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Does your pier need to be removable? If not you could make it longer and set into the concrete. I think the gussets would be a good idea given the length of the pier.
One pier I have made was/is relatively long also. When digging the hole for the concrete, I also drove Star pickets into the bottom of the hole at angles with the ends in the mass of concrete at the base of the pier. In my case I found some old heat shield tubing from old slow combustion heater in recycle yard. It was about 225mm diameter and pieced together provided plenty of length. I used that as the former for the concrete pier on top of where the concrete base was to be set. I tied 4 more star pickets to the ends of the pickets already in the ground to my (yet to be poured) concrete base and set these pickets inside the relatively flimsy tubing. I also welded some threaded rod onto the top ends of the pickets that would protrude through the top of the pier. This allowed attaching a plate for the mount so sit on. I then filled with hand mixed concrete.
Maybe a bit of effort to get the makings up the hill in your case, b ut the cost was minimal and the result excellent.
One thing I missed with my first attempt was installing a conduit inside the pier to allow cabling to be run inside, rather than strapped to the outside.
For my latest pier, built on a concrete ‘deck’ at roof level attached to my new house, I managed to find som 8” diameter pvc tubingused for storm water drain. I used that as the former and again put reo bars inside with threaded rod attached to the top and a utilities conduit before filling with that concrete. It too seems to work well enough, certainly for visual.
Just hope you don’t have too much trouble with the greenies if you need to trim your shrubs when they develop!
HTH BRIAN
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