probably totals around $50 for the concrete and buckets.  Black is best to buy!

Guy Wires

We used heavy sized wire and this is where we did not cheap out.  Our tree is around 21ft tall plus the star but we used 5/16" steel cable.  Attach these to the top of the top piece using the proper steel cable hardware and leave them more than long enough until you know where the stakes will go.  We also used heavy duty turnbuckles.  This was probably around $100 of hardware.

Rebar & Eye Hooks

For our stakes we used a 20ft piece of 5/8" rebar cut into 3 even pieces (just shy 7ft ea) then welded steel eye hooks to the top (so the turnbuckles can attach).  This was around $25 for all.

Trampoline Base

Since our tree was planned to be around 20ft tall we wanted a 10ft ring.  We found a used trampoline online for $40.  The leg height were easily modified by simply leaving the middle height bars out!

Steel Topper

This is an important piece as it's required for how to attach the strips at the top and extend up for a star.  We used a steel topper (around $80), then some scrap pieces of pipe we had (at a hardware store would be around $20).  We welded a 2" pipe on the bottom and drilled holes through that into the antenna tower so that the topper can be bolted to the antenna top.  A 1" pipe was welded to the top so that a star can be easily attached.

Total cost: This is going to vary heavily on how much you are able to get the antenna tower and base each for.  Our tower was given to us by someone trying to get rid of theirs but, again, $200 is a very common price to see 20-40ft for if you are patient.  We will calculate that as the cost.

Tower - $200
Topper - $100
Base - $40
Guy Wires - $100 + $25 for stakes
Concrete - $90
Total - $555

After this you will simply need pixels, strips, and your controller.  Keep in mind - this gets your a semi-portable tree that is extremely stable and safe.  We climb our tree to install the strips, have been at the top in 15+mph winds, handled 70+mph blizzard, freezing rain and more.

In this video we show it all being set up!