underground electrical

grsthegreat · Jun 7, 2011

kf4uda said:
I am in middle TN so our regulations may be different that yours. I wanted an underground service for the same reason as you. I had to dig a 4ft deep ditch 600ft in length for the medium voltage to a pad mounted transformer. From the transformer to the house the distance was 220ft and 3ft deep. I had to provide and install 3in sched 40 pvc. At each end of the ditch I had to use sched 80 also up the pole and up to the meter base. I had to provide a pull rope in the pipe. The power utility pulled the wire in..

yeiks,...your utility company had you do everything except pull the wire. Here in Idaho anything within the house TO THE METER is customer responsibility. From the meter to utility company is their responsibility. They charge $10/foot for trench, conduit and wire. I'm an electrical contractor and even I cant run these wires or conduit or dig the trench.

Also Ive run gas, phone and CATV in same trench allowing for 6" to 12" spacing depending on type of conduit installed. IVE NEVER heard of or seen a sewer line in the same trench. I would guess it would be not allowed as methane gas could theoretically sneak its way into the transformer.. thru the pipes.

Pilot · Jun 7, 2011

Our phone company has a "plow". That's what they called it; I can't find any pics online. Big dozer, a reel mounted up front with conduit going over the top to a vertical blade in back that cut a 4 ft. deep slit and fed the conduit in simultaneously.

Phone & power company workers showed up at 7 a.m., had a powwow for awhile while the power company guys talked to their shop steward about working with the non-union phone company guys, but they got it sorted out.

Work actually started about 8, a pit was dug on each side of the road & they pushed conduit and wire under the road.

Phone guy fired up his dozer with the plow, made a trial run to break the ground, then back to the street. Started plowing in the conduit, the power guys followed (I think that's how it worked; it's been 19 years) and before noon we had power & phone line to the homesite 1,200 feet from the road.

Was a lot cheaper than digging a ditch (I didn't have a tractor) they wanted $2.50 a foot to dig and $1 a foot to bury, plus conduit & whatever each company wanted for their wire and work. Total cost came to about what it would have cost just for the ditch.

A plow is the way to go.

AGGIE00 · Jun 7, 2011

I ran 900' of 4" conduit at 5' bury to the pad mount transformer. We installed a caution tape 2' above the pipe and then ran a water line on top of that. Electric company wanted 16k to do everything and charged 9k to convert from overhead to underground, pull the wire, install the transformer and hook up to the 400amp service that I installed.

20 20 · Jun 8, 2011

goldenwings said:
I work for a very large Northeastern utility company in the planning department. .

And you have the ______ to admit it

ch47dpilot · Jun 8, 2011

AGGIE00 let me get this right $25,000 for 900', seems like a lot of cash...... Pilot union and non-union and only took an hour? I've had to work with unions before. Usually it takes them an hr to figure out who's job it is to talk on the phone then another hr to figure out who's suppose to dial the phone only to find out "he's" not there so they need to figure out who can authorize him to come and dial phone. Then there's somebody else who needs to make some other decisions for somebody to do something else and then after about 3 hrs it's their mandatory break, followed by a few hrs work before lunch and before you know it 8hrs later they tell you they have everything figured out and they will be back tomorrow but since it was suppose to be a 1 day job you'll have to reschedule and that they may have time in a few weeks. Unions gotta love them. they have their place but sometimes they take advantage of the situation.

grsthegreat · Jun 8, 2011

ch47dpilot said:
AGGIE00 let me get this right $25,000 for 900', seems like a lot of cash...... Pilot union and non-union and only took an hour? I've had to work with unions before. Usually it takes them an hr to figure out who's job it is to talk on the phone then another hr to figure out who's suppose to dial the phone only to find out "he's" not there so they need to figure out who can authorize him to come and dial phone. Then there's somebody else who needs to make some other decisions for somebody to do something else and then after about 3 hrs it's their mandatory break, followed by a few hrs work before lunch and before you know it 8hrs later they tell you they have everything figured out and they will be back tomorrow but since it was suppose to be a 1 day job you'll have to reschedule and that they may have time in a few weeks. Unions gotta love them. they have their place but sometimes they take advantage of the situation.

900 feet should have cost between $7,000 - $9,000 by all accounts, but I'm not privy to what else they had to do to get power down to you (switches, transformers, line extensions, etc). As far as unions go, i used to belong to the electrical union, and i thought they were great. At least in Wash state, there was no lying around and doing nothing. We started at 7:00AM (SHARP) had 30 min lunch and got off at 3:30 (SHARP). No overtime, no shirking of duty. if you didn't work hard, you were gone the next day. Not all unions are corrupt and lazy. I got a fair wage and full benefits. The owners of the job got a nice product.

Im not union anymore, but i wont put them down. Oh, we occasionally worked a job with non-union workers of other trades, and there was no hostilities.... chatted with eachother just fine. Some states are harsher than others.

OOPS" what did this rant have to do with the OP's original post...cant remember what that even was hehe:laughing: