Hey Everyone! After transferring the files to my computer I found the audio messed up in a few places... Just found out my new phone has multiple microphones that adjust according to "zoom" :/. I have that feature turned off now and shouldn't be an issue on the next vid! I had no idea what I was getting into with this one... turns out to be a beaver call!🤷♂ This video is a great example of how much procedure is involved for a very simple job!. Be safe all!!
On a different note Aaron; do you have up in Canada where two sets of three phase are running parallel on the same pole, but run four lines on the upper crossbar and two on the lower crossbar? I discovered your channel about three months ago, just about caught up watching all of your videos. Thank you for showing this and for the time that you spent editing, we all appreciate it, I know that I do! Best regards; Edward H. in Connecticut, USA
One has to admire a small animal that can take down a large tree with their teeth where we need a chainsaw. Pretty amazing creatures. It keeps your job interesting. Thanks for the video. They are always interesting and I enjoy learning. Please stay safe, and God bless.
@@nicevideomancanada yes but those beavers think they are constructive instead of destructive! Sometimes things have to be destroyed in order to make something even bigger and better. We’ve been doing that since the beginning of humanity.
One of my favorite series is true facts. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s2YXFeraM8I.html "not for children, nor adults who don't act like children"
You even get the guys in the garage out for the outage! I bet they loved that. I love to see that you guys use 3 way comms and when the read back isn't 100%, the dispatcher calls it out and makes you read it back correctly. It's a PITA but it keeps everyone alive.
At a former employer of mine, 1000 internet customers lost Internet because a beaver chewed through a conduit and severed a fiber line, caused a 4 day outage because of the remote location. 😂
so, did they put back in rigid conduit and place it on a steel or concrete pole? yeah probably not, at minimum steel shield it (they'll chew down the poles and kill it again) lol
The greatest danger in your job is getting hit by a car because no amount of precautions can eliminate the poor practices of others. Any of those drivers can be sleepy, drugged, drunk, or texting on their phone. A tire could blow at precisely the wrong time. So be careful along highways.
The beaver should be happy, you dropped the tree for them and cut it into manageable pieces. Handy that there was another route for the feeder so you could partially re-energize the area and minimize the outage until the work was done.
I appreciate that!! Some viewers find that stuff boring butfor many it's "those details" they want to see! That's why a seperate the more in depth videos into the "being a lineman" titles.... I appreciate the feedback 👊🤝
Interesting to me that the section had to be isolated at the south end to prevent power being delivered from its own north end (the bit that looped to the west before merging with the same circuit). Would be nice to see more content on how the grid is laid out, redundant paths, etc. Was thinking of this channel (sounds better than "thinking of you") when I organized a club visit to a power dam a few weeks ago. Not very big (about 780 MW), but interesting all the same. Got down into the head over the turbine, below the generator. Very warm area. Unusual Kaplan style turbine in a run of the river system (Carillon QC).
Interesting to see that beavers pose a problem to other services as well. I work for a county road dept and we deal with beaver issues regularly. They cause flooding issues for us as well as storm water issues. A few years ago we had a beaver dam burst and it flooded a neighborhood and nearly washed out one of our roads.
With guns, you ALWAYS treat them as loaded and ready to fire. Dealing with electricity like you do, you ALWAYS treated as energized and take ALL necessary precautions, and then some. Be safe.
Classic example of 3 part communication. Great to communicate on the air so everyone else knows what’s going on. Great content Aaron. Keep up the great work!
maybe you should large zip-tie the red tags to the poles? considering gusty winds could blow them away from the pole markings or even some reusable ratchet/spring loaded straps with carabiner clips to hold the tag? I only say that knowing how fast wind can whip up and make a mess.
They are industrious creatures! Once hiking saw a good 3 foot diameter tree that was eaten half way through and it wasn't even that close to the water!
Seems like the Beaver made it. Hopefully he got a learning zap for taking out that darn power. They do make some big chips. They are not in my area. Just squirrel that bit into one of the three phases. It took out the building power to the site. That messed up our equipment. Very interesting call.
Aren't a lot of the electric lines over in England run underground? Maybe I'm just thinking of things mostly in London, which would be pretty common to a lot of cities anyways, but that's what my memory is pulling up.
California is also re-introducing beavers is some area. They have been proven to restore wetlands and eco-systems. They will restore rivers during droughts.
@@44R0Ndin Very expensive to underground all lines in rural areas. Also buried lines are more difficult to find problems. Overhead lines you can often see the problem just by looking at it.
I've watched a ton of your stuff and not sure if I've seen you or your guys wear rubber sleeves. Am I just remembering wrong? Great stuff Aaron. Be SAFE!!
I'm surprised there wasn't a lightly fried beaver at the base of that tree. I would have thought the step potential would have been enough to ruin its day.
@@jovetj True, could have been phase to phase, but at 27:17 you can see that the bark was burned off the tree at the point is was contacting the line, so at least some current was flowing through the tree to ground. Of course, beavers probably have enough brains to back off when the tree starts falling, so that might have kept the step potential and associated current low enough at the beaver's position to be non-lethal.
@@robertlapointe4093 Aaron was talking about phase-to-neutral burn marks on the tree but I don't see those in the video. I only see phase-to-phase burn marks. But I could be wrong. But, yes, electricity was definitely getting into the tree. How much would flow through the roots to a proximate ground line is hard to know. I doubt much electricity can move through the old central wood, it "wood" have to go through the wet newer stuff just under the bark.
