Electrical Service – Overhead or Buried?
I realize I’m opening a big can of worms here by asking for opinions, but…
My Sparky and I are in the process of rewiring my Garage/Shop and upgrading the main panel in the house. We’ve traded labor/favors for years and know each other has the tendancy to over-engineer/over-build our projects. Yesterday, after reviewing what’s done and still to be done, he asks me if I want the new service to be overhead or underground. Just so that he can get the right meter can when he goes by the DTE service center. Sparky works for a private contractor that has numerous contracts with the local power company doing service upgrades and residential problem solving (flickering or browning down lights, etc…)
I knew from the onset of this project that I would need a new service drop. The house is currently on a 60 Amp service and with the needs I have in the garage, a 200 Amp service is a must. But I never gave a thought to changing the way my service comes into the house. My house is in a rural setting where everything power, cable, telco is all overhead and the service upgrades are done in the air as well.
To upgrade the overhead, we have to run large gauge wires from the pole, install a new/larger weatherhead and conduit, meter and can and a larger gauge wire into the main panel.
To go underground, I get to dig a trench and lay the conduits from the pole to the house, then we’ll run new cable, install a new meter can, etc…
I don’t mind the hard work, just looking for the pros and cons of both ways.
TIA, Stickman
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.
The real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light.
-Plato
Replies
What else is overhead in your rural environment?
I have got trees in mine, and I am on a rural electric coop. All overhead services up to the pole out front. Underground from there to the house, shop and kennel/studio bldg.
Trees and tree limbs come down in storms around here. I lose service often enough because of damage to the electric companies lines. Most of the time it is just 2 to 4 hours. Big storms with lots of damage 2 to 4 days. Everyone is caught in the same boat then if they have an overhead service to thier homes that was damaged. Power company will most likely have thier part of the distribution repaired before an electrician gets down the list of service drops he has to repair.
For my money, I go underground. Poco fixes thier stuff and I am back on faster.
I am also an electrician, so I get to make more money repairing those downed mast and meter bases without having to fix my own first :)
Dave
as an HO I would much prefer buried
makes painting, using ladders etc easier
don't have to worry about that line falling
looks better
_____________________________
bobl Volo, non valeo
I got everything buried including cable because of hurricane wind. as far as coduit just use direct burial cable. The power company did mine for $300 extra.
My situation was a little different. 1/2 mile to the nearest pole. Elec cooperative fought me tooth and nail. They wanted above ground and it's their wire until the meter on the house. Tried to scare me, quoting $14k for the trench. My nickle. I bought a hoe.
It's through the woods to get here. Often lose power, but never have a problem with my buried line. Always their aerial line a few miles away. While the trench was open I dropped telephone wire in. Works great. Can't imagine anyone making the other choice.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
BURY IT: DON'T THINK TWICE, BURY IT. It all should be buried. Its not because utility companies are designed to be perverse, since fundamentally they are "cost plus" operations, so they like to keep fixing their stuff as it fails. Lineman get to go out in ice storms and earn triple time while putting the same wires back up again. I live in upstate New York. As the result of a "micro burst" summer storm about 10 years ago a huge amount of the utility's aerial plant was destroyed. So they put it all back up. About four years later an ice storm knocked it all down again. So they put back 8000 poles plus wire. Won't be long before its down again. And since everybody goes out to earn triple time, why not? The stockholders are utterly powerless: its a regulated utility. The custormers are permanent victims: can't go to the competitor. The companies run for their employees, and their employees want to do it again, and again, and again. You don't, so bury it. You also don't need hot wires on the ground when the inevitable happens and it all goes down. We lose plenty of people every year to downed powerlines . . .
Don't mean to start a flame, but you are so far off base about the reason for power companies going overhead, it is hard to know where to start.
Check out the cost of a total underground net work compared to an overhead network. You want that cost included in your rate base?
If you think overhead linemen get triple time for repairing storm damage, your way wrong. Time and a half for hours over 8 and double time after 16 hours is the norm. DOT requires an 8 hours off time after 16 hours, but doesn't police that issue durring storms.
