I love engineering challenges and I needed an elegant solution to mount a vertical antenna right on the corner of my house.
In the end, I used 3 x 24 inch T brackets from Barenco Antenna Hardware store. Poor Brian (Barenco owner) was a little confused by my request but he dispatched my order all the same and I’m pleased with the results.
By the way, a little tip. Don’t use those RawPlug type anchor bolts, they expand and they are tightened and could break off the side of the brick, particularly right on a corner. Instead, use Multi-Monti bolts. These cut a thread inside a pre-drilled hole. The beauty of Multi-Monti bolts is that you can remove them and re-install them at will. If you want to fill in the hole afterwards, use Frame Mastic from ScrewFix (or similar). You will never know your aerials were once there.
I used three 24 inch brackets in the end; two near the top and one at the bottom. For the outside bolt, I used 10mm (8mm hole) extra-long bolts which means that my bolt not only attaches to the very end brick, but also right into the next brick down the side of the house.
If you do this yourself, you’ll need to either ask Brian to make these brackets with the holes on the flat side instead of the regular side where the T would normally bolt to, and your drilling needs to be fairly accurate (he will no doubt charge you).
Each bracket will need (a) three new holes to screw the T to the wall and (b) a further two accurate holes for the V bolts to connect.
Further, your vertical plumb-line will also need to be spot-on so that the pole isn’t twisted or bent as you tighten everything up. It turns out that my middle T bracket was affixed to a brick that was a few millimetres sunk in when compared to the rest of the wall so I padded it out with a couple of stainless washers.
Be warned that if you do drill these beautifully galvanised T brackets, they will lose their rust-proofness. I gave all my hole 5 coats of Galvafroid (links to eBay) which will hopefully protect the bare metal. A few squirts of S100 protective grease might be in order too.
