New electric cable in the wrong place?

New electric cable in the wrong place?

Townhouse n'hood build in 1978. The electric company painted those chalk lines on our yards, but then only dug in the center island on the other side of a street/parking area from our houses. The lines have washed away or gone away when the grass was mowed.

We have sewers under the sidewalk on the near side of the street. Isn't that where the electric cables and phone lines are too??

Why were they digging on the other side of the street, in between the two parking areas, 25 feett or so from where the sewers are.?

Details. I live in a townhouse, and there is parking on both sides of the street that goes in front of my house. Not parallel, not angle, what do you call it when the cars pull in perpendicular to the sidewalk?

In this section, there is a shorr street parallel to part of my street, just beyond my street from my pov, also with parking on both sides. There is an island about 140 feet long, shaped like a dogbone, wiith a wide part with bushes and flowers at each end and an

8 foot wide strip connecting the ends. It has grass and bushes and a couple trees.

About 6 months ago, the electric company came and painted lines on everyone's front yards One line parallel to the street, and other lines going up towards their houses. Mine even went inside my fence and only stopped when it got to a tree and bushes. I talked to the guy who said they were repalcing the electric wires, that this had to be done every 40 yearss or so.

Then a few weeks later, they showed up with a little backhoe and dug a couple holes at the edge of the n'hood, and two holes in the island. They dropped off a 6 foot spool of thick cable, and they were there for a couple days, and left, and we didn't see them for a 3 months.

I figured rthat something more important came up, not maintenance but an emergency repair somewhere, Right???? Although being gone for

2 or 3 months seemed strange.

But WHY did they dig so far from our houses and make no effort to connect our houses? Surely they'er not going to extend every house's wiriing to the center of these two streets, whch would mean going uinder a two lane street with face-in parking on each side, an extra

25 to 40 feet.

And they put in 3 four-foot red plastick triangular pipes marking the cable. Are they intended to be permanent? Do we really have to look at these things? They look like there's a transcontinental gas line going through the n'hood.

Reply to
micky
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they can drill in the dirt going under the street sidewalks etc with ease. minimies restoration work.

why not call the power copany and ask whats up?

Reply to
bob haller

*Most likely they are replacing the high voltage lines that feed the transformers and not the individual lines to each townhome. I saw the power company in my area do that to an older townhome community. They pulled in new wiring underground over a period of several months. They left all of the red conductors stubbed out of the ground until all of the new wiring was installed. Then they went back and made all of the connections. The job is done and there is nothing to indicate that they were ever there.

I have called for markdowns many times in townhome communities. There never seems to be any rhyme or reason how some of the utilities are run. Groups of townhomes may have all of the utilities and meters grouped on one side of each building and you can see how the markdown lines converge to that area. However as you follow the lines out they shoot off in all different directions.

Reply to
John Grabowski

micky wrote the following:

You just wrote it.

Reply to
willshak

They were replacing the "feed cable" which takes the power to the transformer vaults. It is high voltage - they do not connect THOSE wires to the house. Those "rizers" will eventually have cables connected, and be burried (possibly with a new distribution transformer attached)

Reply to
clare

+1..

The power company is upgrading the grid feeder cables in the area...

To add capacity, replace a failing cable prior to an outage occurring or divide up an existing grid...

The installers have to know where the low voltage wiring is buried so they don't get too close to it or disturb it while the feeder cables are being replaced...

~~ Evan

Reply to
Evan

That would be great. I hate those triangular red posts.

Hmm. Every house here has a meter on the front of the house, and there is a transformer at the end of the building, usually 8 houses per building. The transformers are about 50 feet from the center island where they were digging, so I guess they are coming back again. The rest of the n'hood has no island like that, just streets with parking on each side, and they don't have enough parking.. (When the place was built, they actually had to rip out some of the flower beds to put in more parking places,. I came here at 11PM to see if there was really enough parking and for the houses in my area, there are.

Reply to
micky

Thanks all.

Reply to
micky

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