This is on the pole right in front of my house. The rusty brackets holding the cable head to the pole have finally rotted right through, leaving just the underground feeder from below and the tails to the overheads holding the head up.

I reckon it must have happened over the weekend. One night about 10 p.m. I noticed the lights dim right down a couple of times as if there was a severe fault, and I thought I heard the sound of an arc flash from outside. By the time I looked around outside I could see nothing though, and dismissed it.

I just happened to look up at this pole yesterday and saw this. Putting two and two together, I reckon this must have been the cause -- Probably just shorted momentarily as it gave way.

The underground feeder line also looks in rough shape, I can see the outer covering unraveling. We have a lot of fabric (jute?) covered feeder lines installed in the 1960's that looks to be in the same condition now.

Who owns the feeder, the utility or is it a private line?

If it was here the utility usually replaces the line all the way back to the closest manhole or transformer, and not just replace the service head. A lot of times they also put in a new pole as they feel the pole is probably shot as well.

I have seen these flapping about before but thought nothing of it. I assume that the head on the cable is there as it is a PILC cable? There are some 33kv cables near me that go underground and the cable just splits into 3 with no head on it.

I never liked the idea that the 240V supplies are on the same pole, looks close to disaster to me!

Is that barbed wire wrapped around the ug feeder? all of the ones I can remember from my countryside days were wrapped in it to prevent cows and the like from nibbling on it.

To me it looks like 230/400V only since there are 4 wires. Not nice, definitely.

No, it's just the outer covering of the cable disintegrating:



The steel cover on the lower part of the pole is also pulling away, revealing more deterioration there as well:





The utility. The PoCo here owns everything right up to the meter. The underground cable on this pole is the main feeder (240/415V wye) to most of my road from this transformer, which is just a few yards away on the next block.

The three cables you can see coming off the top of the first picture bring two phases plus neutral back about 100 ft. to another pole which feeds four houses, one of which is mine.

I found part of the cause of the failure lying in the grass outside:



EDF was pretty quick at getting somebody out here. I called in the problem around 2 p.m., the "first response" guy showed up around 5 p.m. to assess, and the guys with the bucket truck arrived a couple of hours later to do a temporary "lash up" until it can be repaired properly. They've just tied the head back to the pole and added some extra support straps to the cable for now:

Interesting photo's Pauluk.

That 240/415 Volt cable is armoured ? Usually it is for 11 kV cables or is this a UK standard.
I'm supprised in this set up which does not allowe for drip loops.
We have similar cables, 11 kV in as bad a state with outer covering flaking off.

I like the temporay ( permanent ) fix with the almighty cable ties.

Hi all.

I think the lower set of cables in the first pictures are confusing some people into thinking that the upper ones might be high voltage.
The lower ones seem to be telephone cables which I think is quite rare to find both on the same utility pole in the UK, Certainly in my area it is unheard of.
It will be nice to see the permanent repair and how long it takes to happen.

Martin.

Paul,
What an interesting looking cable head, seems strange to see a thing like that after years of seeing heads made for horizontal configuration.

Were there saddles on that cable at one time, where it runs up the pole above the protection strip?

That type of cable was used quite often here in Southern NZ, it's nearing the end of it's usable life and is being ripped out instead of being repaired, if it faults.

My head goes faster than my fingers sometimes I meant I dont like the idea of 240V/400V on the same pole as telephone. It is unusual but you tend to see it in rural areas, usually where there is a long run for both services.

That cable does look a bit ratty!

I have only seen old looking heads, I wonder what the new ones look like? I might take a trip to the countryside this weekend

In the outskirts of Vienna I see power + phone on one pole quite often. In more rural areas the post office/ now Telekom installed their own poles.

These were the standard cables when installed several decades ago. You'll still see plenty in service here, but often looking rather tatty now, as with this one!


Welcome back Martin. Yes, just in case there is any confusion the lower cables are all telephone. In fact the line from the support ring going off to the right in the first photo is the drop to my house.

The little estate where I live probably has a higher proportion of cabling still overhead than in many areas, although with this part of Norfolk being quite rural, there are plenty of places where you can find telephone cables running below LV power.



I was wondering for a moment where might have 240/415 and 33kV on the same poles!

Different voltage power lines on the same poles are certainly very rare in the U.K. compared to, say, North America. Most times 11kV and 240/415V only meet on the same pole where the transformer is located.

Again though, out here in the sticks there are a few exceptions. There's a place a few miles away where 11kV and 240V share a few spans. The lines cross the main road, and there's a 1-ph transformer on one side which feeds a house on that side and back across to another house on the opposite side. It is fairly unusual though; I'll have to try and get some pics next time I'm over that way.



