oncor tree cutting

[ninemm]

I just spent $500 yesterday getting my wrought iron driveway gate fixed. It was sagging so much that it need to have a section of it cut out and new steel welded into place. The reason it is sagging is that the guy from Encor/Reliant/Whatever (I'm a Stream Energy customer) keeps climbing over my fence to read my meter. I don't have a problem with him reading the meter, but the gate/fence are well over 6' tall, and when he climbs over it, his weight causes it to sag. If he would just come to my door and ask permission, I would let him every time (I work at home), and it wouldn't add but 60 seconds to the process of reading my meter. Each time I've caught up to him and asked him to knock on my door the next time, he literally waves me off and just keeps on walking.

I went out and bought some "Beware of Dog" signs to put on the fence. Let him think twice about whether or not he wants to keep climbing my fence without permission. The rassinfrassin' bleepedy bleep.

I will agree with you that he should not be climbing your fence.

What they should do is to give you the three months the PUC dictates for you to have your meter moved to an accessible location. After that, they should cut you off until you get it done. The PUC mandated in 2007 that meters should be able to be read without having to get someone to unlock a gate. The PUC felt it was unfair to most customers for some customers to have "special" meter reading requirements. As you say in your case, it would only take an additional 60 seconds to come to your door, imagine what would happen if 3,000,000 customers (per the Oncor website - 5,000,000 for Centerpoint) needed that type of "special" consideration. It would add 50,000 man hours to the meter reading task. If the meter readers did that, those of us who have accessible meters would end up subsidizing those of you who need "special" treatment. This is just as bad as the people who don't keep their trees trimmed away from the power lines. Those of us who do keep ours trimmed (or don't have trees) end up subsidizing those of you who, again, expect "special" treatment.

[LaserTex]

Knowing some of my neighbors, I am not really sure that making them responsible to trim tree limbs off of power lines is a good idea. I think a safety consideration is a BIG part of the requirement for a QUALIFIED team to cut the limbs.

Electricity = you can't see it, smell it, taste it, but it can definitely reach out and TOUCH you!!

Doug

[ninemm]

Knowing some of my neighbors, I am not really sure that making them responsible to trim tree limbs off of power lines is a good idea. I think a safety consideration is a BIG part of the requirement for a QUALIFIED team to cut the limbs.

Electricity = you can't see it, smell it, taste it, but it can definitely reach out and TOUCH you!!

Doug

I will agree that not everyone should be doing it. But the PUC is already considering making property owners responsible for having it done. I've heard some predictions that the power companies will be completely out of the tree trimming business in the next 10 years (everybody say "Hooray!). One of the reasons is that it is felt that customers in West Texas shouldn't be subsidizing customers in East Texas. Years ago, if you needed a power line run to a rural home, the power company would pay to have trees trimmed so the line could be built. Nowadays, the power company requires the homeowner or builder to have an excavation company clear a 20 foot right of way (or more) with a dozer at the homeowner or builder's expense. The tree trimming companies (Asplundh, Davey, ABC, etc.) are already developing their marketing and real estate departments. The real estate departments will be for the property they acquire when an ERCOT mandated trim job isn't paid for by the property owner and they file liens and then eventually end up with property. Look for ERCOT to become more and more involved in operations of energy delivery companies.

[KD5NRH]

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.

[KD5NRH]

What they should do is to give you the three months the PUC dictates for you to have your meter moved to an accessible location.

The line coming to my house has an interesting feature; there are two ends on it. One of them isn't even on my property at all. All the electric companies need to do is put the meters on the supply end of those lines in the first place, and they won't even have to move up to last-century technology like remote reading.

[LaserTex]

Get a hyperactive Stafforshire Terrier. It works. The CPS reader hit my Dalmatian with a waist worn tool bag after he jumped the fence. My wife saw it and SHOWED him what TRESSPASSING means. His boss came to our house to apologize. We adopted Harley and haven't had a single fence jumper....5 years now. They call 5 days in advance and we leave the critters inside on that day. I guess I really need to start feednig Harley again. I wanted him HUNGRY and hyper :-)

Doug

[ninemm]

What they should do is to give you the three months the PUC dictates for you to have your meter moved to an accessible location.

The line coming to my house has an interesting feature; there are two ends on it. One of them isn't even on my property at all. All the electric companies need to do is put the meters on the supply end of those lines in the first place, and they won't even have to move up to last-century technology like remote reading.

That certainly is an option although it wouldn't be quite as simple as you may think. You could put your own pole up at the property line and have the utility company run the service to that pole instead of your house. The electric companies do not install the meter bases and generally do not allow customer attachments on their poles. The customer (or his electrician) is responsible for the installation of the meter base and other service entrance equipment. The electric company would probably like this arrangement as it would have the customer paying for the losses in the service wires from the meter to the house. Also, the customer would be responsible for any repairs to those wires. The electric company stops at the meter. Since it looks like the lines that serve your home are in the back (between Lockwood and Melissa), there would need to be a vehicle accessible alley for this to be viable. Otherwise, the meter reader would still have to go through your yard to read the meter.

[jimlongley]

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.

[pedalman]

Get a hyperactive Stafforshire Terrier. It works. The CPS reader hit my Dalmatian with a waist worn tool bag after he jumped the fence. My wife saw it and SHOWED him what TRESSPASSING means. His boss came to our house to apologize. We adopted Harley and haven't had a single fence jumper....5 years now. They call 5 days in advance and we leave the critters inside on that day. I guess I really need to start feednig Harley again. I wanted him HUNGRY and hyper :-)

Doug

Good doggie.

[KD5NRH]

Also, the customer would be responsible for any repairs to those wires.

Gee, a whole 60 feet of that high-tech plastic-wrapped copper added to the hundreds of feet I'm already responsible for. That's a terrrifying thought.

The electric company stops at the meter. Since it looks like the lines that serve your home are in the back (between Lockwood and Melissa), there would need to be a vehicle accessible alley for this to be viable. Otherwise, the meter reader would still have to go through your yard to read the meter.

Great. Maybe then the electric company could convince the city to mow the alley.

Even without the horror for me of having to worry about that piece of wire, and the horror of some reader having to drive through waist-high grass, there's still remote reading. Other industries, and for that matter, other electric companies, have been doing it for a while.

[KD5NRH]

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.

[jimlongley]

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[jimlongley]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Keith B]

Keep it a friendly debate guys. Would hate to have to lock the thread.