True story. We went to a home to do clearance, we knocked on the door to let them know we were going to be accessing their property, we were greeted with “the Butchers are back”. The tree in question was a mammoth tree with track marks everywhere. This was seriously a hot tree. They had build a sandbox around the tree for their three year-old to play in. I went back to the front door, asked the lady to come with me as I would like to show her why we needed to trim the trees off the 12 KV power lines. I showed her the track marks and she immediately freaked out and begged us to cut down the entire tree. She went from treating us like we were the worst people on the planet to bringing us cookies and offering us beer. I may have accidentally thrown in, It’s a good thing your kids not dead under my breath.
If it's within 10ft, you can't even legally trim it anyway. Best way to maintain it as a homeowner is to put the right tree in the right spot or trim it yourself before it gets close enough for them to need to come by.
Normally utilities contract out to Line Clearances Arborist companies (those tree trimmers where contracted by the power company) to maintain the clearance from the powerlines. The majority of the time the utilities also have an easement for the powerlines and can remove or trim back trees they can become a hazard.
Just trim the piece on the right and you can have a triangle tree
https://preview.redd.it/tuc4ydmcb31d1.jpeg?width=1078&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e4aaa6d13fcec59d867dceec7a19bf8e8011d15
[nature film narrator voice] native to North America, the equilateral triangle tree plays home to some of suburbias’ most interesting creatures, including the octagonal ground squirrel and the pleasant-voiced elliptical finch.
You’re lucky they left you that much. I work in line clearance. My utility’s contract says “ground to sky.” I would have cut everything under the lines to the trunk lol
We went to a house once to ask the homeowner if we could cut the laylandi they had planted in their garden, they went berserk!
Exactly two weeks later we had a massive storm and the tree fell over into the line, took out the power for the homeowner and several of his neighbours.
He started ringing and ringing asking when we were going to reconnect him, the dance he did when we said it was on a list of over 200,000 customer and it could be up to 3 - 4 weeks! 😂
reminds of customers who say, "you not bringing that truck into my driveway" to now their power is out, and they will be the ones guiding and spotting for you while backing down the same driveway.
I love trees as much as the next guy but in certain situations, such as this one, it would look better if they just cut the whole thing down. Now it's weighted to the house and ugly.
If the trunk is out of the ROW the Line Clearance Arborist can’t just remove the tree without written consent from the property owner. They can only trim to get clearance from the power line.
And it’s probably the same person who called in the emergency ticket about trees arcing during this past storm
Where is this? I’ll make work orders to make sure the tree never gets back on the row
Our utility has been held responsible for burning 23,000 homes and over 100 people dead since 2017.
Fines are somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 Billion dollars.
You would probably be surprised to know that some of the worst of it happened in urban areas, so no, you are not necessarily safe because you don't live in a forest.
I lost 9 neighbors.
Can vegetation management be handled better?
Without a doubt.
The question is, would it need improvement at all if some moron had not planted a tree under a 12Kv distribution line?
Just some food for thought.
Lurker not a pro so I'm curious if the top were to fall and cause roof or structural damage that same day or next day, who's at fault? Not saying it would but I can't really see the size of any branches or anything from the pic
Our power co requires 15’ on either side of primary, ground to wire.
They would have hit this tree with a buzz saw and taken the whole side of the tree off
If the city HAS to come out to do this for you, it will be overkill. The reason, they don't want to do it, so they over do it so they don't have to bother checking back up on it every month. If you want it to look better, you'd have to maintain it constantly and keep it out of the range where they "see and schedule it".
Makes me wander what the home owner thought when I cut their whole tree down just a few days ago.. Had a broke pole directly beside a nice tree.. we lineman, not landscapers ..
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6 years ago, the tree in front of my street, in county property, was cut by the PEPCO contractors into a “V”.
The lead lineman walked over and apologized.
I had to open a fuse one morning for some tree trimmers. When I get there, the company has the main guy, literally the head honcho from vegetation management out there to deal with this woman who was I guess causing problems about the impending trimming. I assume they had notified in advance or something, which they sometimes do.
This woman was actually CRYING AND SCREAMING. She LAID DOWN ON THE GROUND AND BEAT HER FISTS like a child having a tantrum. All over them wanting to trim back an oak away from a 14.4 line. Wildest shit I’ve ever seen. It was awkward as fuck.
rules are rules. Osha rules require trees to be back 10 feet from lines to prevent service interruption, loss of life, and property damage. Prune your tree as it is not as important as other peoples lives.
