Pole Saw for use around wires?

[BlueRidgeMark]

You are wrong. Show me where the manufacturer says its insulated.......

Ill buy lunch if you can show me an AERIAL wire that the manufacturer says is insulated.

As a matter of fact Ill grab a piece of Triplex from the yard cut it in half, take a pic post it and you can put a red arrow pointing to the insulation. =

I'm guessing that you folks have been taught that "insulation" means something that will prevent electrocution.

That's not what the term means. Insulation is simply something that impedes the flow of electrical current. It's not an absolute. Some insulators are better than others. Vacuum is insulation. (Check what's inside an electronic tube. Er, "valve" for the Brits.) A plastic sandwich bag is insulation. Even pure water is insulation. Add some salts to it and it becomes a very good conductor. NOT an insulator!

Even air is insulation, if you have enough of it. That's why the ceramic insulators on power lines are corrugated. The corrugations make for a longer path for electricity to travel, thus improving the insulating properties.

Air is what USED to insulate house wiring, back in the old days. That and a little cotton. Yes, cotton. House wiring was originally wound with cotton thread, and the wires were run on the walls, exposed, with the two phases separated by about two inches. The cotton and air were enough INSULATION to prevent the current from flowing between the wires.

Wasn't very safe, though. That's why it was moved inside the walls. The cotton and air weren't good enough insulators for safety.


No insulator is perfect. Most lose some insulating ability when heated. All will break down when presented with enough voltage. Many inulators break down gradually, some break down catastrophically, that is, suddenly. All can be physically breached (as with the often mentioned pinholes).


If there were no insulator between the wires on a house drop, the current would flow directly from one wire to another, much faster than the transformer could handle, and it would overheat and explode.


Oh, Boston, take a look at the second row, on the right end.

http://www.fujikura.com/prod/power/p10_3.html

Or take a look at this:

http://tinyurl.com/28lf3r (Fair warning - it's a PDF file.)



Here, I'll quote it for you:

APPLICATIONS
Used to supply power, usually from a pole-mounted transformer, to the user's service head where connection to the service
entrance cable is made. To be used at voltages of 600 volts phase-to-phase or less and at conductor temperatures not to
exceed 75°C for polyethylene insulated conductors or 90°C for crosslinked polyethylene (XLP) insulated conductors.

Here's a similar listing ('nugher PDF):

http://tinyurl.com/2gejg9

• Meets or Exceeds: ASTM B-231
Stranded 1350 Aluminum
Conductor
• XLP Insulated Conductors
• Neutral - ACSR, ASTM B-232
• ANSI/ICEA S-76-474


ASSEMBLY
• Two insulated conductors
are twisted around the
neutral conductor

Hmmm. The insulation on this brand can be ordered in 45 or 60 mill thickness. Cool.

Uh, yes, that IS aerial drop.

Guys, I know what happens in these industrial classes. The material is not intended for engineers, the purpose is SAFETY. So the material is often written by professional writers, who are NOT technically competent in the material they are creating. They are given the raw information, and they convert it into a curriculum. Important distinctions are often lost in the translation. Then some guy gets sent to a class, where he's expected to learn the material and then become a trainer himself. More gets lost in the translation.

So you guys who take the classes often get wrong information. That's how it works.


So, Boston, what's for lunch?

 

[OTG BOSTON]

So, Boston, what's for lunch?

Have you seen his avatar? I'm guessing Alpo

 

[OTG BOSTON]

Have you seen his avatar? I'm guessing Alpo

I'm further speculating on a long rebuttal.........................

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Yeah, probably so... <sigh>

http://demo.apogee.net/foe/ftsds.asp

www.nexansenergy.com/egy/power/CdnService/Neutral_Supported_Cable_App_Des.pdf

http://www.answers.com/topic/service-drop-1

http://www.sural.com/products/insulated/drop.htm

www.generalcable.com/NR/rdonlyres/7B3AB47D-9242-4CDC-82A9-...BAEF3852/0/pg12_13_14.pdf

www.egr.msu.edu/age/aenewsletter/1_nov_dec_03/surbrook11_03.htm

http://www.egr.msu.edu/age/aenewsletter/1_nov_dec_03/surbrook11_03.htm


I could post HUNDREDS of links like this that talk about the INSULATED triplex aerial service drops.

Maybe thousands. :monkey:


Here's a good summation:

Utilizing these properties, multiplex cable, a new secondary and service-drop multiple conductor, was developed. These cables are either duplex, triplex, or quadruplex, consisting of one, two or three insulated conductors wrapped around a bare aluminum or acsr neutral. The bare neutral act as the messenger, supporting the entire cable when strung is an aerial line.

Pizza is good, 'Bull. I like Hawaiian. Maybe dil could chip in a little?

 

[diltree]

Mark.....

