New Powerline Construction
For over 60 years a 230 Kv high voltage powerline has bisected our farm. You can see it in most of the outside pictures taken over the past 5 decades. After 60 years, like most of us, the poles and hardware were starting to show their age. The winter of 2018-19 brought crews to our farm to replace the old poles and lines with new galvanized metal poles and updated lines and hardware. It was sad to see the old poles and lines replaced since they have been a permanent part of our farm for all the lives of most of us
The old wooden poles were somewhere around 80’ tall and the new galvanized poles were assembled mostly in 3 sections, some only two sections, and ended up being between 105 to 120’ tall. Most of the poles were simply placed in an 18’ hole that was drilled in the ground while the poles that support a long span of cable over valleys have concrete bases. The transmission line was replaced with a slightly different line, still mostly aluminum, but a different alloy that ends up with a slightly smaller diameter but lower overall electrical resistance. Unfortunately, the wooden cedar poles had to be sawed as they came down. They were in pretty good condition after being up for 60 years. We were able to salvage many of the pieces and hope someday to build a log cabin on top of the hill – Stay Tuned! You will notice that the new poles are not centered on the same path the old poles took. We believe that this is so another powerline could someday be build within the same right-of-way width. After everything is connected, the wooden mats are pulled up, the roads removed and the land is all restored. We aren’t too thrilled with the look of the new poles but really there is nothing we could do about it. The crews were nice enough to move the location of two of the poles so that they are no longer in our hayfields – a small bonus, but appreciated. |
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