What are these steel channels I see attached to electric poles?

[trader_4]

I've noticed that many wooden electric poles here have recently been updated with a steel channel, double u shaped, about ten inches wide, extending from some level in the ground up the side of the pole to about 5 ft high. It's stamped out of one piece, but if you imagine two pieces of steel channel about 5" wide laid side by side, vertically along the pole, it's like that. They are held in place by two heavy metal bands that go around the pole. The top has a sheet metal cover over it, nailed in place. They had crews here last summer digging around the poles. I also noticed that the poles have new steel screw plugs, about 3/4", maybe two feet above ground level. There is no wire or anything running into or out of it. I can't figure out what this is all about, but I'm wondering did they do test boring to find out which poles have termites or something? And the mysterious channels could be a delivery vehicle for insecticide, where they put stuff in the channel at the top and it dispenses? Whatever it is, maybe one pole out of six or so has it added. I thought it might be to add some kind of crash protection, but then some are on the side facing the direction of traffic, others are on the opposite side and it doesn't seem likely that it would really do anything for that. Anyone see similar or have ideas?

[Sam Hill]

Drunk Driver Deflectors? :-)

[gfretwell]

It is just pissing on the fire until they get around to replacing the pole. We lost a few of them in Irma but the one right around the way from me survived. I suspect it was the direction of the guy wire and the direction of the wind in the eye wall tho.

[FromTheRafters]

I couldn't visualize the double U description, but the rest of what you described sounded like a splint for mending bones straight or immobilizing a joint. We call them 'telephone poles' around here, but I think officially they are 'utility poles' so I looked up 'utility pole splint' and got lucky with that photograph there. It looks something like the metal used for guardrails being repurposed.

[trader_4]

That's definitely what it is. Only difference these are spray painted brown and have a little cap/hood nailed over the top. Not sure what the idea to that is, keep rain out? But it's open at the bottom and 5 ft+ into the ground, so it would not seem to matter.

[TimR]

So if it is infinitely strong, it has the same effect as shortening the pole by 5 feet. I'm skeptical they do much. I haven't seen any in my area, but they're pretty quick to replace poles on schedule.

[Scott Lurndal]

The cap is probably for safety, like the plastic orange caps for re-rod and fence posts.

[Rod Speed]

But no cap at the bottom doesn't.

[TimR]

Walking the dog yesterday, we heard a woodpecker hammering away and it had to be on a telephone pole, but I had trouble spotting it. Finally with some help we saw it. It was at the very top of a pole, and it had excavated far enough in that only its tail feathers showed. The power company had already set a new pole next to it, just hadn't transferred the wires yet, so they knew how bad the pole was. But if they rot from the bottom up, that one had to be pretty bad.

[micky]

The pdf file listed in this thread had a section on woodpecker repair, with a drawing or two.

[gfretwell]

That just meant that the creosote had oxidized to the point that bugs were living in the pole. Woodpecker damage is pretty common in old poles.

[dpb]

On 4/29/2020 12:10 PM, [e-mail] wrote: ...

Not necessarily...EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) for whom was consulting at the time did study on dynamic resonances that were close that attracted them thinking there were bugs in the poles when there weren't.

We did the data collection and reduction; I retired before the project was complete so don't know the end result.

The large pileated versions were completely topping poles...new and old.

[Andy]

I have seen poles with chicken wire wrapped around it. Might be to keep woodpeckers away.

Andy

[FromTheRafters]

Wiretapping?

[Andy]

I do not understand your use of wiretapping?

Andy

[Ed Pawlowski]

Woodpeckers, wire, tapping. It was a play on words.

[Andy]

Got it.

:-)

Andy

[TimR]

That would never have occurred to me. Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting.

[TimR]

I'd never seen these channels until you mentioned it.

There are two poles like that on the block where I live. They're obviously new, judging from the soil pile where the bottom edge goes in.

The poles themselves are heavily scarred with spike marks. These poles have been climbed many times by linemen. I can't remember when I last saw someone climb a pole, everybody uses a bucket truck now. I don't know if they even train people to do it anymore. I imagine the oldtimers could tell some stories about it. At any rate, that probably says something about the age of the poles. I wonder if the spike marks increase the decay rate of the poles.

[David_B]

It was a VERY clever play on words (well, one word!) ;-)

Here's the original post:-

Has anybody suggested that the OP should take a photograph of the pole, with embelishments, post it to somewhere like this and then post a link to the photograph so that everyone may view it?