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KD5NRH wrote:

jimlongley wrote:But there won't be any conduit unless you provide it, and fish it, and have your electrician wire it (it won'r be legal for you to wire it unless you are a licensed electrician) and hook it up.

With the price of direct burial cable vs the price of 60ft of conduit, there's no reason not to have it properly protected. As for the rest, it's not a whole lot more work than getting it properly put up above ground, and reduces the potential for future issues.

But what I am talking about here is replacing existing with new, a very expensive proposition, where you seem to be talking about new construction and putting it in the ground from the start.

KD5NRH wrote:

And of course, it wouldn't have to be your dog that dug it up, maybe you decided to plant some roses or fence posts along the property line of the house you just bought with buried facilities, and you hit them yourself, I can posit literally thousands of possibilities, most of which would not involve your ninja trainer.

And none of which address the fact that there are already things running under my yard that will cost me a lot if I break them. Therefore, I avoid breaking them. The simple fact is, I don't have drunken backhoe contests in my yard, and any contractor I hire is insured against such things.

Which puts you in the very small percentage of people who actually ever consider that there might be something buried right where they are going to dig. And I have witnessed one of those drunken contests, not with a backhoe, but two bubbas with yard tractors seeing who could dig the deeper trench, and when one scraped the buried 13.2kV line in the right of way behind his house, boy did the sparks fly. And that was an area very well posted "BURIED POWER - DO NOT DIG" as a matter of fact they used one of the sign posts as a starting point.

Again, I am talking a global everyone here, not just you.

KD5NRH wrote:

Don't forget, I spent an entire career dealing with buried and underground facilities. Everything on your side of the meter is your responsibility, and you can denigrate the 60 feet of wire as being mere bagatelle, but when it comes to dealing with a buried fault, it is very complicated to find and fix.

Why would I (or any electrician worth using) look for the fault? It's 60 feet: unhook both ends and pull it out, using it to fish a new line in the process. We're not talking about a five mile run that needs heavy machinery. I don't use a TDR on the cable for my mobile antenna when it fails for the simple reason that anything requiring more than $30 worth of equipment is more expensive and time consuming than pulling a new cable.

IF it's in conduit, maybe, but that depends on the conduit never having been damaged, had mud leak into it, had the soil shift and crimp, or many other things that I have seen happen. After all, the suggestion I made was that you or someone working for you or a pet or something had damaged the conduit in the first place. Now it's not possible to just pull out the old and pull in the new, and it's still your pocket the repairs are coming out of.

Like I said, I've been there and done that, and tried to pull cable through damaged conduit and had to shoot trouble in buried cable. It's been thought of.

KD5NRH wrote:

I have seen buried power service drops, put in by the power company, not by an electrical contractor hired by the homeowner, that ended up almost on the surface after final grading and erosion took place.

But have you ever seen an overhead residential water supply or sewer? I bet the same specialized techniques that allow water pipes to be buried will work with conduit when properly applied.

Yes, I have seen overhead water supply, and above ground sewer, and not just in third world countries. There are places in the US where it is nearly impossible to bury anything due to soil conditions, just go out on the caprock for a few days and look around at some of the trailers out there, you'll find a lot of stuff above the ground.

And what specialized techniques for conduit would you be referring to, the same ones you implied didn't exist in your first paragraph?

The thing you are overlooking, and you are getting real close to making personal attacks in your objections to what I am saying, is that what I am talking about is passing legislation requiring upgrades to all existing facilities, replacing all of the above ground stuff, an expensive and time consuming proposition that someone has to pay for, while you seem to be talking about nothing but new construction or your own specific narrow circumstance. Stop and consider for a few minutes instead of just sending a knee jerk response.

Like I said, if passing a law would solve it, gun control would have worked long ago.

KD5NRH wrote:

jimlongley wrote:So you get a law passed which says all power companies have to have their neighborhood distribution lines and service drop buried. Who is going to pay for it?

In case you haven't seen the news lately, passing such a law would just be a way of getting us some benefit out of money we'll be losing anyway. I'd rather have it go to clearing out the spiderweb over the town than to some alcoholic Chinese prostitutes or lifetime resort plans for terrorist suspects.

