So, day 4 with no power because Rappahannock Electric doesn’t properly maintain the power lines. I get it…maintaining things gets expensive, especially when we’re talking about thousands of miles of line but they’re not even trying anymore. Unless the tree is directly touching the line, they simply “carve out” a slot for the line to run under or through. Insanity. They’re all kinds of confused right now as to why there’s a massive power outage. I have the answer but they don’t want to listen.

I’m here just trying to vent my frustrations over some laziness, greed, and outright negligence.

We have family who are still without power, so I share your frustration. Isn't Rappahannock Electric a member owned cooperative?

quote:

Originally posted by Ranger41:
We have family who are still without power, so I share your frustration. Isn't Rappahannock Electric a member owned cooperative?

Yes , it is . That kind of takes the " greed " thing out of the equation ...

They do that here, leave trees and carve out Pac-Man like openings, looks strange, you'd think they'd just take out the trees within x feet of the power lines.

Probably some law/rule/fear of environmentalist retribution or fines...

Where I used to live, I had electrical service from Dayton Power & Light. Referred to locally as Dayton Power & Leech. DP&L contracted with a national tree service company called Asplundh.
Most of the power lines ran behind the homes and DP&L claimed they had an "easement' which allowed them to enter a persons property for line maintenance.
So, Asplundh would bring in a fleet of trucks and go to work in a neighborhood. They drove heavy trucks across peoples lawns, rutting up the sod and crushing sewer and water lines. The chipper began to roar at a 0600 and by the time they left your yard, your tree was "trimmed" to an elongated stump about 15 feet high and you could plant corn in the tire ruts in your yard.
Our day shift was kept busy keeping outraged homeowners from shooting the Asplundh crews. Try to recover damages from DP&L? Good luck!
Be careful what you wish for when it comes to power line maintenance. You might get Asplundh!

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
They do that here, leave trees and carve out Pac-Man like openings, looks strange, you'd think they'd just take out the trees within x feet of the power lines.

DTE's contractors do the same here in S.E. Michigan.

We had a beautiful River Clump Birch in the front yard. Yes: Their power lines were running "through" the fringe of it. Thing is: If they'd just left it the hell alone all would've been good. There weren't any branches big enough to be a threat--much less limbs. But no: Because the lines were going "through" the tree they had to hack it.

This caused the tree to "bulk out" and eventually become a threat. Yup: Because of their hacking they turned a tree that wouldn't have been a threat into a threat.

So of course they came out and hacked it some more. To which the tree responded by becoming even more a threat.

By the third time they came out to hack the tree it had become ungainly and ugly. My wife insisted they cut it down. "We don't do that." "You will, or you won't touch this tree. You destroyed it. You clean up the mess you made." She stood her ground--right by the tree They finally folded.

Similar thing happened with a fir tree on our property line just behind the house--except we paid tree guys to take that one down.

The problem is these tree crews they send out are obviously not arborists. They don't actually know anything about trees, how they grow, and how they respond to trimming. They're just hacks with chain saws and wood chippers.

So many people plant trees in their yard that eventually grow up into the powerlines years later and then get pissed when some poor clown has to come try to trim them . The frustration works both ways .

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Originally posted by selogic:
So many people plant trees in their yard that eventually grow up into the powerlines years later and then get pissed when some poor clown has to come try to trim them . The frustration works both ways .

Except, in both our cases, the trees were planted outside the easements and the power, phone, and cable lines were only passing through their fringes.

The trees, to have interfered with those lines, would have had to have literally fallen on them. The hack jobs the utility's contractors did on them did nothing to prevent that.

(My wife, btw, did take arborist courses. So she knows more than a little about trees, how they grow, how to trim them, and how they react to trimming.)

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Yes , it is . That kind of takes the " greed " thing out of the equation ...

The big wigs still get performance bonuses for not spending more money than is necessary and I have to believe that they make the numbers by not doing proper maintenance.

Another issue I’m having to deal with is REC clearing my outage report. I’ve been on their asses since 7:30 am Monday but the guy I talked to this morning says that I just reported it last night It’s all a numbers game to them. If you look at their page they claim more than 50% cleared. Fucking liars! We went into town today to get a hot meal. Everyone we talked to still had no power. Folks covered 4 different counties and it doesn’t sound like they were hopeful of getting hooked back in within the next 3-5 days. Guys that work for my brother we’re told that they wouldn’t have power until midweek next week at the earliest. All because of some half assed attempts to trim pine trees instead of just cutting the damn things down.

quote:

Originally posted by mutedblade:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
Yes , it is . That kind of takes the " greed " thing out of the equation ...

