The contract tech that did my Comcast install seemed to believe 1 inch was sufficient. Zero if the wind blows. (Coax drops are aerial in my neighborhood.)
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Friday, August 9, 2024 9:51 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions Back in the day, I think aerial phone drops only needed 12” of clearance from secondary. 10’ for primary. Sent from my iPhone On Aug 9, 2024, at 6:51 PM, dmmoff...@gmail.com <mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote: Just venting now. The more I think about this the more annoyed I’m getting. We were going through the meeting agenda including root cause analysis and so forth. I stopped him at some point and asked what rule was violated. He responded with rhetorical questions like “if Elco tree trimmers couldn’t remove the vines why do you think we could?” and similar. He got agitated about it, and seemed flustered that I didn’t intuitively know that something was wrong here. I dropped it, and apologized saying I wasn’t asking to be combative, I’m asking because I don’t know. On social interactions I can be slow on the uptake so it took me some time to realize that obviously the true answer to my question was he doesn’t know, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. That burned my ass so bad that I spent several hours this evening digging into NESC and OSHA documents, and now I am pretty convinced we didn’t do anything dangerous. It’s possible the guys don’t meet every requirement for OSHA “line-clearance tree trimmers”, but if not they’re within a hair’s breadth of it. I’m talking like maybe they’ll need refresh their CPR certification or something, but otherwise they have everything they need in terms of tools and training to work near a secondary voltage line. -Adam From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of ch...@go-mtc.com <mailto:ch...@go-mtc.com> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2024 6:20 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions I would say avoid contact with the conductors. From: dmmoff...@gmail.com <mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, August 9, 2024 4:14 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions Yeah the chart says “avoid contact” on the 0-300V row. For the sake of anyone who might lack common sense I might say the minimum is “any value >0”. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of ch...@go-mtc.com <mailto:ch...@go-mtc.com> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2024 4:37 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions Minimum approach distance to triplex is zero. From: dmmoff...@gmail.com <mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, August 9, 2024 2:09 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions Yup, squirrels. The triplex experience does feed the street light, but also continues through a riser guard into the ground to feed a building. I spoke to an electrician with on power lines and he said the same things you and I are saying. I also did find later that the 2007 NESC is very open ended on this topic in section 218. "Vegetation management should be performed as experience has shown to be necessary". It provides a list of factors that should be considered, but no specific guidance at all. I have the 2023 edition in hard copy, so I’ll have to check that later when I can access it. OSHA meanwhile has some specific rules about things “line-clearance tree trimmers” are supposed to be able to do, and while we’re not trained as “line-clearance tree trimmers” it turns out we did everything the OSHA rule says to do. <image001.png> That’s not even that difficult. Maybe all of our guys can become certified “line-clearance tree trimmers” and maybe that will shut everyone up. -Adam From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of ch...@go-mtc.com <mailto:ch...@go-mtc.com> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2024 2:51 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions Squirrels in the vines. I would just get a bucket truck and remove the entire growth. Really no hazard. The power looks like it feeds the streetlight. There may be a CATV power supply buried in there but the wires will be in conduit. From: Josh Luthman Sent: Friday, August 9, 2024 12:43 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions I'm more confused about how the vines are destroying your fibers...? On Fri, Aug 9, 2024 at 12:30 PM <ch...@go-mtc.com <mailto:ch...@go-mtc.com> > wrote: I am sure some safety guy would disagree, but to me secondary triplex is no more dangerous than your vacuum cleaner cord. I would have just got up there with pruning shears and gloves and cleaned it up. From: dmmoff...@gmail.com <mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, August 9, 2024 10:12 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' Subject: [AFMUG] Vines on utility pole growing into power space - safety questions See pic below. Read my story about it and tell me who’s wrong here? Do you see a real safety issue? We had damage to fiber inside that mass of vines. As you might guess, it turned out to be caused by squirrels living in there. Since it was growing into the power space our construction supervisor requested that his boss call the electric co about it. A week later they came along and cut the vines at the bottom (which is when this picture was taken). That annoyed us because we still can’t access our equipment without touching the vines which grow into the power space. Meanwhile we keep losing fibers and keep having to roll services to spares. Then one morning when we ran out of spare fibers I went out of my lane and asked the construction supervisor to remove the vines and get the repair done. Our guys checked the vines with a non-contact voltage detector then pulled them down with layup sticks and proceeded with repairs…..which IMO is what we should have done on the very first day. Now I’m being called into a safety meeting about a “near miss safety issue” in relation to this. My position is at worst there might be a safety rules violation, but not an actual safety issue. I don’t even know for sure that we broke any specific rule, but please educate me if we did. 1. The power line is a secondary voltage triplex going immediately into a riser guard to head underground. It’s only exposed for less than a foot at the top of the pole, and that’s several feet above our strand where the squirrel damage is happening. 2. I don’t believe the tree service cutting the vines at the base found them to be electrified because if they had they would have coned off the area and called someone at the elco about it. 3. This is across the street from a Greyhound bus station. Lots of pedestrian traffic. If vines were electrified someone would have been shocked and the city would have coned it off and called the elco about it. 4. Regardless of the above, we proceeded in a safe manner. Oh and by the way, I made this call after almost 2 weeks of reoccurring outages and rolling services over because we keep getting fibers broken. At the end of the first week after two outages I had OTDR’d the whole cable and I reported to the construction boss (the one who was dealing with the elco) that we had 38 out of 48 fibers cut. I was patient until we were down to the minimum uncut fibers to keep the active PON circuits up, and then I said screw this we’re taking action. So who’s wrong here? Do you see a real safety issue? (BTW: Later found out that cutting vines at the bottom is the elco’s standard procedure and the vines will wither and fall off at some point. If we need them removed completely we have to request a line crew for that. I didn’t know that and neither did the person talking to the Elco.) <image002.jpg> _____ -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com _____ -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com _____ -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com _____ -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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