Power cable surprise.

[CHJ]

Discussing ramifications with a friend of possibly having the disruption of re-routing and placing underground some high voltage and domestic power supplies associated with a local development I was surprised to see one of the poles involved carried this mix of cabling (Herefordshire).

11,000 volt to local transformer
240 volt single phase back along same run of poles to domestic properties.
and the telephone lines for several properties.

As can be seen here.

Is this a common practice, can't say I've ever noticed similar elsewhere.

 

[NazNomad]

Shared service poles with Leccy & BT are pretty commonplace, although they were working hard to separate the two when I worked for them. Probably a combination of safety and wayleaves. I've climbed plenty of Leccy poles to work on the BT lines.

 

[paulm]

With the new house build in our back garden last year the electric guys mentioned that they weren't allowed to use the BT poles these days and had to run power supplies through trenches instead, safety reasons I believe he mentioned.

 

[Hot stuff]

The wayleave thing was a big bonus I remember but there were a load of rules regarding separation distance, length of parallel runs, long time ago though and I don't remember exact details. Don't think I ever came across that mix of cables but obviously it happens.

 

[NazNomad]

Don't think I ever came across that mix of cables but obviously it happens.

Come to the countryside ... I've seen farmers take a blue alkathene pipe up a pole and across the road to supply water to a cattle trough.

Same thing with electric fencing, draped it over the BT wires to clear the road... Took us hours to find where the weird 'ticking' was coming from on the customer's phone line half a mile away. :-/

 

[Hot stuff]

Quality! My favourite was the BT engineer who used a keyhole in a door to get dropwire into a building. Wouldn't have believed it unless I'd seen it.

 

[n0legs]

The shared pole thing has always gone on. The running of HV and LV on the same pole only requires the observance of some separation distances.
The addition of BT/comms lines is done by prior arrangement and again suitable separation distances are observed.
The matter of electricity using BT poles is a no no due to the weight of our conductors. BT poles are not planted at the same depth as ours and they are not of the same girth.
I've seen many a pole snapped off in the storms , but the best ones I saw was when my younger brother, apprentice linesman at the time, cut off all three 70mm conductors at an intermediate pole. The sudden loss of tension, coupled with the weight of the conductors had the poles swaying about at 30 times in the head. This means 30 x the diameter of the head of the pole, as measurement of the movement.
Well feck me he was hanging on like a rodeo rider :lol: . No pole platform , no ladder. Just his belt and climbing irons :lol:
Luckily as all the weight had gone off the pole he was up it stopped swaying but stayed up. Two others snapped like carrots :lol:
He's never lived it down and wasn't trusted ever again to cut the lines alone again :lol:

Then there was the time Hoss fell from the crossarm of a pair of "H" poles, buckled the truss rods on the way down :shock:
But don't mention Hugh Parry. Huey didn't like digging holes. So Huey took a chainsaw to some new poles and planted them according to their required height. Anyone else seen The Leaning Tower of Pisa, ever wondered what it would look like if you could film it moving over the years ? Well I've got a pretty good idea how it would look :shock: :lol:
Huey wasn't with us for long. There's not many who miss him .

 

[Keithie]

Come to the countryside ... I've seen farmers take a blue alkathene pipe up a pole and across the road to supply water to a cattle trough.

Same thing with electric fencing, draped it over the BT wires to clear the road... Took us hours to find where the weird 'ticking' was coming from on the customer's phone line half a mile away. :-/

Countryside is different indeed ... out here just beyond the western frontier there's all sorts of funny doings. It's a recorded fact (acknowledged by the Exmoor Society) the wheel didnt make it to some parts of Exmoor until the second half ot the19th century. We even used to have our own time zone, 10 minutes behind London ...though we'd always say we'd be along directly.

We dont have street lights round our way but the overhead lines are hv & lv and some folk string their own cables along them as well. We even still have party lines on phones...pick up your phone and sometimes you can hear other conversations ...and you cant dial out till the other folk disconnect! As for broadband ...some folk get 75meg (former telecomms director's estate), some are restricted to 2meg (workers) ..all within a couple of miles of each other!

Wouldnt have it any other way!

 

[Woody2Shoes]

If you want to see really creative use of utility poles, then places like India and Brazil can be enlightening - many people consider electricity to be a free public good and think nothing of hooking in with crocodile clips etc. e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... me=3398432

 

[Freddyjersey2016]

In Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) in Vietnam a few years ago, I saw a team stringing extra phone cables across a 6 lane road, junction, by backing their truck across the road slowly unrolling the cable and cable tieing it to the mass of cables already there (approx 50cm across) whilst the live traffic just avoided them.