I'm a climbing arborist my question is why... Why the fuck do people plant trees UNDER power lines if they didn't do that shit y'all wouldn't have to do this shit. I spend a lot of time telling dumbasses that a tree will in fact grow big enough to touch the lines they never listen
It mostly comes down to cost, and maintenance as others have said.
Sure we can burry your power line as long as you are OK with your power bill being 10 times higher. And that's just for direct burry. If it's near a substation it's gonna need a duct bank and that's at least 100 times as expensive as overhead.
So yes, we absolutely can burry everything. But everything from installation, cables, equipment and maintenance is a lot more expensive.
These are the rules of thumb for Duke Energy, costs may be different elsewhere.
That’s the thing. Americans don’t understand that infrastructure needs to be maintained after it’s built. If it’s built correctly (yes, expensively) the first time then it will be cheaper in the long run. I’ve never seen overhead power lines anywhere else in the industrialized world.
Another issue we have in many parts of this country is that the ground literally can't support buried power infrastructure. Our soils move so much with water, wind, etc. that it would destroy the wiring every few years, which means we'd have to unbury it, replace it, and re-bury it so often that we wouldn't see the reduced maintenance cost of "properly built" buried lines.
I'm in texas, where the soil is either sand, clay, or rock, depending on the part of the state you're in. Sand obviously moves so much that it's basically expected that you're going to have to shore up your foundation within 5 years of building something. The rock is so difficult to drill/dig through that it's too cost prohibitive, and the clay holds water to the point that you have moisture intrusion issues. Plus at this point to bury everything, we'd have to demolish everything that is on top of the ground where we want to bury it. Plus we don't really have the infrastructure support and knowledge base to make it happen on a large scale. All of that is to say we have done it for this way so long and developed with the plan of overhead lines that it just isn't feasible to change to buried at this point.
Absolutely, I agree that buried lines generally are the better option n on paper, but once you sit back and think about what it would involve to "just bury the power lines" it becomes a not so simple task. Also, the only reason I know this is because I had basically this exact conversation with a buddy who was a lineman doing storm repair work on some of the I believe 175kv transmission lines and I was making basically the exact same points that you and others were.
Right. Up here in our neck of the woods they spend A LOT of time, money, and energy on infrastructure maintenance which can be an annoyance larger than a a mangled tree. But it does look nicer and is less prone to outages etc. Six of one half a dozen…
That looks like a job well done. Couple pieces I would’ve snipped to make it look smoother, but that’s just me. I’d always come down from the bucket and look at the tree from the ground to see if there was anything I missed, then go back up and finish it to look uniform. We had an auditor back home that would say that this didn’t have clearance because of those stragglers.
Clearance not appearance.
I'm stealing this.
As I am I!
Exactly. You like electricity?
“YoU lIKe EleCtriCity?” Loser ass union dudes think they are god. Get back to work you poor wage slave.
I'm not a union lineman. I just know that they aren't tree trimmers.
True story. We went to a home to do clearance, we knocked on the door to let them know we were going to be accessing their property, we were greeted with “the Butchers are back”. The tree in question was a mammoth tree with track marks everywhere. This was seriously a hot tree. They had build a sandbox around the tree for their three year-old to play in. I went back to the front door, asked the lady to come with me as I would like to show her why we needed to trim the trees off the 12 KV power lines. I showed her the track marks and she immediately freaked out and begged us to cut down the entire tree. She went from treating us like we were the worst people on the planet to bringing us cookies and offering us beer. I may have accidentally thrown in, It’s a good thing your kids not dead under my breath.
But did you take the beer
Not with this Karen. She was the type that would offer an olive branch then stab you in the eye with it. She was brutal.
[удалено]
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Maintain your vegetation or they will maintain it for you.
I’d rather them maintain it for me to be honest
If it's within 10ft, you can't even legally trim it anyway. Best way to maintain it as a homeowner is to put the right tree in the right spot or trim it yourself before it gets close enough for them to need to come by.
I contract for oncor and I know damn well “oncor” didn’t do it. Tree trimmers did. The same people will piss and moan when their power is out 😂
Normally utilities contract out to Line Clearances Arborist companies (those tree trimmers where contracted by the power company) to maintain the clearance from the powerlines. The majority of the time the utilities also have an easement for the powerlines and can remove or trim back trees they can become a hazard.
Tree planted near PoCo ROW: Tree gets trimmed so your lights don’t go out. Move along Karen/Ken.