Possibly at one time, but there have never been any the 11 years I've been here -- Until now!

It's common in New Zealand to find single and double circuit 33, 22 and 11 kV above 230 / 400 Volts.
Then also the telecom wires share the same pole.

In Wairau Valley, North Shore, there is even 110 kV above 11 kV above 230/400 Volts.

Crikey Ray,
You fellas up north sure know how to get your money's worth out of a power pole.

Common here in USA as well. Cable TV lines are usually run along the same poles, along with 120/240v secondaries and 2400/7200/12470v primaries.

Here's a rather unusual arrangement for England. Cables crossing at all angles, and the rearmost pole has a multi-pair telephone cable anchored above the 240V lines:



Actually, the pole in the foreground of this picture is noteworthy as well. Old telephone poles like this with cross arms and porcelain insulators are becoming quite rare now.

I know a short run (maybe 2km) in Austria which is still bare wires on telegraph style poles, 2 lines I think. All other phnoe lines are multiwire cable by now. This one seems to be the feed to a very remote furniture factory out in the sticks.

Ragnar, that bought back some memories! On vacation at an aunt's house in the early fifties, out in the countryside with my cousins listening to those wires singing in the wind. We used to put an ear to the pole and imagine we could hear what folks were saying on the phone!

Alan

You can still see a lot of these old poles here out in the middle of some country towns here, with the same bare hard-drawn copper wire on them that was put on them the day they were installed, years ago.

See here:

HV & LV on same poles

As mentioned here, EDF was out here again a couple of days ago to a call from my next-door-but-one neighbor about flickering lights and brown-outs. Apparently the house across the road has had similar problems, although I've not noticed anything more and neither has my immediate neighbor the other side.

Thinking it might be a problem on one phase, I actually spent a half hour one evening tracing all the service drops and sure enough, it emerged that the two affected houses are both on blue phase, while I'm on red.

It seems also that the engineer who came out to do the temporary lashup (I didn't get to speak to him) reported that the cable head was "quite warm," so it's looking very much like there might be a bad connection on blue phase in there.

Still no sign of the team to do the proper repair yet, but with what I know now I'll be keeping a close look at the top of that pole!

Still no sign of any permanent repair on the cable head yet, but with the windy conditions overnight, now the guy line has broken as well:





Closer view of corrosion; several strands just snapped right through as I picked up the end:

If it is still standing after all the wind, maybe a guy wire is not needed Just kidding.

That doesn't look too good Paul, power companies don't often guy poles for the sheer fun of it.
Has someone called EDF to notify them of the failure?

Maybe when the whole thing falls over, it will finally get repaired properly.

I called them Friday afternoon and was quite surprised when a crew rolled up Saturday morning! I didn't think they'd bother about sending anyone out until after the weekend for a non-urgent thing like this.

Anyway, we now have a nice shiny new guy line, with one of the newer "square" insulators in matching silver-gray:






More or less what one of guys I spoke with said. He pretty much agreed that it's what I've thought for some time: EDF no longer carries out much in the way of preventative maintenance. They only come out when somebody reports a problem or there's a big bang and the lights go out.

Funnily enough, I was making the most of a sunny day yesterday to do some work on a vehicle outside when I saw a couple of EDF linemen in fluoro jackets walking up the road dropping envelopes off at every house, so I met them at the gate. They were delivering notices about a planned outage for Saturday, February 16th.

For one moment I thought they were actually going to tell me that EDF was going to replace the tatty feeder on "my" pole outside and finally fix the lashed up head. No...... They're installing a new xfmr over at the caravan park somewhere and are doing some HV work at the same time.

One of the guys turned out to be one of the crew who did the temporary job on the head back in the summer though, of which he was reminded when I mentioned it.

"That was months ago, wasn't it?" and looked up at the pole. He was surprised that nobody else had been back to do anything else yet. Then he noticed the new stay wire and laughed. Turns out it was his brother I'd been talking to on Saturday.

It's sad; when budgets get cut, preventative maintenance is the first thing to go. After all, who can afford an ounce of maintenenace when you're already in the hole trying to pay for that pound of cure?

Would you believe that finally a couple of guys rolled up this morning? It turns out they're from some outfit called Freedom Power Lines who are subcontracted by EDF for cable replacements. They'd only been given the vaguest idea about "something" needing to be done at this pole (that really inspires confidence, doesn't it?).

Anyhow, after deliberating and paying a visit to the sub-station on the next block to assess, they've gone away to put in an order to run a completely new underground feeder from the sub to the pole, so it looks as though this job might be completed -- At last!