I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.

This morning two men installed the handrail in four and a half or five
hours.

The material involved consists solely of:

- about 25 feet of one inch square steel cut into seven or eight
pieces to serve as uprights.

- about 33 feet of solid steel toprail, an inch and one half wide
with a little decorative hill-like feature running down the
center
the entire length. This toprail was cut into eight pieces
varying
in length. There are two eight foor pieces,three four foot
pieces,
and one three foot piece.

There are no other components, decorative or otherwise. The uprights
were inserted into holes drilled in the concrete and filled with a
special cement.
The six inch overhangs on the ends of the toprail are bent down to
resemble a swan's head.

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

Thanks.

"John Sanders" wrote in message
om...
I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.

This morning two men installed the handrail in four and a half or five
hours.

The material involved consists solely of:

- about 25 feet of one inch square steel cut into seven or eight
pieces to serve as uprights.

- about 33 feet of solid steel toprail, an inch and one half wide
with a little decorative hill-like feature running down the
center
the entire length. This toprail was cut into eight pieces
varying
in length. There are two eight foor pieces,three four foot
pieces,
and one three foot piece.

There are no other components, decorative or otherwise. The uprights
were inserted into holes drilled in the concrete and filled with a
special cement.
The six inch overhangs on the ends of the toprail are bent down to
resemble a swan's head.

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

Thanks.

My honest opinion? Did you get a kiss with that screwing?

If all the work was accomplished on the job site, not in a shop, where the
components were sawn to size and assembled first, you got screwed. Based
on what you told us, even at $100/hr per man, it would be hard to
rationalize the cost. There must be more to the story.

Harold

"John Sanders" wrote in message
om...
I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.

This morning two men installed the handrail in four and a half or five
hours.

The material involved consists solely of:

- about 25 feet of one inch square steel cut into seven or eight
pieces to serve as uprights.

- about 33 feet of solid steel toprail, an inch and one half wide
with a little decorative hill-like feature running down the
center
the entire length. This toprail was cut into eight pieces
varying
in length. There are two eight foor pieces,three four foot
pieces,
and one three foot piece.

There are no other components, decorative or otherwise. The uprights
were inserted into holes drilled in the concrete and filled with a
special cement.
The six inch overhangs on the ends of the toprail are bent down to
resemble a swan's head.

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

Thanks.

My honest opinion? Did you get a kiss with that screwing?

If all the work was accomplished on the job site, not in a shop, where the
components were sawn to size and assembled first, you got screwed. Based
on what you told us, even at $100/hr per man, it would be hard to
rationalize the cost. There must be more to the story. Was it fabricated
first, and the installation took the five hours?

Harold

On 24 Apr 2004 20:35:50 -0700, (John Sanders)
vaguely proposed a theory
.......and in reply I say!:
remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Where are you? What's $1700 worth to you?

I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.


************************************************** **
The Met Bureau is LOVE!

In article , John
Sanders wrote:

I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.

This morning two men installed the handrail in four and a half or five
hours.

The material involved consists solely of:

- about 25 feet of one inch square steel cut into seven or eight
pieces to serve as uprights.

- about 33 feet of solid steel toprail, an inch and one half wide
with a little decorative hill-like feature running down the
center
the entire length. This toprail was cut into eight pieces
varying
in length. There are two eight foor pieces,three four foot
pieces,
and one three foot piece.

There are no other components, decorative or otherwise. The uprights
were inserted into holes drilled in the concrete and filled with a
special cement.
The six inch overhangs on the ends of the toprail are bent down to
resemble a swan's head.

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

Thanks.


A basic railing cost is $50 per foot of hand rail for simple rails, and
$100 per foot for fancier rails.

That applies to simple steel pipe rails.

33 feet x $50 = $1650.

Sorry it seems steep, but I have made a lot of railings for a lot of
places and that is the going rate.
It has to cover the contractors' cost of doing business.
Tools, Trucks, insurance, licenses, labor...
A few dollars difference per foot and I lose any hint of profit on a
railing job.
Hell , you blow one concrete core drill and you lose $100.

That is why I tend to stick to high end stainless tube and cable rails.
A higher level of cost, but also a higher level of detail.
Plus I have less competition.

The hand rail you describe is called "molded cap rail", and costs about
twice what a similar sized simple steel bar would cost for the same
length.

The end pieces are called lamb's tongues.
They cost about $30 each, and get welded on.