Storm damage repair work is some of the most dangerouse and difficult work, in ussually adverse weather conditions, imaginable. Those guys more than earn every dime they make. Believe me, I have been out there with them.
Most utility companies can not pass on the cost of storm damage in thier rate base. They have to plan for it or purchase insurance to cover it.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Dave
Check out the cost of a total underground net work compared to an overhead network.
But is that really ever calculated? O/H supplies means having to keep "lineman" qualified electricians on the payroll full time. In my town, they have 2nd & 3rd shifts on call, with a rate differential for each later shift. Then there's the equipment needed to handle poles, and all of the poles & gear. Then there's the tree pruning & ROW/easment costs, too.
Ok, so, a "down the hole" sparky will likely want as much as a lineman will. But, with u/g service, shouldn't the amount of needed service decrease?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
My turn to chime in on the Lineman string. I originally asked this question of the BTer's because for 41 years my Dad worked as a lineman for Detroit Edison. And as the son of a lineman, I can tell you that while they make the long dollar for working a storm, the hours that he had to keep were ridiculous!!!
I can remember many ice, wind, snow or thunderstorms that required my dad to be gone for weeks. The company would take care of the worst of the local storm damage and then send the crews off to where the damage was worse. Then they would work 16 hour days, usually in inclimate or below freezing weather, followed by an 8 hour rest period. The rest period usually consisted of sleeping about 6 to 7 hours on a cot in a local school gym. I can't ever recall my dad telling me that they were put up in a motel.
I realize that this was a career choice that he made (and I didn't even thought I had the opportunity twice) and I never heard him complain about the long hours in brutal weather. And yes, he made great $$$ when he was working storm recovery, but then Uncle Sam came and got his more-than-fair share. Sometimes we'd pay more in taxes than we'd getting take home pay.
The cost of Overhead (initial, maintenance and repair) is still significantly cheaper than the Underground equivalent. But I will admit that I don't want to look at the utility infrastructure anymore than the next guy and I certainly don't want my energy, cable and phone rates to go any higher than they already are either.We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.The real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light.-Plato
For those that want to read, in size 3:
My turn to chime in on the Lineman string. I originally asked this question of the BTer's because for 41 years my Dad worked as a lineman for Detroit Edison. And as the son of a lineman, I can tell you that while they make the long dollar for working a storm, the hours that he had to keep were ridiculous!!!
I can remember many ice, wind, snow or thunderstorms that required my dad to be gone for weeks. The company would take care of the worst of the local storm damage and then send the crews off to where the damage was worse. Then they would work 16 hour days, usually in inclimate or below freezing weather, followed by an 8 hour rest period. The rest period usually consisted of sleeping about 6 to 7 hours on a cot in a local school gym. I can't ever recall my dad telling me that they were put up in a motel.
I realize that this was a career choice that he made (and I didn't even thought I had the opportunity twice) and I never heard him complain about the long hours in brutal weather. And yes, he made great $$$ when he was working storm recovery, but then Uncle Sam came and got his more-than-fair share. Sometimes we'd pay more in taxes than we'd getting take home pay.
The cost of Overhead (initial, maintenance and repair) is still significantly cheaper than the Underground equivalent. But I will admit that I don't want to look at the utility infrastructure anymore than the next guy and I certainly don't want my energy, cable and phone rates to go any higher than they already are either.
I just inquired to a friend who is in the process of building a cabin in northern Minnesota about his electrical system. He told me that the quote for buried electrical service was about a tenth of what overhead would cost. It sounded like the local electrical company just added another zero onto the buried quote. Three cabins, about 1 1/2 to 2 miles of cable and his share come out to less than $3000. Sounds like a bargain! I thought that the price would be much higher for such a remote location. It was also nice that they paint those transformers green, they blend in well in the pines.
He had to go up and clear a path for the trenching equipment with a cat thru the woods & they also used old logging trails. Up where his cabin is built there are so many trees that blow down every year that I doubt that you could even get them to actually install overhead unless you hit a spot with exposed bedrock and cant go around or were willing to do a clearcut logging operation.