Your not on the engineering site pal...yes of course an arborist considers insulation as protection against electrocution. We use insulated buckets, insulated hot gloves and insulated pole saws to apply our trade safely. Your perception is reckless from an arborist's point of view, and telling people that service wires are not dangerous is only going to get some one hurt. The point of these discussions are electricity and agriculture and when the two concepts are combined you bring nothing to the table!

and I'm not surprised you like fruit on your pizza......

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Your not on the engineering site pal...

Facts are facts, regardless of where you are.

yes of course an arborist considers insulation as protection against electrocution. We use insulated buckets, insulated hot gloves and insulated pole saws

Yep. And some of the wires you work around are not insulated, and some are.

Your perception

It's not my "perception", dil. It's fact. Service drops are insulated. You might as well argue that the sun comes up in the west.

is reckless from an arborist's point of view, and telling people that service wires are not dangerous is only going to get some one hurt.

Go on back there and find where I said they weren't dangerous.

The point of these discussions are electricity and agriculture and when the two concepts are combined you bring nothing to the table!

Well, if having the correct facts, and considerably more knowledge about electricity than you is NOTHING, well, go for it. You won't learn anything that way, and how that improves your life or makes you safer is a mystery, but it's your life.


Actually, your misunderstanding about insulation is a lot more likely to get someone hurt or killed than having an accurate understanding of the subject. Truth is your friend. Error is not. Thinking that "insulation = protection from electrocution" is dangerous.

 

[diltree]

Mark,

What don't you understand about this being an arborist forum........like I said, in the field: insulation refers to protection from electricity. You have no traing as an arborist, or as a line clearance tree trimmer so I can understand were you are completely ignorant to that fact. I'm not on here feeding people B.S., I actually operate a million dollar corporation that has 50 years of experience of completing line clearance contracts safely with no injuries or fatalities. What people need to know here is whats safe and whats not! You trimming your service wire from the ground is not safe....Bottom line. You mentioned before that you couldn't afford to place your service underground. Well with your "status" as an engineer maybe you should find a good paying job, and get it done for your own safety, don't worry mark there are plenty of high paying jobs out there for someone of your qualifications.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

What don't you understand about this being an arborist forum........like I said, in the field: insulation refers to protection from electricity.

I understand that. It's too bad, too, because such a wrong idea is dangerous. Just because everybody you know thinks that insulation is protection from electrocution, doesn't make it true. It's not, and it's a dangerous idea.

You have no traing as an arborist, or as a line clearance tree trimmer

Never claimed to. But I know what insulation is.

so I can understand were you are completely ignorant to that fact. I'm not on here feeding people B.S., I actually operate a million dollar corporation that has 50 years of experience of completing line clearance contracts safely with no injuries or fatalities.

That's commendable. Doesn't mean you know what insulation is. You don't.

What people need to know here is whats safe and whats not! You trimming your service wire from the ground is not safe....Bottom line.

Never said it was.

You mentioned before that you couldn't afford to place your service underground. Well with your "status" as an engineer maybe you should find a good paying job,

I've got a good paying job, probably enough to make most tree folks on this site green with envy.

I'm also digging myself out from under a stack of medical bills, and horizontal boring is not cheap, and not my highest priority. (I could trench, but I'd kill a bunch of trees.)

Nor does that have anything to do with the question of insulation.


Dil, would you care to go to any of those many links I posted and tell the manufacturers of cables that they don't know what they are talking about when they say their cables are insulated? Care to go to, oh, pick any power company, and look over their regs that call for insulated triplex for service drops and tell them they don't know what they're talking about? HINT: You'll find the language almost identical for just about any power company in the U.S., because they all take their wording from the NESC. Hey, whilie your'e at it, why don't you straighten out THOSE idiots? They're not arborists, after all, what do THEY know about electricity?

:monkey:


Dil, you can learn, or you can stand on your pride. Your choice.


Not learning can be dangerous.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

I'm with you Diltree. Blueridgemark should butt out of arborist 101. He has no business here offering advice to arborist about trimming around power lines and service drops.

Where do you think the regs about working around power lines come from? Who develops those safety regulations?

Arborists?

Or electrical engineers?

HINT: It's not arborists.

He just doesn't know when he doesn't know.

That's a good description of you two. Worse, you refuse to learn. Go tell the entire electrical power industry that they are all wrong when they say that service drops are insulated.


BTW, Dan, seals DO deteriorate with age. Leave any internal combustion engine laying around long enough, and the seals will deteriorate. Some faster, some slower, but all will deteriorate eventually. If you think it makes sense to rebuild an engine, and skip replacing a few seals, be my guest.