"Ernie Leimkuhler" wrote in message

Sorry it seems steep, but I have made a lot of railings for a lot of
places and that is the going rate.
It has to cover the contractors' cost of doing business.
Tools, Trucks, insurance, licenses, labor...
A few dollars difference per foot and I lose any hint of profit on a
railing job.
Hell , you blow one concrete core drill and you lose $100.



Ernie knows what he is talking about. I spent 7 years in the fab business,
and there are a lot of costs that the customer never sees. A loner working
out of his garage might be able to do it for less, but for any established
business with employees and a shop, that is a reasonable price.

Mark

In article , Harold & Susan Vordos says...

My honest opinion? Did you get a kiss with that screwing?

If all the work was accomplished on the job site, not in a shop, where the
components were sawn to size and assembled first, you got screwed. Based
on what you told us, even at $100/hr per man, it would be hard to
rationalize the cost. There must be more to the story. Was it fabricated
first, and the installation took the five hours?

It sounds high but for hiring workers the numbers just about
work out.

The $100 per man-hour is a bit high.

My rule of thumb is that the labor just about equals the
materials cost.

So take his 1700 and make 100 of that tax. Then the labor
was 800 and the materials were 800.

Five hours, two men, makes that 80 per man-hour.

It kind of adds up. The other way to do this is
get three bids and take the middle one. I like to
get three bids only because each craftsman who
looks at a job will have a different approach
or a different idea. Very instructive.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amoun

I'd say no. A few months ago, I bought a a decorative rail to go in a house,
about 7' long. It had a cap similar to what you describe, very decorative
pickets, fabricated, one trip to measure, one trip to install, cost about $1100
from an ornamental fabricator. All of the parts were off-the-shelf items not
hand forged.
Gary Brady
Austin, TX

Sell price is not dependent on cost. It is based on what the market will
stand. The best way that you can satisfy yourself that you paid a fair
price is to get other quotes for the job from other reputable people in your
area.

Roger



"John Sanders" wrote in message
om...
I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done

Ernie Leimkuhler wrote:

That is why I tend to stick to high end stainless tube and cable rails.

What's a "cable rail", Ernie?

Ted

M writes:

A loner working
out of his garage might be able to do it for less, but for any
established business with employees and a shop, that is a reasonable
price.

Every contractor whines about overhead, like nobody had thought of that.

Sorry, but two guys for part of a day, some tools, and $100 worth of
materials, does not add up to $1700 in this line of work, at least in a
competitive market. Clearly the customer got highballed and took the bait.

If the "loner in his garage" can do the equivalent, just what justifies
this overhead? The pros have to do it better, or cheaper, or both.

Can't say buy IO know just plain picket molded handrail is pretty darn
expensive. Too bad you can't weld or decided to tackle it yourself. I
did find that 99% of most components no matter how fancy they are is
readily available and pretty darn dirt cheap. Unless you have the
skills to assemble it and weld and grind and fit, then this would be a
moot........but I have built a heap of wrought iron stuff for my wife
now that I have a MIG and found a source for anything you could
imagine, and I would shudder to think what it would cost if I had to
have it made. I would think the price may be a bit high, but its a
curved stairway. Hey you don't get much for a dollar anymore, except
perhaps unfinished ready to assemble weld up decorative metal items
;-)
Visit my website: http://www.frugalmachinist.com
Opinions expressed are those of my wifes,
I had no input whatsoever.
Remove "nospam" from email addy.

"John Sanders" wrote in message
om...
I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.




We had a customer that wanted a hand rail too. One of our workers looked it
over and said, no problem. When he got to the shop the boss shut down the
idea. Around here that simple hand rail needs to be designed by an engineer
to ensure that it is safe. This was a business situation, home may be
differant.
One of the fab shops in town did it. They have "standard" practices for
stairs and railings. An engineer had his hands in deciding what those
standards are. As long as they fab railings that meet the "standards" they
can build them with out the engineers stamp of approval.
But keep in mind the engineer stuck his nose in there somewhere, and a
portion every railing made goes to paying that engineer.

Also keep in mind allot of thought went into the railing before it came to
your home. Think of the time it would take if they just dropped of a bunch
of metal, some tools, and a couple of workers and went to it. You would see
allot of on site engineering going on!
Greg

In article , Ted Edwards
wrote:

Ernie Leimkuhler wrote:

That is why I tend to stick to high end stainless tube and cable rails.

What's a "cable rail", Ernie?

Ted


Cable rails are usually a rather sturdy series of vertical pieces and a
top handrail made from Pipe or Tube, with a series of stainless steel
cables running horizontally underneath.
They are often used for decks with beautiful views because they can
almost disappear to the eye.
They are a bit tricky to install, and require good planning as to cable
tension.
You need a few special tools like Nicopress swagers, and Felco cable
cutters.