The only problem that I have heard about buried services is that gophers sometimes chew on the insulation. A electrician I was working with last week told me that his son works on the stray voltage crew and finds that sort or problem all of the time. Give him the address and he can usually guess the problem.
Oh come on !
I heard that you guys have hookers up in those pole top tents. And champagne and caviar back at the hilton...
;)
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow
Worked a storm last spring, and had to watch a downed wire for 28 hours in one of the seamy neighbor hoods. It was so bad that the hookers stopped working, but the druggies were still out there. I kept asking the PSRT (pubic safety responce team) to get me the hell out of there. Let the dopers get cooked and we could count the bodies later..... as long as I wasn't one of them. Metro police finally sent a patrol car by every hour to check on me. Between midnight and 5:00 am in 58 minutes increments of 8.5 azzhole pucker is a long time. I kept the truck poinet away from the down line and running. Everytime someone approached the caution/danger tape I would roll down the window, put the truck in gear and yell at them to stay clear. No way in hell was I going to get out of the truck to stop them.
We have one substation where the New Years eve "fireworks" is provided by the local gangs shooting out transformers. Police won't even go in there or escort our repairmen untill full light the next day.
Dave
Ouch !!!
But hey... If you die in the line of duty, don't they give you 27 virgins in heaven, or something like that ?
;)
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow
Long as it's virgins,......not virginians.
Dave
ROFLOL
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow
A long time ago I got talking with a local electric company lineman. Typically a line was down after a summer storm. Underground lines came up.
His version was that it would take a large investment up front to put significant numbers of underground runs in. It would save money in the long run in avoidance of future damage and tree trimming but that the utilities could make more money investing the money. Seems, according to him, returns on investments more than covers the additional costs of overhead lines.
He claimed that the utilities were using these profits to lower prices and return dividends to investors. A short term tactic. Should the financial situation change the lack of money would cause a quick rise in prices.
Long term, IMO, they would be better off going underground. The reduced maintenance costs would continue to pay off long term.
Well, well, it looks like we aren't about to have any flame wars about whether to bury that service drop! Roof venting it ain't.
Add my vote for underground. I undergrounded the line to our home five years ago and am grateful every time I see the aerial services on some of the million-dollar houses nearby. It is safer, prettier, more reliable...what's not to like? The incremental cost is so minor for most of us, that it pales in comparison to the long term benefits.
Bill
Tend to agree with the underground thought. I've delt with all kinds of distribution over the years and have come to the conclusion that the witches broom of wire traveling overhead to my house is ugly. Your house will be so much cleaner looking when it all travels underground. No holes in the roof for the riser, no conduit traveling down the walls (in my care 2 stories), nothing to be moved when you repair siding, no straps on the pipe or cable to rust...... When you dig the trench, oversize the pipe and have plenty of runs for anything you may need (power, phone, TV & etc). for my house I added an extra unused run (it's cheap) for some unknown use down the road.
No offense meant to the guys who go up in buckets when its about 5 degrees and the ice is blowing sideways: its awful, and you probably couldn't get me to do it for any money.
Nonetheless: However the utilities pay for it, its in the rate base. whether they buy insurance, or reserve for it, its there.
My great objection, however, is not money but safety. Aerial Power lines go down. and when the do, people can die. I had a major fire on my property last June, and have thanked my stars over and over that three or four years ago I ponied up 40 grand and buried 3300 feet of 4.8K primaries on the property. The fire burned a building immediately adjacent to where a terminal pole w/ transformer had stood. Probably three hundred people flooded onto the property to watch the show. The lines would have been down and hot, and the chances of one or more deaths was very great. But the stuff was buried, and so never an issue. I had buried the lines once I had the $$ because years ago I had come within 6' of a downed primary during an ice storm before I realized what that sparking on the ground was. That's way to close to 4800 volts when you don't know where the rest of it is.