By all means put all the meters at the curb, but remember that you will be responsible for everything beyond the meter, including if your dog digs up part of the service drop and it develops a high resistance short to ground, which spins your meter merrily for power you are not using, and how do you prove which watt you used and which was accidental.

If my dog digs up a buried conduit, chews through it, and I don't notice, I'm suing his sharkninja trainer. There are plenty of things that can spin the meter inside my walls that are much less protected than a few yards of cable in conduit under a foot or more of dirt.

But there won't be any conduit unless you provide it, and fish it, and have your electrician wire it (it won'r be legal for you to wire it unless you are a licensed electrician) and hook it up.

And there are very few things inside your house that can spin your meter quite as much or as fast as the unfused line.

As far as the laws are concerned, note that I am talking practicalities here. We are already spending (wasting) that other money, this would be in addition to, not instead of.

And of course, it wouldn't have to be your dog that dug it up, maybe you decided to plant some roses or fence posts along the property line of the house you just bought with buried facilities, and you hit them yourself, I can posit literally thousands of possibilities, most of which would not involve your ninja trainer.

Don't forget, I spent an entire career dealing with buried and underground facilities. Everything on your side of the meter is your responsibility, and you can denigrate the 60 feet of wire as being mere bagatelle, but when it comes to dealing with a buried fault, it is very complicated to find and fix.

There is no PRB-1 for this sort of thing, the power company says the problem is on your part of the line, and then it becomes your problem unless and until you prove, to their satisfaction, that it is not, and the average citizen is ill prepared to deal with a popped GFI, much less a real ground fault.

Do you know how to locate a buried fault?

Are you sure it's a foot or more down? Heck, my dogs have dug all the way to beneath my foundation in a couple of places, and that's better than a foot by far, with all of the digging done by the little dogs. I have seen buried power service drops, put in by the power company, not by an electrical contractor hired by the homeowner, that ended up almost on the surface after final grading and erosion took place. We are talking real world here, a real world that has been in place for a lot of years, not what if a law was passed, with ideal circumstances.

Simply passing a law isn't going to make it so, or gun control would have worked a long time ago.

KD5NRH wrote:

jimlongley wrote:I would think with all of the tree damage t power lines shown in the various media, that people would have a better understanding of just how poorly power lines and trees get along.

How about making the electric companies actually do something proactive about the situation? There are lots of places in the world where all utility lines are buried. They're not an eyesore, don't blow down every time the wind exceeds 3mph, and don't get tangled up in trees.

I would think a fellow ham would have a better appreciation for the practicalities involved.

"Making" them do it is where part of the problem comes in. Having spent a lot of time dealing with power companies as a telephone engineer, I can assure you that the utilities, power, telephone, and cable tv, would love to have the convenience of having all of their facilities, at least at the distribution level, buried or underground (underground usually implies running through conduits and manholes) but the problems are almost biblical in proportion.

First, all the way back when Morse and his partners and competitors were putting up the first electrical communications systems, they had to take to the air because there was no efficient means of burying it and protecting it. So, for a hundred years, everything went in the air, even including new improved stuff that might survive well in the ground.

Now we have a massive embedded infrastructure that is very expensive to replace.

So you get a law passed which says all power companies have to have their neighborhood distribution lines and service drop buried. Who is going to pay for it?

Comfortably ensconced in my buried service neighborhood, I don't feel like subsidizing those who won't responsibly keep their trees out of legal easements.

So we have the individual homeowners pay? Nope, already established law under the Communications Act of 1934, which establishes universal service (almost) and makes everyone pay for everyone. (that’s a wholesale truncation of the real thing, but for brevity’s sake)

And then there are the costs of the new plant, the engineering of the whole mess, the people who won’t allow the electric to run across their yard because they are going to get kidney stones from the vibrations, and on and on. Rocky ground, muddy ground, and various other factors come into consideration and add even more complication.

