Being a Lineman - Episode 37 

Hello

hey if you can, do you have a name for that tool or a link to one? (the spiral depth gauge for the insulation). id like to mention it to my company to see if we might be able to get them. that would be a very useful tool just to save a little extra time and make it a little less of a hassle. thanks!

In my cable tv days we had an cable stripper like that for the bigger coax cables. did the outside and the inside stripping

"...I'm really hoping it's not too confusing for those whom aren't in the trade." Yes, it is a bit whelming. Before _I_ change a padmount 😱I need more training!! 🤯But I see the general path of the repair and the parts and most of the "Why?". Thanks for showing the insides of those 7KV elbow connectors (bonus: two types!).

Just wondering if you guys have a backyard machine that you guys can use instead of driving a 5-ton truck through somebody's back yard. Had the same thing happened here last year but it was a pole mount they used a backyard machine to remove it from the pole

Lol 👊🤝

Nice! Nobody had any idea what it was at all. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain/share that. Any one of us would have definitely pulled that hot without a second thought. I'll certainly let the guys know. 🤝

Thanks for saying that keeping These guys safe !

Really appreciate the kind words! I find the Keen boots extremely comfortable. I do a lot of walking and driving tho... They don't hurt my feet when I climb, just because I'm used to it. As much as I love Keen boots, I don't recommend them for everday climbing or those new to the trade. Definitely find something a little more rigid and durable, at least until you get a feel for the job! 👊🤝

Our other two options would be a very large screen to reach from the road or using a backlot machine that can fit in between a 30 inch fence opening

I agree! We all learn every day... Already a viewer has taken the time to explain exactly what brand of termination that was and added a few safety precautions to identify and deal with them. Very cool. Love it when people share knowledge and help each other out.

My first guess would have been that it got bent from other means however I was just in that unit a month ago and it was fine... So I'm assuming there must have been a blast of some sort! Pretty wild for sure.

@@Bobsdecline any chance that xfmr might have been hit with a snowplow? Just thinking that a blast big enough to bend that tab probably would have disturbed several blocks and someone would have reported the noise first. It also would have deformed the lid.

It's true eh! Always on the weekend lol! That's not a bad thing tho... An unplanned job like this can really mess up the day plan.

@@Bobsdecline I blame lightning, sometime in the past.

It very well could have been!

Could be a loading issue. More people home on the weekends. Drawing more power, overloading a weakened transformer.

Lots on incest in Mississippi huh 😝😝

That's not a bad idea! Seems I remember MADI designed a product for this as well, but I've never tried it

I'm supposed to meet with a guy to film one for our company this week! I should be able to make some adjustments to release it on my channel as well 🤞

I would assume that the extra work caused by underground utilities is far outweighed by the fact that they barely cause problems. And if they cause problems it's (I assume) generally not during a storm. So a lot safer for the lineman compared to aerial lines that regularly have to be repaired during storms and other extreme weather events.

@@Jehty_ That is true. However here in the rust belt they are not immune to frost heaves and errant backhoe's. So you need to balance maintenance cost vs cost of construction. Here in NH since the state PUC "encouraged" utilities to be more aggressive tree trimming we have far fewer power outages.

I am a master electrician / field service tech servicing and testing medium and high voltage equipment. My brother in-law bought a new house, I asked him about putting in a generator plug like I did at his last house. He said no I will be fine all my electric is underground. I said that doesn’t matter, it’s not underground everywhere, he said I will be fine. He had lost power 3 or 4 times in the last year. He texted me and said he wants a generator plug now. I wanted to say I told you so but I didn’t.

@@Jehty_You would be assuming wrong. Underground utilities are just as problem prone as their aerial counterparts. Troubleshooting and repairing is far more difficult and expensive. And even though the utilities own easements where the underground runs, people still build things on top of them. I live in the PNW and our utilities are very aggressive when it comes to tree trimming. A couple years ago we had a massive windstorm come through and knocked out power to pretty much the entire region. Our power is largely aerial. Within 24 hours about 95% of the power was restored and those that weren't were largely due to access issues such as trees blocking roads. I work for a road dept and we were actually out in the storm cutting trees that blocked roads as they fell so the power crews could have access when they needed. Aerial is far superior in my opinion, it just looks ugly.

