How Many Electricians Does It Take To Climb A Pole

One of the guys I worked for had run a line on poles out toward Fort Peck Dam (East of Glasgow, Montana).  He said that he had a young guy, a tall skinny kid about 17 years old hanging around and pestering him for days wanting to climb one of those poles.

One day the boss finally gave him a set of climbers and let him climb one of the poles.  The boy got up to the top of the pole and the boss said: “You wait there (where did he think he was going to go?), I’m getting something out of the truck.”

When he turned back the boy had slipped.  Apparently as he had come down, his turtle neck sweater had caught on an insulator and stretched out about 10 feet and he was hanging by it.  The sweater had slipped up enough that it had trapped his arms over his head.  The boy couldn’t get his spikes into the pole for purchase and he couldn’t grip anything with his hands.

The boss had to get another set of climbers to go up and rescue him.  The kid never came back to work again.

I was once tasked to go out to a job where the customer had put in his own pole.  It was about 5 feet around at the base.  My safety belt was not long enough to go around.   I began to climb with my hands (make that finger tips due to the size of the pole) gripping the sides of the pole as I went up.  About 10 feet up my hands (finger tips) slipped and down I came.  I discovered two things:  1). That’s the quick way down.  2). The ground is hard.

And it made me mad.  It made me so mad I got on the pole and climbed all the way to the top.  When I finished my work I thought: “Now how am I going to get down?”

I knew I couldn’t stay up there all day.  Those leg irons have a stiff strap about 1-1/2” across under the bottom of your feet in the arch.  If you stand there long enough your feet go numb all the way up to your hips.  I knew that about 10 feet from the ground I was going to have to let the safety strap loose and maneuver with just two points of contact on my feet and five miniscule (and insecure) points on each hand.

I really hung on tight the last ten feet.  I was sure glad there were no rocks at the bottom of that pole.

The point of all of this, I suppose, is to make sure you don’t climb the pole on the side where the meter is.  If you fell you could really injure yourself severely.

Pole Work

When I first started out doing electrical work, if we had to do work on yard poles or poles along the road, we had to use a set of pole climbers.  I mentioned that the first electrical job I had, involved climbing a pole.  Back then the companies I worked for did not invest in bucket trucks or cherry picker booms as some refer to them.  We used pole climbers.

Pole climbers are stirrups you strap onto your legs with a spike on the inside of each foot about 1-1/2” long.  (Tree climbers used the same type of equipment but their spikes are about 3 inches long as they have to penetrate past the thickness of the bark.)  There is also a body belt that is strapped on with a big buckle.  There are also hooks strategically placed around the belt to hold tools, and a “D” ring on each side designed to work with a “safety” belt.  To work properly the safety belt would be slung around the pole and each end clipped to the “D” ring on each side.

The beginner’s way to climb a pole is to strap the leg irons to your legs.  Tighten them up tight; put your body belt on; attach your tools to the hooks; toss the safety strap around the pole; and climb the pole a step at a time – sliding the strap up as you go.  That sounds reasonable.

However the top of the pole is not as thick as the bottom.  Therefore as the climber is ascending he must periodically stop to tighten up the safety strap.  Failing to do so would make the safety strap too long when you reached the top of the pole and you would have to lean too far back to place tension on the strap.  In other words, there wouldn’t be much safety involved at that point, not to mention being able to do any work.  Coming back down the pole was just doing the whole process in reverse.

If the pole existed in its own world you might not have a lot of problem.  Poles though, are put there to do a function.  That function includes wires, cables, boxes, and devices; all of which are very capable of getting in your way while climbing, descending or working on the pole.  Getting around all those impediments takes too much time.