I have been there and done that and dealt with those situations. Just relocating a couple of miles of telephone cable, already in place, that GE built a power station over, cost over a million dollars, and I was able to get GE to pay for it, but it was a long hard fight and those fights would multiply exponentially.

Lots and lots of considerations come into play, and make “just make the power companies . . .” very impractical – and it’s all been thought of before.

Interestingly, and like I said, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and such, Europe is way ahead of us in this regard, want to know why?

We bombed them off the map in World War Two, and they got to build it over again, more efficiently, and guess who paid for that, and it wasn’t them.

And pole mounted meters have been used for a long time too, usually on a temporary basis, but I have known of some permanent ones due to access considerations. But consider that, although a minor consideration, the power company splits the cost of delivering power to your meter amongst all users, you bear the cost of getting it from the meter to your appliances. Pennies to be sure, but every penny counts, as ninemm points out.

By all means put all the meters at the curb, but remember that you will be responsible for everything beyond the meter, including if your dog digs up part of the service drop and it develops a high resistance short to ground, which spins your meter merrily for power you are not using, and how do you prove which watt you used and which was accidental. Just ask the water companies about that.

And there is so much more to consider.

Like those tree roots growing into the lines, and Asplundh coming around and trimming them every couple of years.

subsonic wrote:

eric wrote:oncor rep patrick hogan supposedly said they could tresspass on your private property any time without permission from the land owner.

I see an exemption in 30.05 for peace officers. I see an exemption for firemen and EMS for "official duty under exigent circumstances." I don't see an exemption for utility contractors.

I can't claim to be a right of way or easement expert in TX, but I know that in NY blocking access to an easement is as illegal as blocking the easement itself. OTOH, access to a meter is not an easement and they can make appointments to do so.

kevinr277 wrote:is anyone elses trees getting butchered after this last round of storms in Dallas Ft Worth Arlington area..?! Who can a homeowner contact about the needless buchering of hundred year old trees..??

See above, contact your Public Utilities Commission, expect little progress.

I would think with all of the tree damage t power lines shown in the various media, that people would have a better understanding of just how poorly power lines and trees get along. I, personally, think that the law should provide penalties for homeowners whose trees are in any way responsible for power outages in weather events like we just suffered, and that those homeowners should bear part of the costs of restoration as well as outages expenses. Then maybe there would be less "needless buchering (sic)" of any trees, much less "hundred year old" ones.

An utility easement is legally treated as the property of the utility company, this is a fact that allowed me to cost GE about $1.5 mil a bunch of years ago, when they violated our 9 the phone company's) easement and built a power switching station right over one of our subscriber cables.

OTOH, Molon_labe is right, they do not have a right to hurt your property in the process of maintaining the easement, although the easement does usually include unfettered access to the easement.

Asplundh has been in these fights many times before, as has just about every utility company in the US. Part of the problem stems from the Rural Electrification Act, and Communications Act all the way back in 1934. Our legislators back then, in their infinite wisdom, felt that the way to control the burgeoning monopolies in power and telecommunications was to establish a franchise type of system, which didn't really work as well as they anticipated.

One of the things that transpired was rules about where and when the utilities could place their facilities (just about anywhere they wanted) and what the landowner could do about it (essentially nothing) and just about every court case since then has found in the interest of the greater good for the public.

These days, due to one and/or another of those court cases, easements and access to them are usually written right into the deeds for propety, and by signing when purchasing the property the landowner is stating that the easement is ok with them, leading to problems trying to withdraw that permission.

That much said, and there is so much more, it is good to document, document, document, and hold them to the boundaries that they are required to stay within - a bunch of years ago 1985 to be exact, the power company had to build a drain for a ground mounted transformer, adjacent to my house, that had flooded, and they did damage to my property in the process. Although it took a little time I was able to prevail and get them to pay for the re-sodding of the area which they damaged, which was outside their easment and not necessary for their access to that easement (their argument to the court) and their fight against me in small claims court cost them more than it would have to just resod the few square feet they had torn up. When I became a telephone engineer responsibe for dealing with the power company about a variety of right of way, easement, and noise issues, I turned the tables a few times.