Could you do a short video on multipoint grounded neutral distribution systems and how it protects linemen like you and aids in faukt clearing? Phenomenal video by the way
For simple outages like this, does your company require YOU to tell the dispatcher what devices you're going to open to isolate the fault? Or do you have to wait for step by step instructions from the dispatcher?
We must always wait for step by step instructions.... With one exception. We can open line without permission if there is a fire or for safety (wires down). Once the area is secure we must immediately report our actions and be able to justify them. We can never close a switch without permission.
Really enjoyed that video thank you Bob decline Beaver's strike again at least wasn't a mess like the last Beaver video that you posted keep up the good work and stay safe
Do you ever question the integrity of the neutral you're bonding to as a life-safety device, or is it just assumed that if they're still in the air, they'll always have a good strong path to ground?
It's grounded at every pole but then of course there's the copper theft issue :/. A very important part of our grounding is that our work area is also all at the same potential.
Do you think we're close to having each pole have a reporting point back to HQ? Like a GPS signal but for the electrical grid? - To tell you what's wrong and where? Or will that ever be a thing?
The more you do things like that, and the more you rely on it, the easier it is for nefarious actors to "spoof" an outage when there's not actually anything wrong. It would only be useful if it used heavy encryption, and just so you know, "Heavy encryption" and "power efficient" don't belong in the same chapter, let alone paragraph or sentence. Kinda hard to beat "no power required, go out and look at it" for the power consumption when nothing's wrong, which is the vast majority by such a large factor that I'd have to break out a logarithm-scale plot to fit both numbers on the same bar graph scale and have them both visible for both start and end of the bar (if I used a linear scale, the "normal operations" bar would take up the whole page, and the "fault" bar would maybe take up a few pixels).
looks like that device reading green for open is like european nomenclature on breakers. red is hot green is open. house breakers in north america show red when tripped
Things are starting to get confusing over here in North America. We have Red fire exit signs in buildings. But wait! We also have Green fire exit signs in buildings 😂
you guys don't use tree crews for trouble??...been a trouble man 25+ years and i would have called for a tree crew the minute i saw how lg that tree was then did the switching to get a part on..
@@gordonrichardson2972 In this case, it was a combination of wind and chainsaws, but yes. That beaver is still gonna be eating good for a good long time. To fell a tree that big must take a big beaver tho, right? I'd think that wouldn't be something a beaver born last year is gonna attempt, they like the smaller trees that are not only easier to fell, but the wood is also softer besides.
Hey there good sir. Im in the cable industry and comcast doesnt want to pay for locates but they want us to pound bond rods right next to those padmount transformers. I cant say ive ever had something bother me so much as driving a rod next to them to the point i refuse to do so. I dont have a hammer drill. I just have a picket post pounder with a 4lb hammer. Do you have any information or statistics as to how i can finding the best location to pound a rod by one of those padmount transformes without having locates? I really dont want to feel the power of whats inside. Does not appeal. Very much apprecitate the content by the way. Im interested in your line of work and you do swell at projecting your knowledge and know how.
The computer at our dispatch will highlight the line I'm working on a different color. It will light up that color until it meets each protection point. So it's pretty much computer checked but also involves human confirmation.
That Beaver is really upset at those pesky humans for putting a power line in the way of felling that tree that would have fed him and his family all winter.
Are you guys allowed to utilize hydraulic stick saws or gas powered extendable stick saws to keep more distance just in case things get a little sideways?
I havent started the distribution side of my apprenticeship yet so just a question. In the case of the amptacted switches, could you have also pulled the lead out of the top of the cut out and turned the leads up away from the switch? Since we are worried somebody will close them on us?
Do they have a crew whos only job is to get most trees (pruned) before they actually grow into trees, I've actually noticed in wa st,they seem to,only after storms or ( beavers).
there is routine trimming for maintenance, but in some areas it's only every so many years, based on budget. IOW, every 5+ years and they take chances that will help. The other trim work is based on potential problems and get ranked with a priority when a crew has time to do extra work.
an auto-recloser will do 3 strikes then lock out. The timing is more about the load on the line, or how many times a tree blows into a wire over a short time frame. Fuses are a one shot deal. They blow out and must be manually replaced.
Pardon the dumb question, but I thought electricity could not travel through wood? How did that tree making contact between a phase and neutral cause the short?
Dry wood can be somewhat of an insulator but not a great one. Sticks on low voltage lines generally aren't a problem, but high voltage is another matter altogether.
@@darkpixel2k I have seen a power line arcing to a live tree. This was when I was in college in the late seventies. A late snowstorm (in early May) dropped about 2 feet of very wet snow on Fort Collins Colorado. Trees were fully leafed out and this storm caused lots of tree damage resulting in power outages. While walking around the neighborhood during the storm with some friends, we encountered a power line arcing to a tree branch weighted down by the snow. We threw snowballs at the branch, and managed to knock enough snow off of it so it lifted up and broke the arc.
Dry wood is a pretty good insulator, wet living wood much less so, and once current starts flowing it can carbonise the wood making it even more conductive.
Beavers are smart enough to fell the whole tree, then only take what they can work with after it's on the ground. IOW, they will chew the branches off later and leave the logs by the stump.
