ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Laminated Hydro Poles showing up

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that some of the new poles Manitoba Hydro had installed to a pork packing plant have a strange look to them.

Yesterday I was able to see one up close and it appears to be a tapered laminated wood pole. Sort of what you would see as a main beam in a new house only tapered and not round.

So far they appear to be only used for the underground dips to new High Voltage Substation Buster pad mount transformers for new subdivisions and commercial buildings. They must be costly if they are only being used as end poles and not as line poles.

Has anybody else seen this type of pole in use?

I've seen them in rural New Jersey after PSE&G upgraded some transmission lines. Just like in your case they're only used as end poles. They do look just like a glue-lam that tapers to the top.

I'm curious if they cover them in creosote/tar like the regular poles or if they're pressure treated. I didn't catch the ones in NJ until after anything might have had a chance to run off.

We see a few concrete poles but I haven't seen the laminated ones.
Most of the time it is just a PT SYP pole. I guess they grow the pine right up the road so it is easy. I think these are the same 2.5 CCA they use for dock poles. You may not be able to get CCA up there tho.

If you have not seen what they look like here is the site for one of the manufactures. http://www.lwsinc.com/

Apparently for certain sizes and classes of poles its faster to get delivery and less expensive to get the laminated poles than standard wood poles.

As for concrete poles I can only think of one section in our city that has them and I think that they were an experiment.

The concrete seems to be high end medium voltage and high voltage poles
They have some huge ones behind my house that are 115' tall and about 4' around at the base. I am not sure if they are solid or hollow inside. The surface is as slick as glass. The smaller concrete poles look like regular concrete.

I won't think that a glue-lam pole would be good to use outdoors. I heard that if you drill into a glue-lam, you can ruin the glue inside of the hole. Thus allowing it to rot or fall apart quicker.

Look at a few webpages from the different suppliers they all state that their poles can be field drilled for last minute modifications with normal tools, so I don't think that they are worried about water intrusion causing rot or delaminating.

One manufacture says they have been making these poles since 1963 so the product is not new. I guess that they are just new to our local utility so that's why i have never seen them here before.

I heard a strange story about a Manitoba power pole once , someone had changed out a pole and replaced it with a pole that had a V cut out the length of the pole with conductors installed in the vee cut out , and the piece put back the conductors were feeding a stolon poco transformer and guess what the power was being used for

I would be afraid of it delaminating, but if they've been building them that long they must be doing something right.

They just have better glue now.