Aerial power is dangerous, unreliable, costly to maintain, and ugly. Perhaps its time for more research: what would it really cost to bury and what would the ultimate payback be? how many lives are lost a year to aerial line electrocutions? Then a realistic cost/benefit analysis could be made.
Bury it.
Trenching is not all that difficult, and it you can't afford to sub it out, rent a hoe or a commercial trenching rig.
I dug mine with a 30" bucket and layed the power conduit on one side and the phone and an empty conduit (future use) on the other.
About 560' of trench with plenty of CT glacial rock.
Just another day in the life of this dog.
There are several reason why high voltage lines aren't burried. One is that the high voltage lines would require substantial insulation, perhaps several inches. Overhead lines are not insulated. Heavy insulation and underground burrial would hold in the heat. The conductor size would have to be increased a great deal to cut the heat back so it won't overheat from not being in the open air.
The wires create a capacitor with the earth, which results in energy loss. The further the wires are from the earth the lower the loss. While the loss is trivial for a service entrance for a house, it would be significant for hundreds of miles at 750,000 volts. That's why high voltage towers are so tall, to reduce the capacitive losses.
> There are several reason why high voltage lines aren't burried. One is that the high voltage lines would require substantial insulation, perhaps several inches.
A friend of mine long ago e-mailed a description of an underground high voltage line near his place. It used some kind of special oil with circulating pumps and a cooling system.
-- J.S.
You get no arguement from me about the safety and reliability of undreground services or even distribution systems.
Cost is another factor, and that includes maintenace and operations.
Think of the historical developement of the current transmission and distribution system. Even the underground network in most metropolitan areas is a nightmare of complexity. Airial T&D lines,switches, etc are difficult to work on and have certin dangers associated with them. Underground net works are no different, you just don't see them.
Ever see a flooded transformer vault? Ever think about the guy that has to go down in that hole in the ground and repair or splice a transmission line or switch?
Think toxic gasses, damp and wet conditions, confined space working requirements, and like a fire at sea...no place to run when stuff goes boom!
4LORN1 has described underground repair splices for residential system. If not done correctly, they are dangerous and unreliable. Same thing with T&D U/G splices. I have seen splices that weigh over 100 lbs per foot when correctly made up, and it can take 10 to 15 ft. of splice joint to get the job done. The same splice overhead takes 1/4 the time and 1/8 the material, maybe less.
Almost all utilities would like to see all new developments go u/g, but that is not our decision to make. Developers pay for intial distibutions systems. Underground is way more expensive up front and many don't want to or can't afford that cost. They eventually get the investment back as each lot or home ties onto the system, but many times the return is way to slow for them. They just can't tie up that many $$$ for that long and still make the money they want.
One of our ongoing cost is tree management and consumer education. That is a whole nother can of worms, that for the most part is out of the control of the utilities.
For the most part everyone recieves reliable electric service from thier pocos, and fairly reasonable cost. However, let a major outage occurr and the poco becomes the bad azz for not providing what the customers were unwilling to pay for.Even the stock holders in investor owned utilities are unwilling to give back some othe 10 to 12% profit pocos are allowed in the regulated industry to bild new underground networks. It is a catch 22 for everyone. Couple that with politics and corporate ploicies that produce the likes of ENRON and you can see how convoluted it can really get.
I don't even pretend I understand any of it. I just try to do my job each day and help provide safe and reliable service for our customers, and collect my paycheck every two weeks :-) I am not out there on the line crews. I just help out when the poop hits the fan durring storms. The rest of the time I am comfy keeping our facilties running so the real linemen and gas dogs can get thier jobs done.
