Virginia Tech (VT), located in Blacksburg, VA, approached Gorilla Netting in early-2021 regarding an existing Netted Drone Enclosure installed by another contractor damaged in a snow storm.

Gorilla Netting was awarded the project, and before installing the new netting panels for the Virginia Tech Drone Park, our crew performed a damage assessment. (Photos of the damage below)

Damage Assessment Summary:

The existing netting system was built using a 1″ mesh netting on the roof. Using a small mesh size on roof netting panels in a Northern U.S. Region significantly increases the risk of snow and ice build-up. Without a functional safety breakaway system installed, the risk of damage to the netting panels and integrity of the netting structure itself by the increased weight is inevitable.

As you can see from the photos, the amount of snow and ice build-up was significant. Consequently, the snow and ice build-up’s added weight caused substantial sag in the netting material and avoidable stretching and stress of the wire rope, hardware, and bending in the steel poles themselves. Moreover, this caused bending of the poles inward of the structure and stress to the helical anchors set to support the netting system. Therefore, Gorilla Netting performed a pull test of the helical anchors to ensure their stability in-ground.

Project Details:

Gorilla Netting removed the damaged netting panels, wire rope, and hardware on the system’s roof and corrected the bent poles to the furthest extent possible without further damage to the system’s integrity. Once the bent poles were corrected, our team replaced any unusable stretched wire rope segments and replaced the roof’s netting panels with a larger #36 4″ treated knotted nylon netting, new additional utility-grade wire rope, and new hardware.

Because another contractor built the original netting system, our netting panels had to be custom-fabricated onsite as dimensions varied, and the exact dimensions of the system were off from documented details. The dimensions of the Virginia Tech Drone Park enclosure are 300’L x 120’W x 85’H.

Gorilla Netting only uses the highest quality netting and provides a full coverage 5-year warranty on material, labor, and equipment for turnkey netting installations. This includes our netting repair and placement projects.

Contact a Gorilla Netting representative today for more information on baseball netting and overhead netting applications.

Virginia Tech Drone Park
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Drone Enclosures, Netting Replacement/Repair

– 300’L x 120’W x 85’H
– #36 4″ Treated Knotted Nylon Netting
– Powerline/Utility-Grade Hardware & Wire Rope
– Bent Pole Corrections
– Down Guy Wire Corrections
– Helical Anchor Corrections

Gorilla Netting LLC