In-situ inspection and quality assessment of rock bolts and other load-bearing structural elements, has received significant attention over the years, but there are still no techniques available capable of monitoring changes over time in mechanical properties of already installed bolts. Since mechanical changes will also affect the propagation of mechanical waves, ultrasound is a strong candidate. In this paper we propose a technique based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) for coding the transmitted ultrasound pulse in such a way that the propagation channel (transducer and rock bolt combined) can be estimated. We show that a transmit voltage of 1.1 V r.m.s. is sufficient to obtain reliable channel estimates even in bolts as long as one meter. The channel estimates are then used to predict changes in tensile stress on the bolt, from experiments conducted in a laboratory environment.