17 feet 11 inches

Continuing on the success of the last tower, I figured I could scale it up and make a taller tower. I'm still using pillars made up of 2x2 blocks but this time with nine pillars instead of four. Each pillar is 19 bricks tall and the frames are two bricks tall and made up of 2x4 and 2x6. Since I didn't have enough 2x2 or 2x4, sometimes I substituted two 1x2 next to each other for a 2x2 in the pillars and two 1x4 next to each other intead of a 2x4 in the frames. This tower uses 28 frames and 27 sets of pillars. All together it was 569 bricks tall. Each frame was made up of 96 2x4s and six 2x6 used at the center and the middle of each side where the pillars attached. The frames are 9.5 bricks wide counting with 2x4 bricks.

This may be the tallest tower I can build in my house. Luckily, from the front door of my house I have a half flight of stairs down and a half flight up to my living room with a vaulted ceiling.

The entire tower was built on a shelf resting on a stair near the bottom and a chair. I leveled the shelf before I got started.

By the time I was half way up, the structure already had a lot of wobble, not side by side but rotational. At the top it was this got even worse. I'm not sure this is bad. Flexibility is strength for buildings built in earthquake prone areas.

I could not get a single picture that showed the entire tower so here are two that give you an idea.

Thanks again to my wife, Pat, that helped me build frames and pillars. She also came up with a great idea to make an outline of the frames on paper which sped up the process.