 

[diltree]

Mark,

Why cant you recognize that insulation can be a number of different things. The word insulation holds a completely different meaning to a Carpenter then it does to a line clearance tree trimmer. You said that you were perfectly safe to trim your service wire because they are insulated. Your wrong, they do not provide the type of insulation that makes them safe to work around for anyone except a qualified line trimmer. Thats the message we need to send here on arborist 101, not pickles on trees or fruit on your pizza, go hit the joke forum where you belong.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Let me take this a bit out of order:

not pickles on trees

Did you take that crack as an insult? If so, I most sincerely apologize. I did NOT intend to insult you. I was just making a joke. A bad one, perhaps, but I certainly was NOT trying to insult you.

I respect you, Dil, and we have gotten along just fine before now, so I wanted to clear that out of the way.

Why cant you recognize that insulation can be a number of different things. The word insulation holds a completely different meaning to a Carpenter then it does to a line clearance tree trimmer.

ABSOLUTELY!

Maybe we're getting somewhere.

Of course, to a carpenter the word insulation probably means something pink and fluffy that makes you itch. Obviously, we're not talking about that.


When we're talking about electricity, it means something else, but it does NOT mean anything you want it to mean. It does not mean NOT mean "protection from electrocution". I can understand how that idea got started and accepted in the tree industry, but it's not correct, and it's dangerous. It's based on an incomplete understanding. Go ask a power company engineer if it means that. He'll tell you NO WAY! Why? Because he knows better. There's NO SUCH THING. There are only degrees of protection, degrees of danger. Or, inversely, degrees of safety.

Something that is "insulated" will give you a higher degree of protection from electrocution than something that is not, but NOTHING can be relied on to be "protection from electrocution". That is a dangerous idea. You've made the term to mean something more than it does, and it's a dangerous error. You tell some new guy that this pole will protect him from electrocution, and you've given him false confidence. Dil, I don't think you'd tell that to someone, would you? Yet by insisting on your definition of "insulation", that's reallly the message you put across.

That's like thinking that a fall harness will protect you from a fall. It's certainly LESS dangerous to climb with a fall harness. It might even be fair to say it's a LOT less dangerous. But it's not "perfectly safe", right? And you would never tell someone that it was.

(Yes, I've done climbing. Not trees, steel towers. <shrug> Gravity doesn't care if you fall from a tree or a tower.)


Insulation won't keep you safe any more than a fall harness will. KNOWLEDGE is a much better safety device than any insulated pole or fall harness, right?

You said that you were perfectly safe to trim your service wire

No, sir, I did not. It's NOT perfectly safe. It's a lot less dangerous than trimming primaries. It's a lot less dangerous than a lot of other activities. (Base jumping, for example.) But it's not safe. Neither is driving to work.

because they are insulated. Your wrong, they do not provide the type of insulation that makes them safe to work around

Didn't say they were. They are much less dangerous than primaries, but they are not safe.

Thats the message we need to send here on arborist 101,

Agreed. Which is why I agreed with clearance's bottom line: "If you have to ask, stay away". I would never advise Joe Homeowner to mess with his service drop. I know enough about it (including what the dangers are and what cracks look like) that I feel comfortable doing so, for myself. Again, though, if you have to ask, don't.

Let's back up and look at the big picture. Several people on this thread (and others) have insisted that service drops are not insulated. My point here is that's simply not true, and I have provided ample evidence of that to anyone who has an open mind. The entire electric power industry considers those lines to be insulated, from the manufacturers to the contractors who install them to the linemen who work on them to the people who write the electrical codes. They ARE insulated. Do they consider them SAFE?

No. Nobody said they were, as far as I can tell.

 

[DonnyO]

Where do you think the regs about working around power lines come from? Who develops those safety regulations?

Arborists?

Or electrical engineers?

HINT: It's not arborists.

Now that is just bad misinformation. Yet another thread derailed by a guy who spends more time on a keyboard than in or working on trees.:notrolls2: especially the dork type

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Now that is just bad misinformation.

How is it misinformation? Where do those regs come from? Who prepares them?


Facts, please. I've presented plenty. Your turn.

 

[BostonBull]

I'm guessing that you folks have been taught that "insulation" means something that will prevent electrocution.

That's not what the term means. Insulation is simply something that impedes the flow of electrical current. It's not an absolute. Some insulators are better than others. Vacuum is insulation. (Check what's inside an electronic tube. Er, "valve" for the Brits.) A plastic sandwich bag is insulation. Even pure water is insulation. Add some salts to it and it becomes a very good conductor. NOT an insulator!

Even air is insulation, if you have enough of it. That's why the ceramic insulators on power lines are corrugated. The corrugations make for a longer path for electricity to travel, thus improving the insulating properties.

Air is what USED to insulate house wiring, back in the old days. That and a little cotton. Yes, cotton. House wiring was originally wound with cotton thread, and the wires were run on the walls, exposed, with the two phases separated by about two inches. The cotton and air were enough INSULATION to prevent the current from flowing between the wires.

