Washington winter clearing

[Highbeam]

The 6600$ or whatever the new electrical quote was does not include my cost to open up the 3-4 foot deep trench and backfill. That wil likely be another 1000$ or so since the logger volunteered to come back out for that with his big trackhoe and should easily dig it in one day. The power company bores under the road, puts the primary line on the bottom of the trench, sets the transformer, hooks up my temporary power which is ready for them, and then they leave. I then backfill about a foot and the phone and cable company drop in their utility plus I'll throw in my waterline and a spare conduit at that time. Then I fill to the surface. We use a vibratory plow in these parts for shallow utilities like cable, but not 7200 volt power in a conduit. The trench will be in the ditchline so I will need to wait until the weather dries up.

A buck a foot saved on the backfill makes the tractor payment for a couple months. I'll be sure to tell the wife about that.

Today I visited the site to find mucho flooding. It is just water backing up from an undersized underdrain in the bottom of a blocked ditch. I can fix that but it'll take a day. Sure wish I had a backhoe. The flooding is nowhere near the homesite or in the area that I'm worried about being called a wetland so that was good news.

 

[Pilot]

7200 volts? For domestic power? I probably misunderstood something.

All I know is I watched the Cat bury the lines in one pass at about 3 1/2 or 4ft. deep. Phone & power, both. Don't remember any vibratory action other than the shaking the Cat does. Just a big honking machine.

Kind of a related story: Back in the 70's when I was a new forester working in Montana, I had to do an environmental assessment for bringing in a power line to a little community located in the center of our district, 15 miles or so from the highway. Can you believe that? No power in the 70's? Anyway, the power people told us they were planning to put the line on poles thru the forest. When asked, they 'fessed up that it would only cost about $150 more to go underground; that was the cost to take it off the pole and go underground, the cost per mile was the same. 15 miles thru the woods on poles. Trees fall down (especially the lodgepole pines we had), power goes out. We mandated underground power & the power company didn't complain. Probably saved them thousands of dollars in the long run as they had a lot fewer outages.

 

[Highbeam]

The 7200 volts is primary power from the lines. They run at the high voltage so the amperage is low and that means that the loss to friction is low through a small wire. As close to the house as practical they place a transformer, the green buzz box, to bring it to two phases of 110 volts to feed the panel. The wire for the 110 volt section will carry full amps so it is bigger.

Full underground power is the way to go. For both long term maintenance costs, safety, and aesthetics. The only risk is that I might want to change the shape of the earth where that line is.

I didn't pitcure a cat pulling the wire. Pictured an overgrown vibratory cable plow machine with tires. I can't imagine how he would pull a wire and a conduit. In a simple buried wire application that would be the ticket. The cost for open trench vs. plowing it in seems to be close and the various other utilities would have to be on-board which they are not. They would probably cry that their wires would be pulled apart. Think I will roll with it.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Great! Glad you got the data locally!
I didn't know where you were at exactly but was able to download a representative sample in the SeaTac area and generate 2' contours quite easily. It was a good exercise cuz I hadn't needed to check out the USGS site for a while and got caught up on their current National Map coverage.
Cheers!

 

[Highbeam]

You're killing me. I haven't gotten response from the engineer yet. Wetland guy is coming out tomorrow so I have been fretting over that. Drew up a site plan for him today. I have not been able to figure out the contours so I'll go ahead and PM you to beg for help.
Thanks