Check out these sites

Feeney
http://www.cablerail.com/index_2.html

Johnson
http://www.csjohnson.com/pages/archi..._products.html

American Wire Specialties
http://www.cablerailings.com/cabletn.htm

Arakawa
http://www.arakawagrip.com/i_balustrades.html

Arakawa has stopped selling their railing system in the US.
You can still get it, but you have to pay to ship the components from
Japan
The building I was working on most of last year had about 100 feet of
Arakawa cable railings.
It is very high tech and fancy, but also extremeley expensive.
The Client decided he really wanted them so he ordered them straight
from Japan.

Check out he rest of the Arakawa site to see some really cool little
cable grippers.


Feeney and Johnson both came out of the Marine industry , making cable
fittings for sailboats.
They just adapted their hardware for architectural applications.

Most states now have a "babyhead code"
Meaning that there can be no gap in a railing that allows a 4" ball to
pass through.
This usually only applies to residential railings adjacent to living
spaces, but it can also apply to railings in shopping malls and hotels.
Resdential railings are usually 36" high and commercial railings 42"
high.

Because of the flexibility of the cables, inspectors often make you
skrink your spacing to 3" between cables.

You have to be careful in tensioning these things.
ten 3/16" stainless steel cables can develop a LOT of pull if you
tension them too high.
I have seen 3" pipe bent by over tensioning them.
Some installers actually have their end pieces rolled to a curve, so
the tensioning pulls them straight.

The distance that one cable can span varies by manufacturer.
Arakawa limits you to about 10 feet, but Johnson and Feeney can span
longer runs, as long as your vertical tubes are stout enough on the
ends to take the higher tension.

Some of you may not realize it, but a curved stair rail can be tricky. The
top rail needs to have just the right amount of twist in it. (Maybe that's
why Ernie prefers to make the top round.)

Also, if I understood the description, the vertical pickets were cemented
into individual holes in concrete. That's a lot more work than tacking them
to a lower metal rail, supported on two posts at the ends.

Greg O wrote:
"John Sanders" wrote in message
om...

I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.





We had a customer that wanted a hand rail too. One of our workers looked it
over and said, no problem. When he got to the shop the boss shut down the
idea. Around here that simple hand rail needs to be designed by an engineer
to ensure that it is safe. This was a business situation, home may be
differant.
One of the fab shops in town did it. They have "standard" practices for
stairs and railings. An engineer had his hands in deciding what those
standards are. As long as they fab railings that meet the "standards" they
can build them with out the engineers stamp of approval.
But keep in mind the engineer stuck his nose in there somewhere, and a
portion every railing made goes to paying that engineer.

I'll bet nothing went to the engineer. If there was one, he was
paid a small token amount once years ago and was layed off. The
lawyers and MBA types have been billing the customer repeatly ever
since. Its not even as good as what an actor gets with the less
than 5% share in the copyright fee when ever their work is
presented to a new customer.

Then there is the government licenses needed to just present the
work to you, the libility ins, workers-comp, SS tax, Medicare,
medicad, unemployment tax the list goes on and on.

The only way get control of this is to learn to do it yourself and
then do it yourself before they make that illegal too.

Al




Also keep in mind allot of thought went into the railing before it came to
your home. Think of the time it would take if they just dropped of a bunch
of metal, some tools, and a couple of workers and went to it. You would see
allot of on site engineering going on!
Greg

One point that seems to be left out of this discussion is the fact the
contractor also needs to carry some form of liability insurance to cover
this "little" job. Have you priced liability insurance lately?

If the homeowner or guest gets hurt while walking past this assembly,
you can bet your last dollar some lawyer will be all over him like you
know what.

There are many jobs I would like to tackle, if only for the challenge. I
won't touch them because of the liability/lawsuit issues.

Jim Vrzal



Richard J Kinch wrote:

M writes:


A loner working
out of his garage might be able to do it for less, but for any
established business with employees and a shop, that is a reasonable
price.


Every contractor whines about overhead, like nobody had thought of that.

Sorry, but two guys for part of a day, some tools, and $100 worth of
materials, does not add up to $1700 in this line of work, at least in a
competitive market. Clearly the customer got highballed and took the bait.

If the "loner in his garage" can do the equivalent, just what justifies
this overhead? The pros have to do it better, or cheaper, or both.

"Richard J Kinch" wrote in message
. ..
M writes:

A loner working
out of his garage might be able to do it for less, but for any
established business with employees and a shop, that is a reasonable
price.