Wasn't very safe, though. That's why it was moved inside the walls. The cotton and air weren't good enough insulators for safety.


No insulator is perfect. Most lose some insulating ability when heated. All will break down when presented with enough voltage. Many inulators break down gradually, some break down catastrophically, that is, suddenly. All can be physically breached (as with the often mentioned pinholes).


If there were no insulator between the wires on a house drop, the current would flow directly from one wire to another, much faster than the transformer could handle, and it would overheat and explode.


Oh, Boston, take a look at the second row, on the right end.

http://www.fujikura.com/prod/power/p10_3.html

Or take a look at this:

http://tinyurl.com/28lf3r (Fair warning - it's a PDF file.)



Here, I'll quote it for you:




Here's a similar listing ('nugher PDF):

http://tinyurl.com/2gejg9




Hmmm. The insulation on this brand can be ordered in 45 or 60 mill thickness. Cool.

Uh, yes, that IS aerial drop.

Guys, I know what happens in these industrial classes. The material is not intended for engineers, the purpose is SAFETY. So the material is often written by professional writers, who are NOT technically competent in the material they are creating. They are given the raw information, and they convert it into a curriculum. Important distinctions are often lost in the translation. Then some guy gets sent to a class, where he's expected to learn the material and then become a trainer himself. More gets lost in the translation.

So you guys who take the classes often get wrong information. That's how it works.


So, Boston, what's for lunch?

Mark thats all fine and Dandy, but I have only ever seen those types of drops in industrial areas.

Those are not what we are talking about. We are talking about standard 1/0 house services.

And you are 100% correct all those things listed are considered insulated. Again those are NOT what we are talking about.

We(linesman) consider insulation the pink(usually) THICK jacket BETWEEN the conductor and the outside plastic jacket.

The point is you are wrong. You listed highly specialized cables in those posts. I could show you ADSS fiber optic cables that are insulated to 500KV, but to a normal person, in a normal situation, yuo mention fiber and they think of lashed cables on a steel strand support wire.

I am glad you are in this discussion as you are a wealth of knowledge!! But rememeber ther K.I.S.S. principle!

None of these guys here will ever see ANY of the cables you listed, nevermind work around them.

 

[DonnyO]

How is it misinformation? Where do those regs come from? Who prepares them?


Facts, please. I've presented plenty. Your turn.

ANSI A-300 and Z-133 both have sections pertaining to arborists' working around energized lines. Last time I checked the committee was made up of mostly arborists'.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Mark thats all fine and Dandy, but I have only ever seen those types of drops in industrial areas.

Interesting. I haven't been around Boston much. Maybe you folks have really antiquated wiring or something.

Those are not what we are talking about. We are talking about standard 1/0 house services.

And you are 100% correct all those things listed are considered insulated. Again those are NOT what we are talking about.

The point is you are wrong. You listed highly specialized cables in those posts.

None of these guys here will ever see ANY of the cables you listed, nevermind work around them.

Those are standard house drops. All over the country. National Electric Code, Section 230, I believe. Are you familiar with it?


Hmmmm. Seems that Florida Power thinks that house AND commercial service drops are insulated, too.

A service drop or service cable connects the transformer to the weatherhead or downpipe of a home or business. Service drops are the overhead lines that connect an aerial transformer to a weatherhead. Service cables are underground lines that connect an aerial or padmount transformer to a downpipe via an underground route. Both the service drop and cable are insulated wires.

Whats with all these power industry people thinking that service drops are insulated? What idiots! They need to hire an arborist to teach them about electricity!

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

ANSI A-300 and Z-133 both have sections pertaining to arborists' working around energized lines. Last time I checked the committee was made up of mostly arborists', and one engineer they keep around for comic relief :jester:

Do you really mean to tell me that a bunch of arborists got togehter and decided on what consituted safe working conditions around power lines? Can you really be that stupid?


I have some bad news for you. They took their regs straight from the NESC.

 

[BostonBull]

Go get me a picture of one of those houise drops in FL.

I have two of my best and clossest friends that work for FP&L......I went own and worked on their system for 1 year.....

Your wrong, admit it!

Like I said we deal with *usually* #2, #4, 1/0, 2/0, 3/0, and 4/0 triplex house services.

Alot of times all you see are old number 4 copper services, and no ts not a Boston thing. I was an on the road linesman for 4 years, I worked every state on the eastern seaboard and as far west as Iowa. I have only seen those drops a few times.

and as for the regs they are created by Engineers, linesman, power co, and OSHA. So you get partial credit on those ones. Everyone listed makes suggestions and OSHA decides on the standards with the national electric code people.

 

[BostonBull]

Deal with it 99% of the house drops have a WEATHER coating/jacket on them!!

 

[BostonBull]

So your saying that the secondary cables are insulated and have a di-electric coating in them?

Not 95% of the ones I have seen!