@@mikel9567well, I find that hard to believe. I'm German, so I will compare things to Germany, because that's what I know. Edit: Sorry, I somehow forgot that he was from Canada, not USA. My bad. I couldn't find a number for the average outage time per year for Canada. Has someone that number? So in Germany more than 80% of our power grid is underground. The number I found for the US is 20%. On average a customer in Germany experienced 12.2 *minutes* of interruption in 2022. The average US customer 5.5 *hours*. The highest average number in the last decade was 8 hours in the US (in 2020), in Germany it was 15 minutes (in 2017). That's just such an enormous difference. Of course I'm not saying that that difference is solely because of underground vs aerial. But a lot of reasons for power outages features on this channel are just things I've never heard of here in Germany. Animal walked on transformer, car crashed in power pole. Even power outages because of trees are really rare. All power outages (all 5 or so of them) I experienced during my 30 years on this earth were during "storms of the century". I've never experienced a power outage that just happened on a normal day.

Cheers man! 🍻🤝

in the video he said this one was 1,100 pounds. (shipping weight is usually on the outside)

Thanks man! Youngstown, absolutely love them.... Our company tried just about every brand out there!

Hey! Yes, all of our transformers are fused internally. The fuses are located on the high voltage side and protect the load/low voltage side but not feed through (primary leaving the transformer to feed the next one) cables.

Lol! Glad ya found it tho! Was glad to have been able to capture some of that job. It was rather unplanned lol

I see a pretty big scorch mark on the wall of the transformer going half way around the socket. 5:13

Great to see ya Alan! Hope all is well 👊👊

We check voltage before leaving unless there was reason to suspect a problem. For individual installs, we'll check before putting the meter on and for commercial installs typically the main is open and checked before load is switched on. We don't normally close In a tx on a new install without secondary leads on for a voltage check.(Followed by an open, install and close). Would that be a bad thing tho? ... Definitely not! Unnecessary 99.9% of the time, but would certainly be an extra step in the right direction. IMO of course!

Love it when customers are like this. It makes the job much less stressful. In any case we always do our best to respect customer property.

Alarm?

I always blame lightning. Can be pretty easy for lightning to damage the windings in the transformer and cause it to pop at a random-seeming time in the future.

I might have an depth primary termination coming up soon.... Also a Bluetooth crimper and whatever interesting calls come up during trouble response.

As he says at 10:15 the photoeye is stuck open

I noticed that also, and again at 20:55. This might be a combination of LED efficiency, capacitive coupling and cheap construction allowing a few microamps to pass through the LEDs and get them glowing. This so called "Zombie Bulb" effect has been treated in greater detail by Steve Mould: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1uEmX5XClPY.html and ElectroBoom: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_bgUy6zA0ts.html .

Yea there was a bad batch of photo eyes that allow water to get inside and short out the circuitry

@@Bobsdeclineah, I see now

@@coopermorris1778 Stuck closed, you mean.

That sounds less likely as debris hitting the insulator hard enough to break it.

@@jovetj could also be lines slapping together. Also, remember that gravity plays a major roll in engineering and storm winds can "lift" which is the exact opposite direction. IOW, unexpected stress in a different direction.

@@rupe53 I just don't see lines slapping together solely responsible for removing them from insulators.

@@jovetj I didn't say solely responsible. The problems with storm related wind is they can go in different directions only a few feet away. IOW, push, pull, twist, up and down. Much different than 100 mph in one direction. Also, sheets of rain can draw an arc over dirty insulators where normal rain might not.

The flashes are usually from the wind slapping conductors together.

What do you use?

Your thought process is rather misguided.

@@vladimus9749 A local substation 500 Kva or larger feeding onto a LV feeder pillar with fused ways going out to indivdual main cables, services to properties are then jointed onto the main. If you have a ug fault on the LV then an individual phase fuse will blow rather than lose the whole output of the transformer. In the UK we fuse the LV output of the transformer and the HV side is covered either by local HV fuses to the individual tranformer or a breaker for a spur leg. I'm a linesman in the uk, we have seperate teams for the ug jointing side of work,leaving us to concentrate on the overhead side.

@@neilh2150 Thanks!