Every contractor whines about overhead, like nobody had thought of that.

Sorry, but two guys for part of a day, some tools, and $100 worth of
materials, does not add up to $1700 in this line of work, at least in a
competitive market. Clearly the customer got highballed and took the
bait.

If the "loner in his garage" can do the equivalent, just what justifies
this overhead? The pros have to do it better, or cheaper, or both.

It is clear you have never run a commercial business.

Some of the costs:

Rent on a commercial building
Phone book advertising
Liability insurance (High in the welding business)
Workman's comp (also high)
Fire insurance
Payroll taxes
Payroll itself (those guys have to feed their families even when
there isn't much work in the shop, so you save for a riany day)
Welding equipment (not cheap, and it wears out)
Fabrication equipment (bought any ironworkers lately? A hacksaw or a torch
that the loner might use gets mighty slow and tiring when you're doing it
all day long.)

I could probably go on for several paragraphs like this... Ernie (who IS in
the business) will back me up. That price was not outrageous at all. In
fact, it sounded very competitive to me.

Mark

On 25 Apr 2004 15:01:49 GMT, OSPAM (Gary Brady)
brought forth from the murky depths:

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amoun

I'd say no. A few months ago, I bought a a decorative rail to go in a house,
about 7' long. It had a cap similar to what you describe, very decorative
pickets, fabricated, one trip to measure, one trip to install, cost about $1100
from an ornamental fabricator. All of the parts were off-the-shelf items not
hand forged.

Let me guess: Same vendor?

I could see $1,700 if the guy cleared, framed, and poured
the slabs for the walkway, too.

John, I hope you tell your brother this story and perhaps
not ask for any other referrrals from him in the future.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A PSYCHOLOGIST looks at everyone -else- || http://www.diversify.com
when an attractive woman enters the room. || Full Website Programming

In article ,
John wrote:
My thanks to all who pitched in and provided their insight.

Note that not all agreed that it was a highball estimate, some
considered it quite reasonable. I have no background to estimate the
reasonableness of a given estimate, but those who do seem to agree that
it was a reasonable estimate.

The photo shows that the top rails themselves are not curved, so that
bit of information may change the opinions -- of those who see the
image. This one made it though to me simply because you used an older
encoding scheme (uuencoding), instead of the more common base64
encoding, which seems to be blocked somewhere along the net feed for my
news server.

[ ... ]

I'm posting the following part, instead of using private e-mail
for two reasons:

1) You have your e-mail address "spamproofed", and while it appears
straightforward to correct it, it may not be, and I choose not to
bother.

2) Posting this will get the issue before more people, who may thus
avoid the mistake which you have just made.

Lesson learned...the hard way.. At least they did a decent job. The
handrail, while not terribly attractive, is sturdy and functional. I'll try
to attach a picture I just took.

This is a bad thing to do in a discussion newsgroup. Any
binaries, images (such as this), sound files, programs, Microsoft Word
documents, and lots of other things are supposed to be not posted to
discussion (text-based) newsgroups. They should only be posted to
newsgroups where "binaries" is part of the newsgroup name.

The *proper* solution is to put the images on a web site, and
just post the URL, so those who want, and who can afford the bandwidth,
can got to the web site and download it.

If you don't have web space, Steve Stallings runs the "dropbox"
at http://www.metalworking.com which is available for posting
metalworking related images and then posting the URL to the newsgroup.
Visit the site, and you will note that there are instructions on how to
upload the images (done via email).

Unexpected attachments are very likely to contain virii, so they
should be discarded without looking.

And your image took up 367824 bytes on each and every news
server around the world which carries this newsgroup. It is things like
that which cause news administrators to stop carrying certain newsgroups
(such as all of the alt.binaries.* newsgroups) Web sites have a single
storage space and everybody comes to it to read the contents. Usenet
newsgroups (such as this one) are stored in hundreds or thousands of
news servers around the world, taking up space in every one of them
until the article expires. (Another effect of posting binaries to
newsgroups is that news admins will set the expire time short on
newsgroups with the binaries, to keep the disk usage within control.

Also -- they AUP (Appropriate Use Policy) to which you agreed to
get your net connection probably forbids this, and it *could* cause you
to lose your account, should someone desire to make an example of it.

