Utility poles
blog.plover.com
Utility poles
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Re: Utility poles
#2I absolutely love reading about a topic from a super enthusiastic non-expert. I want to subscribe to a weekly series called "Reasonably Intelligent Person Obsesses Over Something"
Re: Utility poles
#3Old utility poles can be reused in many ways too, but they must be outdoors, and not where it can have direct contact with people. Back in 2003 I called a local electric company if they could donate a few used poles to be used as beams for a bridge I was constructing for a local park. They we're happy to oblige. You can sometimes see these poles used in retaining walls and buried alongside hiking trails, used as water bars. I keep an eye out whenever I'm on a trail and am sometimes surprised to see an electric pole miles from a trailhead.
Re: Utility poles
#4> The cans are full of mineral oil, or sometimes vegetable oil! (Why are they full of oil? I don't know; I guess for insulation. But I could probably find out.)
I think the oil's for cooling, actually.
Re: Utility poles
#5> The cans are full of mineral oil, or sometimes vegetable oil! (Why are they full of oil? I don't know; I guess for insulation. But I could probably find out.) I think the oil's for cooling, actually.
Isn't it also to keep a pressurized environment in the can and prevent moisture leaking in, resulting in rust? I was reading up on these too recently. Oil is also used in large circuit breakers to extinguish electrical arcs.[1]
Re: Utility poles
#6I have always wondered about utility poles, they always seem very fragile. Why not just stick everything in the ground?
Re: Utility poles
#7I have always wondered about utility poles, they always seem very fragile. Why not just stick everything in the ground?
I think it's cost, mainly. Also, in my neighborhood of older homes it would be hard to get all the easements.
http://www.elp.com/articles/powergrid_international/print/vo...
Re: Utility poles
#8I did some work for an electricity utility and they wanted to get the pole IDs described in the article into our database, alongside the GIS data. The client explained that getting the IDs was kinda difficult and there were several different data sources for the various regions they provided service to. By and by we found a guy there who knew how everything worked and promised he'd get us the data that we needed - which he did.
But he told me an interesting story - the utility had about 50,000 power poles in their network. But due to various historical reasons and how their assets were digitized over the years he reckoned there were probably about 1000 of them that were on their maps, but that didn't actually exist anymore. And interestingly, he thought the inverse was also true; that there were perhaps 1000 poles out there that weren't on any of their maps. Big ten meter tall poles, some probably carrying live cables - didn't know they were there.
Re: Utility poles
#9Old utility poles can be reused in many ways too, but they must be outdoors, and not where it can have direct contact with people. Back in 2003 I called a local electric company if they could donate a few used poles to be used as beams for a bridge I was constructing for a local park. They we're happy to oblige. You can sometimes see these poles used in retaining walls and buried alongside hiking trails, used as wate…
> and not where it can have direct contact with people.
Could you expand on that? My elementary school had a playground structure made of old utility poles. Other than getting pitch on our clothes, they didn't seem particularly hazardous.
Re: Utility poles
#10I absolutely love reading about a topic from a super enthusiastic non-expert. I want to subscribe to a weekly series called "Reasonably Intelligent Person Obsesses Over Something"
I completely agree, and Tedium is probably what you're looking for: https://tedium.co