The big wigs still get performance bonuses for not spending more money than is necessary and I have to believe that they make the numbers by not doing proper maintenance.

The " bigwigs " answer to the Board of Directors , that are elected by the members . When the " Bigwigs " don't do their job , the Board members get their asses chewed on by the members . And since these guys are worried about being reelected , well you get the idea . I worked for an Electric CO-OP . It's a different animal than an investor owned utility .

Here they just take out the pine trees. I had three removed that could be a problem with the house. My experience is that if you are there when Asplund does the work problems are minimal.

I wish all the pines within 150’ of the roadways and utilities were gone. Outages and road closures would essentially disappear. Alternatively, burying everything would also alleviate the weather related outages but it wouldn’t help with road closures

Just venting and doing a bit of wishful thinking. Hopefully my sigforum bros that are experiencing this with me are doing well. If not, get in contact with me and I’ll help the best way I can. I’ve got a chainsaw (or 5 ) and I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty

We get electric through a cooperative here. 10 year cycle, 15 feet on either side of the lines from ground to sky. If it's within that 30' and it's a tree it gets completely removed.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
So many people plant trees in their yard that eventually grow up into the powerlines years later and then get pissed when some poor clown has to come try to trim them . The frustration works both ways .

Except, in both our cases, the trees were planted outside the easements and the power, phone, and cable lines were only passing through their fringes.

The trees, to have interfered with those lines, would have had to have literally fallen on them. The hack jobs the utility's contractors did on them did nothing to prevent that.

(My wife, btw, did take arborist courses. So she knows more than a little about trees, how they grow, how to trim them, and how they react to trimming.)

DTE’s tree policy made no sense to me at our old house. Behind our old house t the corner of four lots was a Box Elder tree that had grown up adjacent to the pole that had three drops from it, fed from the lines at the street.

I called because this tree was starting to die and was afraid that a limb would take out the lines at minimum or the pole at worse case.

The tree service contracted by DTE came out and refused to touch it, they said that the policy set by the company was that transmission lines were the only place they would trim and the only way that they would trim by a drop was if it was damaged by a falling limb. Made no sense to me as they own the cable until it reaches the meter.

quote:

Originally posted by mutedblade:
So, day 4 with no power because Rappahannock Electric doesn’t properly maintain the power lines. I get it…maintaining things gets expensive, especially when we’re talking about thousands of miles of line but they’re not even trying anymore.....

I don't buy that argument because it costs a lot more to keep fixing downed lines and clean up the mess than to just trim trees back. Watch they'll come requesting for a rate increase due to the "unusual amount of line repair". They should be burying these lines anyway.

Ridewv, I agree that it’s a shitty excuse but everyone sees it. Everyone knows it’s more expensive to do last minute repairs in bad weather but if they gamble and there isn’t bad weather, they win. This is the second year in a row we’ve had outages. 1st time was 3 days, so far I’m on day 5 without power and I’m not hopeful for it getting restored today.

I think I’d we were able to bill the power companies for food spoilage, generator fuel, and hotel rooms, they’d be a bit better at maintaining the lines. If only I was in charge of the world.

The only thing pine trees are good for is making paper and they should only be planted in groves for cultivation... the only tree worse than a pine is a Bradford Pear...

Have been trying for over an hour to get someone on the phone at REC. looks like they no longer want to hear from the customers.

quote:

Originally posted by Blume9mm:
The only thing pine trees are good for is making paper and they should only be planted in groves for cultivation... the only tree worse than a pine is a Bradford Pear...

You must not have any Chinese Tallow trees around there .

quote:

Originally posted by Blume9mm:
The only thing pine trees are good for is making paper and they should only be planted in groves for cultivation... the only tree worse than a pine is a Bradford Pear...

Right on. The White Pine was developed as a landscape tree.

VA Power and the NOVEC Loudoun County are the good guys around here.

The underground cable had to be replaced but their easement did not show on my plot plan so they placed it between the property line and the curb. The back hoe operator had other ideas and put the support feet in the flower bed and wiped out some azaleas and left depressions. They had no problem paying damages and fired the guy.

In Loudoun County, the subs stole my bucket I use to prime the pump and shit in the creek. I wanted my bucket replaced but no, they bought me two new buckets.

Verizon on the other hand, had no easement but put the cable on my property and killed a $400 Blue Rocket Juniper.

Some time later, I caught the Verizon contractor putting the neighbors cable on my property.

In Loudoun County, I caught the contractor putting the Verizon cable across my property to the neighbors house. Instead of going 300 feet down the road and 900 feet up the neighbors driveway to the house, it was a lot shorter to cross my property. If I had come along several days later, the cable would have been trenched in the ground.