So today was another pretty easy day. We ended up changing out two corner poles, both single phase and one had a tap off the east side that was headed to a farm house. My boss was away to attend a safety meeting so I teamed up with Adam, he is the Foreman for the two man crew and his apprentice is away at school for the next two weeks so the boss man sent us out to Bismark to try and get closer to finishing up all the ICC audit jobs. There's a lot of work to be done by July 1st!!!
I'll try and break things down a little on all the tasks that I went over for the day and explain the area's that I need work on or that I messed up....typical apprentice:)
So, for starters the poles that we changed were already framed up and at the job site ~ Adam ran the line truck while I laid out the phase in a hot arm. I lined up Adam with the augger and he dug the first hole, when setting poles you take a simple rule into effect ~ 10% of the height of the pole, plus two feet ~ so if it were a 40 foot pole you would dig the pole 6 feet deep. These poles that we are removing have date nails from 1937.....Cedar poles seem to last forever, now adays we use mostly pine poles that don't hold up hear as well. Also, we have started to rock all our poles, what I mean is that we fill in and tamp the hole with road-pack rock to help keep the pole from leaning one way or the other. When that done, you can hook up your guy wire. Now the first pole didn't need a new anchor set so we strung up a new fish and jonny ball and made up our guy. It pretty much keeps the angle of the pole from going one way to much, and when I say fish I mean a fiberglass rod that seperates the guy wire from the pole and provides a small bit of seperation in case the guy wire would get energized. Once the guy wire is in place, pole is tamped and the line truck is clear of the new pole ~ I went up in the bucket and transfered the primary phase and clip'd in the neutral wire and then cut down the old pole. I should mention that the primary wire was energized while we were working on the poles today so that means that I had to put guts on the wire and I was wearing my rubber protective gloves and sleeves.
The second pole that we set was also struck by lighting and we had to move the anchor on this one. Adam again set up the line truck while I laid out the primary phase and gutted up the phase so we could slip the new pole in between the neutral and phase. Once we dug the hole, we then set the anchor and Adam raised up on the winch line and I moved the new pole over the hole and Adam then lined off the pole and the we used our plum bobs make sure the poles were level and straight, then did everything all over again and tamp'd the hole with rock and I transfer over the hot phase and also I had to mack the neutral wire out so we didn't have to take the customer out of power to change the pole. A electrical mack is a device that allows you to change the direct path of the of the wire without killing the primary phase or in this case the neutral.
While changing out the last pole we recieved a call state'n that a farmer hit another one of our single phase poles with his tractor and some customers were out of power. So luckly we had some poles near by and we rob'd one of them and headed towards the fields to change the broken pole out. I should mention that the poles we changed out earlier had 1/0 aluminnum wire as primary wire and the pole that the farmer hit had #6a copper weld wire. This isn't the first time that a farmer has hit a pole, in fact this is the 3rd pole that we changed out in the last two weeks b/c a farmer snagged a wire or hit a pole.
Well, tomorrow we have a road widening project in Hoopston, and some of the crew had to head to Danville for some EEC training....how to be a better person touchy feely crap:) But I think there's a total of four poles, two lift poles one single phase primary pole and maybe on overhead guy pole. I'll check back in with ya tomorrow and give you an update.
o, and the stuff that I messed up on today ~ well, I should have set the anchor a little bit more in line with the new pole and while pulling the old pole I should have let the pole rest in the line trucks ears a little more before trying to push the butt of the pole towards the front of the truck....nothing major but things that I should know better seeing as I'm a 3rd step apprentice...
anywho,
see ya tomorrow
I'll try and break things down a little on all the tasks that I went over for the day and explain the area's that I need work on or that I messed up....typical apprentice:)
So, for starters the poles that we changed were already framed up and at the job site ~ Adam ran the line truck while I laid out the phase in a hot arm. I lined up Adam with the augger and he dug the first hole, when setting poles you take a simple rule into effect ~ 10% of the height of the pole, plus two feet ~ so if it were a 40 foot pole you would dig the pole 6 feet deep. These poles that we are removing have date nails from 1937.....Cedar poles seem to last forever, now adays we use mostly pine poles that don't hold up hear as well. Also, we have started to rock all our poles, what I mean is that we fill in and tamp the hole with road-pack rock to help keep the pole from leaning one way or the other. When that done, you can hook up your guy wire. Now the first pole didn't need a new anchor set so we strung up a new fish and jonny ball and made up our guy. It pretty much keeps the angle of the pole from going one way to much, and when I say fish I mean a fiberglass rod that seperates the guy wire from the pole and provides a small bit of seperation in case the guy wire would get energized. Once the guy wire is in place, pole is tamped and the line truck is clear of the new pole ~ I went up in the bucket and transfered the primary phase and clip'd in the neutral wire and then cut down the old pole. I should mention that the primary wire was energized while we were working on the poles today so that means that I had to put guts on the wire and I was wearing my rubber protective gloves and sleeves.
The second pole that we set was also struck by lighting and we had to move the anchor on this one. Adam again set up the line truck while I laid out the primary phase and gutted up the phase so we could slip the new pole in between the neutral and phase. Once we dug the hole, we then set the anchor and Adam raised up on the winch line and I moved the new pole over the hole and Adam then lined off the pole and the we used our plum bobs make sure the poles were level and straight, then did everything all over again and tamp'd the hole with rock and I transfer over the hot phase and also I had to mack the neutral wire out so we didn't have to take the customer out of power to change the pole. A electrical mack is a device that allows you to change the direct path of the of the wire without killing the primary phase or in this case the neutral.
While changing out the last pole we recieved a call state'n that a farmer hit another one of our single phase poles with his tractor and some customers were out of power. So luckly we had some poles near by and we rob'd one of them and headed towards the fields to change the broken pole out. I should mention that the poles we changed out earlier had 1/0 aluminnum wire as primary wire and the pole that the farmer hit had #6a copper weld wire. This isn't the first time that a farmer has hit a pole, in fact this is the 3rd pole that we changed out in the last two weeks b/c a farmer snagged a wire or hit a pole.
Well, tomorrow we have a road widening project in Hoopston, and some of the crew had to head to Danville for some EEC training....how to be a better person touchy feely crap:) But I think there's a total of four poles, two lift poles one single phase primary pole and maybe on overhead guy pole. I'll check back in with ya tomorrow and give you an update.
o, and the stuff that I messed up on today ~ well, I should have set the anchor a little bit more in line with the new pole and while pulling the old pole I should have let the pole rest in the line trucks ears a little more before trying to push the butt of the pole towards the front of the truck....nothing major but things that I should know better seeing as I'm a 3rd step apprentice...
anywho,
see ya tomorrow
No comments:
Post a Comment