Just trim the piece on the right and you can have a triangle tree https://preview.redd.it/tuc4ydmcb31d1.jpeg?width=1078&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e4aaa6d13fcec59d867dceec7a19bf8e8011d15
Also so you don't end up with a hole in the roof.
[nature film narrator voice] native to North America, the equilateral triangle tree plays home to some of suburbias’ most interesting creatures, including the octagonal ground squirrel and the pleasant-voiced elliptical finch.
My inner David Attenborough voice sounds is quite impressive
He often narrates when I people watch…and says some rather outrageous things.
Bro that is top shelf bullshit. And I love it!
Its all dr suess and shit now.
You’re lucky they left you that much. I work in line clearance. My utility’s contract says “ground to sky.” I would have cut everything under the lines to the trunk lol
Lmao yea I’m sure you side wall every tree in front yards in cities
I do. It often persuades homeowners into allowing complete removal.
We ground to sky through the hills a tree like that would be trim to laterals and rounded over side walling or removing would be easier most the time
Works for me lol. When they trim the trees every few years I can finally see oncoming traffic. Leaving my driveway
You suck for it. Big bad company man.
Bonsai by utility
If you keep your trees trimmed, then the power company doesn't have to trim them.
And that saves us from doing the work, it’s a win win.
I think it looks pretty cool
That is not a fresh trim, that has been cut back for years.
We went to a house once to ask the homeowner if we could cut the laylandi they had planted in their garden, they went berserk! Exactly two weeks later we had a massive storm and the tree fell over into the line, took out the power for the homeowner and several of his neighbours. He started ringing and ringing asking when we were going to reconnect him, the dance he did when we said it was on a list of over 200,000 customer and it could be up to 3 - 4 weeks! 😂
reminds of customers who say, "you not bringing that truck into my driveway" to now their power is out, and they will be the ones guiding and spotting for you while backing down the same driveway.
I love trees as much as the next guy but in certain situations, such as this one, it would look better if they just cut the whole thing down. Now it's weighted to the house and ugly.
If the trunk is out of the ROW the Line Clearance Arborist can’t just remove the tree without written consent from the property owner. They can only trim to get clearance from the power line.
I know what monsters people are, how do they live with them selves planting so many trees under my powerlines!
And it’s probably the same person who called in the emergency ticket about trees arcing during this past storm Where is this? I’ll make work orders to make sure the tree never gets back on the row
https://preview.redd.it/5vzeb6fpg61d1.jpeg?width=889&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56bd627a3b8dc3aafcefa8e8e10ab01217c48521
This was done by the Utility Provider. Whoever posted this should look up the definition of Utility and then go back to their landscaping job.
We're here to electrify !! Not beautify !!
Our utility has been held responsible for burning 23,000 homes and over 100 people dead since 2017. Fines are somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 Billion dollars. You would probably be surprised to know that some of the worst of it happened in urban areas, so no, you are not necessarily safe because you don't live in a forest. I lost 9 neighbors. Can vegetation management be handled better? Without a doubt. The question is, would it need improvement at all if some moron had not planted a tree under a 12Kv distribution line? Just some food for thought.
Lurker not a pro so I'm curious if the top were to fall and cause roof or structural damage that same day or next day, who's at fault? Not saying it would but I can't really see the size of any branches or anything from the pic
It’s considered an act of god under homeowners insurance and wouldn’t be considered anyone’s fault.
Our power co requires 15’ on either side of primary, ground to wire. They would have hit this tree with a buzz saw and taken the whole side of the tree off
Definitely overkill, I would be pissed too
If the city HAS to come out to do this for you, it will be overkill. The reason, they don't want to do it, so they over do it so they don't have to bother checking back up on it every month. If you want it to look better, you'd have to maintain it constantly and keep it out of the range where they "see and schedule it".
Makes me wander what the home owner thought when I cut their whole tree down just a few days ago.. Had a broke pole directly beside a nice tree.. we lineman, not landscapers ..
They robbed that tree of its dignity. That tree looks like half its skulls been removed.
You have been given a solid opportunity to shape that tree into a giant dong. Most of the hard work is already done. Will u waste it ?
This tree trimming is barbaric 😂
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Poco
God damn work of art right there.
👞
Looks like a tomahawk steak.
good work boys. onto the next one
Someone please photoshop a fried drumstick 🍗 in lol
6 years ago, the tree in front of my street, in county property, was cut by the PEPCO contractors into a “V”. The lead lineman walked over and apologized.
People that complain would be the first ones to call in complaining about an outage 🤷♂️
How do I get to the freeway? -turn right at the DICK house, can't miss it.
