Sometimes Electrical Work Means Fixing Others’ Mistakes!
Here at TCA Electric, we’ve seen our fair share of questionable or downright dangerous electrical work over the years. Some of this electrical work gone wrong has included everything from faulty wiring to using the wrong materials, resulting in a dangerous situation for the homeowner. In today’s post, some shoddy electrical work resulted in a downed power line that our TCA Team fixed following a major Vancouver storm.
Let’s take a closer look at this project, why our team should never have been needed in the first place—and why it’s a good thing we were called in for the job!
The project: Fixing a downed power line after a severe storm
Avid readers of our blog may recognize this project, as we covered it in a recent Project Spotlights post. To recap: we received a call from a very distressed homeowner whose main power line had been knocked out by a storm.
As part of restoring the homeowner’s power, the TCA Electric team needed to arrange installation of a new private electrical pole before fixing the downed power line. There were also several other aspects of her service that needed to be brought up to code. But none of these other code updates were as bad as what we realized had been done with her power line previously…
A tree forced to serve as an electrical pole
While power lines are typically run across sturdy, standardized electrical poles driven deep into the ground, this unfortunate homeowner’s service depended on a tree. Yes, that’s right—instead of installing an electrical pole on her property, whoever had been there before us had screwed a support into the side of a tree to hold up her home’s main service line.
It should go without saying that this is against all electrical code not only here in Vancouver but, we would assume, just about anywhere! No matter how sturdy it may seem, all sorts of things can happen to a tree and compromise its structural integrity, thereby jeopardizing a home’s power.
What problems did this cause?
As mentioned, plenty of things can go wrong with a tree supporting a power line. One of the most obvious issues is that the tree can die and rot, weakening it over time. Unfortunately for this homeowner, that’s exactly what happened. The tree began to rot and weaken and, as soon as a strong storm came through the area, a downed power line and complete outage was the result. Thankfully, no one was hurt!
How TCA helped this unlucky homeowner
As part of fixing the downed power line on this homeowner’s property, the TCA team worked to coordinate with D&B Auger Services to properly install a private electrical pole. The new pole is 25 feet tall, drilled 6 feet into the ground, and should be in no danger of dying and rotting. We were sad about the fate of the tree, but it never should have been put in that position to begin with!
Ordinarily, we’d offer suggestions for how homeowners can avoid this problem. But for this situation, the bottom line is that power lines should only be supported by standard electrical poles.
Keep Up with TCA Electric for More Interesting Projects and Electrical Tips!
When you’re in the electrical industry for as long as we’ve been, you see some pretty wild things! We never expected to see a tree used to support a power line, but we were proud of the way our team came through for this homeowner to fix her downed service.
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