The Pedee Fire Lookout Tower

The Pedee Fire Lookout Tower (see Figures 1 and 7) is under construction at Dave and Barb Sullivan's timberland property at 12875 Kings Valley Highway, Monmouth, Oregon which is just outside the small unincorporated town of Pedee. Land use approval and site-specific approval to build a fire lookout has been received from Polk County, and the Sullivans have completed site prep by logging trees near the building site, removing stumps, trenching for  electricity and water, and installing a septic tank. Construction began in early 2022 and should be completed in 2023. For example, Figure 9 shows Evan Diviney cutting a Doug Fir tree to make a corner post for the lookout tower. 

Dave Sullivan worked for over two years with the talented folks at Fire Tower Engineered Timber to an unsuccessful attempt to create detailed plans backed up by a structural analysis. The licensed professional who had the most impact during this extended design effort  was Ben Brungraber, who cofounded Fire Tower Engineered Timber, a design and engineering firm that specializes in timber frame and complex post-and-beam construction methods. You can learn more about Dr. Brungraber and his qualifications at the Fire Tower Engineered Timber website. 

The slowly evolving plans for this tower ran into difficulties with Oregon's land use law and building code compliance. For example, Polk County Zoning Ordinance, Section 177.025, says putting a fire lookout tower on the Sullivan timberland is an outright permitted use. On the other hand, this same law (Section 177.070) says the lookout tower site does not qualify for a dwelling, and yet another part of the law (Section 110.186) defines a dwelling as 

a building or portion thereof which is occupied in whole or in part as a home, residence, or sleeping place, either permanently or temporarily, but excluding hotels and motels. 

Everyone knows fire lookout towers are used for sleeping at night, so  it makes no sense to allow a fire lookout tower, but not a dwelling, and then define a dwelling as any building used for sleeping. As a mathematical analogy, this is the equivalent of saying, A is greater the B, B is greater the C, and C is greater than A.  Somehow this logical inconsistency needed to be resolved, so the Polk County Community Development office decided to allow the fire lookout tower as long as it does not have a bathroom --which is a restriction that appears to have no basis in the actual law. Then, they strongly encouraged building the fire lookout tower under an Agricultural Exemption (see  ORS 455.315). This means the fire lookout tower can be built without any structural or engineering analysis whatsoever.

The current construction is proceeding in what might be called a "build-design" process. The fire lookout tower is being built from trees on the property according to informal plans. Then, once the building is complete, then the resulting tower can be analyzed for safety. That way, we will be able to organically adapt the tower to the materials at hand, and if some part(s) of the tower need reinforcing, that can be done later by adding guy wires, additional metal connections,  and so on.