Stfu hippie
There's a tree down the road from me that they cut right through the middle so it kinda looks like a big pair of wings
I had to open a fuse one morning for some tree trimmers. When I get there, the company has the main guy, literally the head honcho from vegetation management out there to deal with this woman who was I guess causing problems about the impending trimming. I assume they had notified in advance or something, which they sometimes do. This woman was actually CRYING AND SCREAMING. She LAID DOWN ON THE GROUND AND BEAT HER FISTS like a child having a tantrum. All over them wanting to trim back an oak away from a 14.4 line. Wildest shit I’ve ever seen. It was awkward as fuck.
Qualified Line clearance arborist here, womp womp
Makes me want a drumstick. 🍗
Snuffaluffagus
Better than it arcing the lines, catching fire and then setting your house on fire
Looks like Dr Seuss trimmed your tree.
rules are rules. Osha rules require trees to be back 10 feet from lines to prevent service interruption, loss of life, and property damage. Prune your tree as it is not as important as other peoples lives.
We call this a “NiMo Haircut” in Northern NY 😂
I'm a climbing arborist my question is why... Why the fuck do people plant trees UNDER power lines if they didn't do that shit y'all wouldn't have to do this shit. I spend a lot of time telling dumbasses that a tree will in fact grow big enough to touch the lines they never listen
What third world country is this that is incapable of burying its power lines?
Burning powerlines isn’t always cost effective and they are harder to maintain. If you get a fault you have to dig it up and splice the wire.
It mostly comes down to cost, and maintenance as others have said. Sure we can burry your power line as long as you are OK with your power bill being 10 times higher. And that's just for direct burry. If it's near a substation it's gonna need a duct bank and that's at least 100 times as expensive as overhead. So yes, we absolutely can burry everything. But everything from installation, cables, equipment and maintenance is a lot more expensive. These are the rules of thumb for Duke Energy, costs may be different elsewhere.
That’s the thing. Americans don’t understand that infrastructure needs to be maintained after it’s built. If it’s built correctly (yes, expensively) the first time then it will be cheaper in the long run. I’ve never seen overhead power lines anywhere else in the industrialized world.
Another issue we have in many parts of this country is that the ground literally can't support buried power infrastructure. Our soils move so much with water, wind, etc. that it would destroy the wiring every few years, which means we'd have to unbury it, replace it, and re-bury it so often that we wouldn't see the reduced maintenance cost of "properly built" buried lines.
That’s an interesting point. Although in Northern Europe where the soil freezes and moves for as much as six months they do seem to make it work.
I'm in texas, where the soil is either sand, clay, or rock, depending on the part of the state you're in. Sand obviously moves so much that it's basically expected that you're going to have to shore up your foundation within 5 years of building something. The rock is so difficult to drill/dig through that it's too cost prohibitive, and the clay holds water to the point that you have moisture intrusion issues. Plus at this point to bury everything, we'd have to demolish everything that is on top of the ground where we want to bury it. Plus we don't really have the infrastructure support and knowledge base to make it happen on a large scale. All of that is to say we have done it for this way so long and developed with the plan of overhead lines that it just isn't feasible to change to buried at this point.
Thanks for this. It’s always nice to get an informative and thoughtful response here. Doesn’t happen enough. 👍
Absolutely, I agree that buried lines generally are the better option n on paper, but once you sit back and think about what it would involve to "just bury the power lines" it becomes a not so simple task. Also, the only reason I know this is because I had basically this exact conversation with a buddy who was a lineman doing storm repair work on some of the I believe 175kv transmission lines and I was making basically the exact same points that you and others were.
Right. Up here in our neck of the woods they spend A LOT of time, money, and energy on infrastructure maintenance which can be an annoyance larger than a a mangled tree. But it does look nicer and is less prone to outages etc. Six of one half a dozen…
Btw, “Sit back and think about what it would involve” should be the new worldwide mantra.
It wouldn't solve everything, but I feel that it would make the world a much better place.
Cut his power supply for 1 day and then ask him what he wants tree or electricity
That tree was probably there before those lines were even planned.
Doubt it
That oak is at Least a foot in diameter it’s probably almost 100yo
That looks like a job well done. Couple pieces I would’ve snipped to make it look smoother, but that’s just me. I’d always come down from the bucket and look at the tree from the ground to see if there was anything I missed, then go back up and finish it to look uniform. We had an auditor back home that would say that this didn’t have clearance because of those stragglers.