Let's talk about electrical awareness

[Bart_]

One time I trimmed a conifer near lines but I was away from the lines. A year or two later the neighbour adjacent flags me over and says he put in a city/utility request to trim his side of the tree. He complained that they trimmed the wrong branches and said "Listen, you can still hear the electricity sizzling through the tree" and indeed I did! Yep he was right, crew missed the objective. You could see the contact with the kV line. kV line was only 2 1/2 stories up.

 

[ghostice]

I had an experience with our City electrical utility and a tall gangly spruce at a church. The spindly top was getting too close to the primaries on the top of the poles (now well within 10 feet anyway) and would probably only grow more and whip around in the wind until one day . . . It is a church and there are kids in a daycare running around in the yard. The utility guy tho didn't seem too fazed at all - I guess if it did touch the wires, it's just a tree to him and off he drove. To date, it's the only tree I have actually topped in all the years (kinda looks like a very tall shrub now). But the utility guy seemed awfully blasé about the whole thing. Strange we keep having breakers trip all over though . . . . . .