A Day With A Lineman #3 ~ Wire Down... Dang Birds!!!

After only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before, due to a late night outage and a combination with me staying up an hour or so later than usual, I was hoping for a chill day. It’s that time of the month where I need to go to multiple Substations and do an inspection. It’s a little time consuming and... boring!! Yet it has to be done. Perfect for a guy that hat hasn’t had much sleep.... maybe... Then just as I was gonna kick back for a little lunch an outage call rolls in. Mind you the rain just started coming down really good 5 minutes into lunch and the call came shortly after the rain. We lost a whole circuit! Perfect...just Perfect.

You know what helps us out big time, is when people see something happen, they call in. This can change the outage time significantly. The time searching for the cause of the outage can now be used to fix it. Sometimes we feel like we are chasing a ghost. It could be a hair line crack in a porcelain insulator. You would never see it unless you had it in your hand, 2 inches from your face. Searching for the cause can take hours. Getting those lights back on as fast and as safe as possible is the name of the game. Thankfully these local farmers seem to always be on top of things.

”It was another damn Osprey!”

After getting this section of line isolated and the circuit back on, it was time to see what damages this Osprey caused this time. We could see the wire was burnt to the ground but what exactly caused it? Was it the Osprey itself or something else? Believe it or not we have had them drop a piece of barbed wire across the lines before. Most of the time it is bigger sticks that they drop. These Osprey carry all kinds of stuff to make their nests and sometimes they “accidentally” drop them. This is exactly what we think happened here. Since non of us found a dead bird laying on the ground. But did find a burnt up stick but could that cause this much damage??

Frickin birds!! We have a nesting box near by because last time you were nesting on the pole. Yet you still manage to cause an outage. This pole has been torched!!! Burnt the one wire to the ground and the copper jumper wires is completely gone. The insulator on the far left of the photo is suppose to be grey and the one in the center, that is on the arm should be grey also. Instead one is white and the other black. Lol. Check out this connector...

Seems to be missing a little bit of it??

If you can’t tell, these Osprey were spending a lot of time on this pole... that is a lot of poop!! Dang!!

At this point the only customers out of power we’re a few of the farmer’s pumps and a couple potato storage sheds. Knowing how and where to sectionalize the line to get the most customers back on is key. Houses take priority over irrigation pumps when it comes to restoring power. We always try to get as many accounts back on before we start repairs.

By this time the rain let up a bit and we put together a game plan to hopefully keep this from happening in the future. Despite providing them a nesting box, we need to go a little further to prevent another outage.

So instead of using 2 wood cross arms, we installed a single fiberglass crossarm 40 inches lower than the existing set of cross arms. This will give a bigger separation between the energized phases. The center phase stays high up on the pole and the 2 - outside phases drop down with the new arm. It makes the distance between them approximately 5 feet when this reframe is all said and done.

After attaching the new fiberglass arm we began transferring the wire. This wire is about the diameter of your index finger with a steel core and it is at full tension. Let’s just say you aren’t gonna hold this wire with your bare hands and keep it off the ground. It is a smaller size wire but the pounds of pulling force it takes to keep the wire up in the air will surprise you.

It may look like a mess but we got this all under control.... maybe... Having one size of wire on one side and a smaller size on the other makes this reframe just a little more difficult. Maybe difficult is the wrong word... it took a few more steps to get the wire transferred... so more “time consuming” is more appropriate. This is a pretty “routine” fix for a Lineman believe it or not. Yet we still have to pay attention to all the details, dot our I’s and cross our T’s.

A fresh set of insulators, all the damaged wire is replaced, new fiberglass crossarm framed down the pole for better phase spacing, and new jumpers installed. If these Osprey cause another outage at this pole, we will have totally underestimated there outage causing skills. They are good I will give them that.

Now that the reframe is compete, it’s time to get the wire:
~Hotted Up~
~Put the Fire in the Wire~
~Heat it up~
~Giv’er the Onion~
Or
~Energize it~

With the line energized we just need to close a couple sets of fuses on some pump banks and things are all back to normal. So much for having a “relaxing day” after only getting 3 hours sleep. In all honesty, I would have much rather done this than those dang inspections. :wink:wink.

So the battle between Lineman and the Birds rage on. Starlings, Golden Eagles, Bald Eagles, Osprey, Owls, Ravens, Crows... Us Lineman are a bit out numbered ya think?!?! Plus it isn’t like we can just go around and kill them before they cause outages... shoot, some of them are “Suicide Flyers” and sacrifice their life to cause an outage. This war ain’t pretty and neither side is gonna be waving the white flag anytime soon.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of
A Day With A Lineman

Until Next Time...

Hive On
and

Yep,
We gonna need a
New one