A Day With A Lineman #40 ~ Fat Hawks and a Little Water ~

Once the wheat fields have been cleared by the Harvesters, the vermin have no where to hide. Gopher, mice and other rodents have had their cover blown. Its time to feast! I swear once the fields start to get cleared you get a little idea about how many hawks are patrolling the skies above these fields. Even when the harvesters are still chopping down the stalks of wheat, the hawks are circling the skies above waiting for a delicious meal to be exposed. In the skies, on the ground and on the power poles, hawks are everywhere when the harvest hits. I imagine they put on a few pounds since these vermin have no place to hide. Easy Meals equals Fat Hawks... Fat Hawks equals Power Outages. It might not seem to add up but when you add a little water to the equation...

A Day With A Lineman #40

A Fat Hawk and a Little Water

Even after the harvest the farmers still need their water. They can’t just depend on Mother Nature to provide enough snow and rain throughout the fall, winter and spring. This is done to keep the moisture in the ground as close to the surface as possible. Yes the temps have cooled off but these local farmers still need that water. Even when it’s raining, they are watering so we gotta keep those pumps running for them. Food Grows where Water flows. :wink:wink

This happened a few weeks ago and I am just now getting around to it. We had a rainy weekend and come Monday morning we had a few outages roll in. When things have been really dry due to the summer heat, then Mother Nature brings a few good rainy days, we tend to find a few issues. As most know water and electricity don’t mix too well, yet wood has insulating properties. Wood’s insulating properties are good enough that they used to use them as hot sticks. Early Lineman built their own attachments to be connected to a wood “pole” to work on the energized power lines. From wooden hot sticks to these fiberglass sticks. I think we have a couple wooden stick laying around somewhere... AH HA

Now this one isn’t really that old compared to the other ones we had. They ended up taking the other wooden hot socks to a museum to be put on display. This wooden press does have some sort of epoxy coating on it and doesn’t really do the whole “Wooden Hotstick” as much justice as it deserves. Oh well at least I tried right?

What I am getting at by mentioning the wooden hot sticks is that there can be wires laying on the wooden arm or pole and nothing happens. Especially when it is only 7,200 volts it’s not quite enough juice there to cause any explosions when laying on a dry wooden pole or crossarm. That wire can sit there for a very long time with no adverse effects. Now this is where the water comes into play, add some rain and it provides a path for the electricity to travel down the pole to the ground. Causing an outage and sometimes a fire. This doesn’t happen instantly, the electricity can just sit there and track back and forth across a section of the pole or arm, slowly burning it, then eventually causing the fire or shorting out the circuit. Here is a photo I took a while back of some really cool tracking that was happening due to failed insulators. The electricity was making its way down to the neutral and just sat there slowly cooking the pole. Eventually it would have caught on fire, burned in half and cause a good outage.

Now let’s get back to these Fat Hawks enjoying their feast. Gopher after Gopher get eaten and when these full-bellied-hawks land on a jumper wire that goes over the wooden arm from the fused cutout to the lightning arrestor, the wires can hold the weight of the hawk and bends. Then when the hawk flies off it shoved it down to the arm and there is sits laying on the wooden cross arm. Welp, here comes the rain....

Ring...Ring...Ring...
“Um ya my pump isn’t working and it looks like a fuse is blown”

These old farmers are actually pretty funny to deal with. They get out there and try to trouble the problem by looking at all the poles around them. Some of them have been around long enough they know their stuff pretty well and can give us some good clues to find out what the issue is. This one was a no-brainer once I looked at it. The Over-the-arm jumper was pushed down onto the arm, thanks to the Fat Hawks. Add onto that the fact that it had just rained a bunch the night before, we got ourselves a little outage.

Typically I can use a hotstick and push the jumper back up, refuse the cutout and close it back in. Not this time, it looks like there is a little bit more going on here. Now I am not sure how/why the cut out on the right completely broke in half but it is balancing there very nicely isn’t it.

Before I go messing around with anything follow the line back out to the road where it taps off the main line. There is a set of fuses there also that protect the whole tap. The blown fuses and broken cut out protect the transformer bank at the end of the tap. By opening the fuses that protect the tap, I de-energize the whole tap. There is only a couple pumps on it so it isn’t a big deal. Plus I talked to the farmer and he said it was cool to do so :wink:wink

Those cutouts are made of porcelain so they are pretty heavy. So if I was to try and remove the jumper that comes off the top of the cutout from the line above, the over the arm jumper would have been pulled down due to the weight of the porcelain. Causing it to come in contact with the arm. I didn’t really feel like experiencing that at the moment, so I de-energized the whole thing.

As a Serviceman, I work by myself. Yes I am limited on the tasks I can perform but that is strictly due to safety guidelines. Along with the fact that love being able to go home with all my fingers and toes. It’s quite a bit different than working on the crew, where you have that extra set of eyes looking for that potential hazard. So if I am second guessing something even the slightest, Its time to make a phone call for some help. I’ve been engulfed in a ball of fire before and I don’t really want to experience that again. It gets really hot really fast I can tell you that. Just a little taste of what 7,200 volts can do take a look at this. Note: this is in a controlled environment done by professionals like... Me.... As a Lineman you can’t be scared of it but you do have to respect it.

After I make a couple quick calls to get some parts coming my direction.... I know, I know!! I don’t know why I didn’t have a cutout on my truck either!! I searched every single bin and could not believe I didn’t put one on this truck!! Big Dummy!! Oh well, I got one one there now!!

The funny thing about this is that this pole has a work order getting really to be put out to the crew to rebuild it. All new transformers, fiberglass arm, and the lightning arrestors would be repositioned down on the transformers to keep this sort of thing from happening. We have been retrofitting poles like this anytime we have an opportunity to. Replace wood arms with a fiberglass arm and move the lightning arrestors. That way these Fatty Hawks quit causing outages.

As you can see it was tracking its way to the pole and working its way down to the ground. Which by the sight of the blown fuse... I think it made it there. I mean I didn’t see any dead hawks or anything laying around, they just pushed the jumper into the arm and left. I think this one got really close to starting a fire. So the arm being wet kept it from burning but the arm being wet cause it to track and create and outage???.....hmmmm

Welp this piece of junk has got to go!

This is actually a quick fix, change the cutout, refuse the doors and we are good to go. All except I forgot to take any photos of my handy work. I had another call come in and I had to get moving. Plus it looked a little funny with one odd ball cutout up there. Oh well it is just temporary until the crew rebuilds it. I almost forgot this photo....

One good shake of the pole and would have fallen off of there, and pulled that jumper down into the arm. From the other angle it didn’t look like it was balanced that precisely. That was a close one for sure!!

Well thanks to anyone who took the time and enjoyed another episode of A Day With A Lineman. Keep an eye out for the next one when I show you guys how we make a Hand-Line. Adjustable for any size pole and some rope splicing done by yours truly.

Until Next Time...

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