Dave
drives me crazy... gorgeous homes with aerial service.... bunch of ugly wires thru the air.. then draping down the house..
i always recommend underground...even if they have to set apole on the property and just make the last 100' or so underground
sometimes they just can't afford it ( usually about $2K by the time it's all done )..
but if they can, it's money well spentMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Mike, something that I suggest to customers when they really want underground is to relocate the position of their meter socket close to where their overhead service comes onto their property. Sometimes the power companies will give you a percentage or a certain amount of free underground when you convert from overhead to underground. In my companies case they will give the customer the first 15 feet from the property line free, buy a factory built meter pedestal or build one, position it at that point, then from that point on it is considered the customer's wire. Go to Menards or Home Depot buy 4/0 triplex underground either have someone dig it or dig yourself by hand up to the house. This is considerably much cheaper than having the power company bring it all the way up to the house. Also it gets all the meter equipment off the side of the house. It also gives you a point to bring some other circuits off from that point to feed an outlet, shed, etc. If you plan it right when building a new home you can use that as your temp. service for contractors and when it comes time for perm. service branch off from that up to the house. Plant a bush or landscaping and it is hid from the road.
good points, steve...
i'll talk to my electrician about that as to local requirementsMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Underground, absolutely. Use direct burial cable if you can, a lot easier than conduit. Put a few inches of fill on the cable and then some of the warning tape they sell for that purpose, so that someone digging will get the tape first.
In a lot of places people are on 20 year waiting lists to get their stuff underground. Looks better and doesn't get knocked down.
If you're in a rural area, do you have farm equipment to deal with?
If you do, I wouldn't even consider overhead due to safety issues.
The only advantage I can think of with overhead is it's easier to repair if you have a break. One of the wires into my spec house fried about a year after it was put in. The utility company fixed it for free, but left a heck of a mess in the newly landscaped yard.
I was going 70 miles an hour and got stopped by a cop who said, "Do you know the speed limit is 55 miles per hour?" "Yes, officer, but I wasn't going to be out that long..."
Here we don't have much weather bad enough to damage power lines. But still underground services are considered to be one of the marks of a higher class neighborhood.
-- J.S.
I can't think of any reason not to go underground. It's so much more protected from damage and it looks better. After living through the Ice Storm of '98 I wouldn't have it any other way.
While you're at it, consider placing all your services underground. Or at least laying conduits through which you can pull phone, cable, fiber optic, or whatever in the future.
I have been a lineman for about 20 years. The last 13 for an investor owned utility. Stickman, going from overhead to underground would be one of the best things you could do for your service entrance going from 60 to a 200 amp service entrance. I've seen way less problems on the underground services compared to the overhead. It also cleans up the looks of your house getting all the overhead wires down, at the same time you have your ditch open...drop cable, telephone, whatever else overhead right in there with it and will not hurt a thing.
Pertz, to address your response, TRIPLE TIME is unheard of in the industry! And it still wouldn't be enough pay for when we have to go anytime day or night in the most adverse weather conditions and unbelievably long hours in borderline unsafe working conditions. And if you think we put up overhead instead of underground just so we can go put it up again....you don't even have a clue!!
Steve: My hat's off to linemen! they rank up there w/ firemen & cops. I live in Nawth Jawja - two hurricanes grazed our area. We have underground svc from the ROW to our house. 473.5 ft and $1875 for the installation. Othewise, we'd have had to remove all trees 70 ft either side of the power line.
Lost pwr during one hurricane. A dead pine tree (courtesy of pine beetles in a neighbor's land) took it out. Happened at 10:00PM. called the pwr co, expecting them to wait till daylight when the storm would be gone. Nope! they were out there & had us back on line by 12:30 AM. Called them back and thanked them for going out when they really didn't & shouldn't have gone out. They risked their lives for us to have electricity. Too many folks forget that part.
DonThe GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
I spend a lot of time repairing overhead services. I had one last winter that was pulling the end off a pole barn. Before we could start the electrical repairs we had to use the owner's come-along and chain to suck the building together. I get to repair underground too, in every situation it costs more. If underground faults it often takes out the conduit, it's always during a high stress time of year or extreme weather. I just spent Saturday replacing a customer owned 2000kva transformer and 12.5 kv primary. The only thing that was left was 6 tons of dubious recycle material caused by an underground fault. Still the aesthetics say UG, just be sure to use expansion joints if they are called for....many times we'll concrete encase the conduits, sometimes with red dyed mix.