Thanks again, everyone.


begin 666 Handrail.jpg
M_]C_X1_^17AI9@``24DJ``@````)``\!`@`&````@```! !`@`5````@ ``

[ ... 265496 image, which was bloated to 367824 bytes by the
uuencoding necessary to get a binary to pass through the
newsgroups snipped ... ]

M=[V\\T,?ELRDX"]_^^?2NBR;UV"+Y4N79G&W&N3/J,,#F)Y;?/D*IY(ZAL"N
I,O+*XEN9%BN99)KBX?RIQO&YLY&JX/18P,8J8^]H]C278__]D`
`
end


Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

hey,
if you like the job then you paid just the amount


"John Sanders" wrote in message
om...
I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.

This morning two men installed the handrail in four and a half or five
hours.

The material involved consists solely of:

- about 25 feet of one inch square steel cut into seven or eight
pieces to serve as uprights.

- about 33 feet of solid steel toprail, an inch and one half wide
with a little decorative hill-like feature running down the
center
the entire length. This toprail was cut into eight pieces
varying
in length. There are two eight foor pieces,three four foot
pieces,
and one three foot piece.

There are no other components, decorative or otherwise. The uprights
were inserted into holes drilled in the concrete and filled with a
special cement.
The six inch overhangs on the ends of the toprail are bent down to
resemble a swan's head.

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

Thanks.

John,

You didn't say what part of country the work was done. You mentioned
you received and gave the go-ahead on an estimate for the type of work
your job site required. Perhaps it was the amount of time used to do
the job that surprised you. You have to ask yourself if the job was
done to a professional standard and will hold up under normal usage?
If so, then you should be happy, the company did its job in a
professional, quick and timely manner for the price agree by you.
Still I would say it was fair amount for a job well done.

Rusty Bates

(John Sanders) wrote in message . com...
I needed to have a steel handrail fabricated and installed along one
(1) side of a slightly curved set of seven (7) concrete steps. The
steps are about two feet long and each step drops about eight inches
from the previous one. The estimate for the handrail was $1,700. I
went ahead and had it done.

This morning two men installed the handrail in four and a half or five
hours.

(SNIP)

Given the foregoing, would anyone care to hazard an opinion on whether
I poaid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

Thanks.

Sounds about right, I charge $35 a foot uninstalled.

Les

M writes:

It is clear you have never run a commercial business.

It is clear you don't know anything about me.

Ernie Leimkuhler wrote:

What's a "cable rail", Ernie?

Cable rails are usually a rather sturdy series of vertical pieces and a
top handrail made from Pipe or Tube, with a series of stainless steel
cables running horizontally underneath.
They are often used for decks with beautiful views because they can
almost disappear to the eye.

Thanks for the reply. Very interesting idea.

When we add the deck we planned on, I will have just that problem and I
like the idea.

They are a bit tricky to install, and require good planning as to cable
tension.

I would think so!

You need a few special tools like Nicopress swagers, and Felco cable
cutters.

Nicopress swagers I have. I don't know what a Felco cable cutter looks
like but my big crimpers have a cutter that handles 1/4" easily without
ravelling the strands.

Check out these sites

Feeney
http://www.cablerail.com/index_2.html

Johnson
http://www.csjohnson.com/pages/archi..._products.html

American Wire Specialties
http://www.cablerailings.com/cabletn.htm

Arakawa
http://www.arakawagrip.com/i_balustrades.html

Arakawa has stopped selling their railing system in the US.
You can still get it, but you have to pay to ship the components from
Japan
The building I was working on most of last year had about 100 feet of
Arakawa cable railings.
It is very high tech and fancy, but also extremeley expensive.
The Client decided he really wanted them so he ordered them straight
from Japan.

Check out he rest of the Arakawa site to see some really cool little
cable grippers.

Feeney and Johnson both came out of the Marine industry , making cable
fittings for sailboats.
They just adapted their hardware for architectural applications.

Most states now have a "babyhead code"
Meaning that there can be no gap in a railing that allows a 4" ball to
pass through.
This usually only applies to residential railings adjacent to living
spaces, but it can also apply to railings in shopping malls and hotels.
Resdential railings are usually 36" high and commercial railings 42"
high.

Because of the flexibility of the cables, inspectors often make you
skrink your spacing to 3" between cables.

You have to be careful in tensioning these things.
ten 3/16" stainless steel cables can develop a LOT of pull if you
tension them too high.
I have seen 3" pipe bent by over tensioning them.
Some installers actually have their end pieces rolled to a curve, so
the tensioning pulls them straight.

The distance that one cable can span varies by manufacturer.
Arakawa limits you to about 10 feet, but Johnson and Feeney can span
longer runs, as long as your vertical tubes are stout enough on the
ends to take the higher tension.

I'll have to work out the tensions needed as a function of spacing but I
sure like the concept!

Ted