You learn to look at the pole, estimate how big it is at the top, and make the strap adjustment to that size while still on the ground.  Then, strapping the safety belt into only one of the “D” rings you leave the other end to hang free.  You walk up the pole using your spikes and gripping the pole with your hands.  At the top, you use one arm to encircle the pole while with your other hand you sling the safety belt around the pole and attach it to the remaining “D” ring.  Lean back and you’re all set to work.  It didn’t take me long to purchase my own set of pole climbing equipment.  It was all leather and I still have it around in my stuff somewhere after nearly 60 years.

One day I was sent out to do some work on a farmer’s yard pole.  A farmer’s yard pole will have a cable coming in from the power company.  It will have a yard light on it at the top and a meter near the bottom about 5 to 6 feet up from the ground.  There will be conduit running up the pole from the meter to the yard light.  There will also be cables running up the pole and overhead to the house, the barn, the shop, the granary, the garage, the storage shed, actually to everything but the dog house.

The wind was blowing pretty well that day.  When you’re on a pole, you cannot stand with the wind at your side, as it will blow you around the pole.  You either have to have the wind in your face or at your back.

For this job I had to disconnect a number of wires at the top of the pole and then reconnect them.  When I had accomplished the task, I realized that I had run some wires between me and the safety strap.  I had two choices.  I could either unfasten all the wires I had just connected to facilitate getting the wires out from the area of the safety belt and then refasten and re-tape them.

Or I could (carefully) pull out one of the spikes and unfasten one side of the strap, swing my body way around on the remaining spike, taking a chance that the remaining spike would not twist out, then plant the other spike in the pole and refasten the belt.  I thought about it for a little while and decided I really needed to get out of the wind.  I chose option #2.

It worked.

As I came down I noticed that the farmer had been watching the whole process.  All he said was; “Oh, here’s a cap.”

I said; “Yes, it is mine.”

He said; “Here is a glove.”

I said; “Yes, it blew out of my pocket.”

He said; “Here is another glove.”

I said; “Yes, it is mine.”

He said; “Here is a jack-knife.”

I said; “Yes, I dropped it.  You don’t see any nerve laying in the grass do you?”

He said; “What?”

I said; “I lost that up there too.”

The Last Nail

One day I was working with a young kid, well younger than me anyway, on a job that required a ladder, and a nail gun that would shoot fasteners into concrete.  (Yes, it’s another one of those “wild” tools.)

We were using a straight ladder with round wooden rungs and had set it up leaning against a wall.  The kid had climbed up the ladder with his feet about head height off the ground.  He shot a nail from the gun into some concrete.

A short tangential diversion here: One time on a different job a homeowner wanted to know how a power nail gun worked.  I set a brick on the cement floor and shot a nail into it.

Any engineer could have anticipated the result.  At the shot, the brick split in half, each half scooting in a different direction; both halves traveling until they contacted the nearest wall.

In older concrete a nail shot from a power set gun may at times hit a rock or pebble in the concrete and “spall.”  This means that a wide, shallow portion of concrete will chip off and go flying to who knows where.  The nail will also travel elsewhere.  It is usually possible to know where the nail goes by its distinctive ring when it lands.

This is exactly what happened when the kid shot that first nail.  However, for some reason neither of us heard it land, and though we looked diligently neither of us could find it.  Well, no real problem there.  It was just an old bent nail by now.  We forgot about it.  The next shot was good and we went on with our work.

A couple of days later we were again using the ladder with the round rungs.  When we set it up we found the nail that had disappeared.  It had disappeared into one of the round rungs (about ¾” in diameter).  It was the rung the kid’s feet had been on when he shot the nail.

It was also the rung next to my head at the time the kid shot the nail.

The kid had barely missed getting a nail in his foot.  I had barely missed getting shot in the head with a wild nail.  Steel toed boots and hard hats are cumbersome and sometimes inflict difficult parameters to the normal ease of work flow.  But they can sure come in handy.

Safety measures are a good thing.  Safety measures are there for our protection.  I firmly believe it.  They have probably saved my life numerous times.

It is one aspect of the work that was difficult for me to get used to.