Stormy Weather

One time the contractor I was working for got a job to replace the lamps in fixtures mounted on tall poles surrounding some athletic fields.  One field was so large that the poles upon which the lights were mounted had a cross timber about 25 feet up holding high voltage lines.  The pole itself was about 35 feet high.

The pole was equipped with metal rungs about 4 inches wide staggered about a 12 to 14 inches apart going up the pole.  When you got up to the cross timber it was necessary to squeeze between the two high voltage lines to get up to the fixture.  Therefore the job required two people.  One to climb the pole and exchange the lamps and one person to man the knife switch to turn the power off and on.  It was the only way to get between the high voltage lines.  They had to be off.

Sometimes a metal rung would get bent downward and when you stepped on it your foot would slip and get caught on a small one inch lip on the outer edge of the rung.  It tended to give you a feeling of the “willies” when that happened.

We successfully managed to change all the lamps without falling or getting electrocuted.  That job prepared me for the next one.

The next athletic field (no soccer in those days, these were baseball diamonds) was located next to a large bluff.  The pole in this case was shorter and there was no cross timber.  The metal rungs did not begin for some distance up.  A representative from the power company was on site and had a lift truck.  A lift truck not a bucket truck.  He placed his lift like a ramp and rested the top against the pole.  I climbed up on his truck and made my way up the “ramp” to the climbing rungs.

When I got to the top I attached a pulley and rope system to the pole and started to exchange lamps.  The bluff was near to the pole and the top of the bluff was some feet above me.  We had worked on the lamp exchange for a little while when I happened to glance up over the top of the bluff and noticed dark black clouds rolling in.  I thought to myself; “Self, you better get off of this pole.”

That warning came too late.  Just then the weather dumped on me.  It rained and it blew and it howled fiercely for about 10 minutes.  I ducked my head down and hung on for dear life.  When the storm passed over, there was only one spot on my whole body that was dry and it wasn’t anywhere close to my face.  I was so soaked I came down the pole intending to go change clothes before completing the job.

When I reached the ground I noticed the other guy was also soaked.  I asked him what had happened to him.  Didn’t he sit the storm out in his truck?  He told me that he had been worried that I would attempt to climb down that he had run back and forth under me shouting up at me not to come down.  I had been tucked into the pole so far and the wind and rain were so loud I hadn’t noticed or heard him.

Then I noticed a huge bruise on his face up around his forehead and one eye and down across his nose.  So I questioned him again on what had happened there.  It seems that the pulley and bucket arrangement for hauling the lamps up to the fixtures was the culprit.  When the wind sprang up it had turned the bucket upside down and the large 500 Watt lamp had tumbled out and come down on his face when he was trying to get my attention.

Stormy weather.

That’s Just Shocking

One time I was sent out to a pasture to install a service for a watering tank pump.  Of course this service had to be hung on a pole.  Though I was aware of it, I didn’t really cognitively understand the significance of the high voltage power lines about 100 feet away.  The power line ran all the way across the state of Montana and carried about 150,000 volts.

To save time on the pole, I assembled the meter, disconnect, conduit, wire and weatherhead completely on the ground.  Then I pushed the entire assembly up the pole intending to fasten it at the bottom and as far up as I could reach, then climb the pole and complete fastening it as I went up.

I kept getting bit by electricity.  The service hadn’t been juiced up yet, so there was no reason for me to get bit.  I would look around and find no reason for it, examine all my connections, try again, and get bit.

I finally realized that electricity was coming through the air from the high voltage lines, running down the conduit, through me and into the ground, thus completing a circuit.  Since I was the last thing in line, I got the shock.

Once I realized that, I had a solution.  I took the entire assembly and laid it on the ground, fastened a ground wire to it, drove a ground rod, and tied the ground wire to the ground rod, thus taking me out of the circuit.

I pushed the service and assembly up the pole and fastened it on the bottom and as far up as I could reach.  I put on my climbers and started up the pole.  As I started fastening the conduit to the pole I started to get bit again.  I looked around and couldn’t figure it out.  The grounding hadn’t come loose.

Then I realized that by working on the grounded assembly on the pole when I was not touching the ground myself, I was insinuating myself into the circuit once more.  The electricity was coming through the air, down the conduit, branching off into me, then back into the assembly and down to the ground.

Down the pole I went once more and disconnected the ground wire, pointing it up into the air.  Once more I climbed the pole and finished strapping the conduit to the pole.  After reaching the ground once more I then reattached the ground wire to the ground rod.

Later I was doing some wiring in an airplane hangar.  The hanger and the air strip were on the top of a hill.  One of the power company employees was on a nearby pole intending to run power to the service on the hangar.

A bad lightening storm came over the area .  He came down and visited with me inside the hangar until the storm was over.  I told him about my experience in the pasture.  He said; “Yeah, it gets kinda sticky out there.”

I watched his technique for climbing poles.  It was different than what I had developed.  He had one spike in the pole and would drag the other one against the pole for his next step as he climbed.

When I questioned him about it he said that it was a safety measure.  If one spike came out while the other one was also out, by dragging it against the pole the weight of his body would push the dragging spike into the pole and prevent a fall.

It gives a person a lot of respect for the people who make a living climbing poles (and trees).

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.