Hanging poles

[Bald Cypress]

For all y'all who know about such things.

Is there a "standard ratio" of how much pole to bury for a given length ?.

The telephone pole and shed work but I get to many night visitors. local dogs, sniffing around. Am looking to move inside the fenced back yard.

I have a couple of 10' I beams and was wondering if I put 3' in the ground, will that be enough the support 300 lbs in a hammock.
[adding a 100 lb safety factor in there].


EDIT. The plan is to bury, in cement, 3' sections of thick wall pvc, the I beams will then just be put in when I intend to use them and can be removed to mow or clear the view.

[Magoober]

well... my rule of thumb for fences is always 1/3 of the post goes in the ground. i have hung from lots of fence posts around my family's ranch and they all hold me no problem. Three feet should be just fine imo...

of course, they are in the ground with a few bags of concrete.. if you are just burying them then i don't know...

[Pitch]

The plan is to bury, in cement, 3' sections of thick wall pvc, the I beams will then just be put in when I intend to use them and can be removed to mow or clear the view.

I think this will work well. The only technical challenge is to get the hollow PVC to stay in the ground without having it fill up with cement. For this I would suggest a large end cap on the bottom. Then you run into another problem: Displacement. The PVC is gonna try to float up when you pour (ugh). Solution: Fill it with water (pump it out when your done... but unless you can provide drain holes through PVC cap and cement its gonna just fill up with rain water)

I'm not sure if the PVC will survive the strain of a beam levering against it though... but the cement will still be there.

[rip waverly]

sink half the length of what will be out of the ground.

if you want 7 ft out of the ground, bury at least 3.5 ft.
i secured mine with compacted crushed gravel.

the beams flex a lot with 250# in them, but show no signs of ripping from the earth.

[BurningCedar]

One third in the ground is what they teach us for setting sign posts.

I sense a pattern here

[Muskrat]

Not sure if this applies to your I beam but from dealing with the construction of ropes courses and using telephone poles for low and high elements, the standard from ACCT (American Challenge Course Technologies) has been 10% of the total length + 2 feet is what gets buried in the ground. With a 10 foot pole, that would come out to 3 feet in the ground.

Just read the ACCT website and what I mentioned above is still accurate but the minimum depth is 4 feet. So now it seems its either 4 feet or 10% + 2 feet, whichever is greater. Been out of that line of work for 12 years now. . .