You're the reason I'm headed to lineman school. Starting Jan 8th. thank you.

I think it was 6th grade when I discovered the galvanized chain link fence surrounding the playground adjacent to our gymnasium, approximately 200 feet of it, was electrified. Not on purpose of course. This from the tingle I got from putting a full palm on the posts. Of course I immediately reported it to the elementary principle's office with as much gravity and sincerely as I could muster at the age of eleven. Several weeks later I realized nothing would be done about the dire and significant danger. Imparting another one of the sparse but profound and untaught lessons from school. That adults will never believe children, and that whatever the dire situation, malfeasance and idiocy will always overcome competence. So, at this point, I decided to celebrate the silliness of authority, and used a loose few feet of bottom stringer wire to spark-engrave ( with concomitant carbon flash soot outlines) the name of my favorite band on the newly constructed metal storage building adjacent the last post. Still no action. Sometime in between I managed to get the entire class to hold hands across the twenty foot gate opening to the parking lot. We all felt the tingle. Not a good Idea, but another lesson, to classmates on electricity, and to me in persuasion.

Everytime I enjoy your videos, I have immense respect for you and your profession.

Need to tell the guy on the auger that if he shakes it more than three times then he's just playing with it.

I know nothing about electric circuits, but I find your job very interesting and it shows how much potential danger there is if something is done wrong. Although you are speaking in a language of electrical circuits, I still find the videos really interesting.

Many years ago while on a pole setting crew we were also setting anchors on corner poles. For some reason the crew chief wanted to set all the poles first, about 6 or 7 of them, then go back and set the anchors. If I recall correctly there were 3 anchors to set, I asked the chief why set up twice, put the auger in the ground, install the Kelly bar, set the anchor, then set the pole in one set up. I had made Journeyman about 2 years before, and the chief basically had the attitude that I didn’t know shit. In actuality he was on the digger because it was a place to hide him. Well we did it his way, between setting the anchors instead of removing the kelly bar, we wound it up and stowed it like you would stow the auger. On the second anchor while stowing the Kelly bar, the auger lock sheared the stow cable and the Kelly bar free fell back to the black top almost hitting the other Journeyman. I screamed at the crew chief, called him a dumb f*ck and he would no longer speak to me. Your advice about never standing under the auger while in the process of stowing is spot on. Stay safe!

In the USA NEC has clearance requirements based on voltage present. The guys I have worked with would have flagged this transformer and made the fence owner fix it. Safety first. Arc flash is no joke!

Man, I love your videos. I'm a domestic electrician in the UK and really enjoy watching your stuff - very interesting and educational.

Thanks for the videos. Nice to see what my relatives might have been doing.

Fantastic video, I'm not a lineman but sure do enjoy your videos. Sure makes me appreciate what you guys do when my power goes out in middle of the night. 🙂

That is a lot to consider for that first job. I'm grateful for guys like you who do this work. And another hurry up and wait for the pole job with some comic bonus. More things to consider. You never know what job will be next. Please stay safe, and God bless.

Thank you for the job you do keeping our lights on!!!!

wow that is one hell of a career you got..... The true heroes when we have storms and no power.... Thanks guys

Thanks for another educational and informative video.

Love your vibe and videos man! Keep it up!

Great video. Professional work as always.

Great video Erin. When I had my pole replaced a few years ago they actually had to use an extension on the auger to get it deep enough. I wasn't home when they started but got home about halfway through digging of the pole, my mom dosent know how to turn my computer off as they opened the tap clamp that suplys my hose & the one across the street.

Thank you for your service. God bless you

@11:07 "..just an old pole.." Nah, that's got 100,000 miles left in it! You should see some of the rot-sticks still in service and mostly standing here on Bay Rd. (The really 'mature' ones are all telco now, but so over-built that if one falls it snarls the road....)

The troubleshooting processed in the beginning few minutes was very informative. Great work!

i remember having a job at a factory once when i was young and the old guy (probably late twenties!) told me to pour the mix like this, not like how i'd been doing it. at the time i thought a pour's, a poor, a paw but as i got older i realised there are reasons. just watching the guy pull the fuses reminded me of that. give it a yank. [yoink!] okay, give the next one a little less of a yank. what's a little? give it a yank and i'll tell you! [yink!] nearly! 😅

O man... Setting poles like that brings back memories.. Used to work for a small contractor 2002-2013 and did a TON of temporary power poles on new construction sites EXACTLY like this, primarily in the same area and same builder. 35' poles, shovel depth in the ground, #2 triplex, only where I live it's all clay... Also we always used a heavy duty rack with a "217" spool insulator and the same wedge grips to support the triplex.. It was fun and it sure as hell made me appreciate the crews that build and maintain the electrical transmission and distribution systems in all weather conditions..

I enjoy your videos. Good content on what you guys do. I’m a comm network tech and I love working outside.

Great Content. Thanks for sharing..🌿🕊️

I was in your area last week and I can't believe the growth of the area since I lived there is 1994.

Good job Aaron.

So nice job ❤❤❤❤❤

Nice video. I was the electrical engineer on a school renovation and discovered the Utility company installed a 460/277v padmount that should have been 208/120 v. I avoided a big problem by catching it before it was energized. Should have had a double gate in front of that padmount, I think our Utility standard is min 15ft clear.

I’m not a lineman but I’ve always been fascinated by the work you do. I turned the volume up while the worker was removing the fuses on the pad mount transformer. The humming stopped once he removed the last fuse.

When I left the I.S Army in 1975 I thought about becoming a lineman but after taking to some people at KCP&L I decided that I had already had enough excitement for one life. Great videos, take care and stay safe.

Thank you

like the top lid on that pad mount !!

looks like someone needs to get the weedwacker out lol

Great vid. Always prefer service work over new installs.

Great video thanks for sharing

Sparky here, this stuff is great to watch! Cheers

At least when you opened up that pad mount there wasn’t a mega hornets nest built on the fuses! 😅

Long day ey? Nice work!

My grandson is going for climbing training next week to see if this is his thing. I had 40 yrs at a electric utility. I guess that gave him incentive to try line work.

Nice vid, but frankly surprised the pole was allowed to get into such "scrawny" condition.

I didn’t want to do it but…….this stuff is a lot of fun to watch and see how other lineman do similar tasks……so I subscriber. Lol.

Wow that 240v pole was old! Had an old cast insulator pin on it. Me who collects stuff like that wants that old pin lol

Dam freight shakers always breaking at the wrong time. Always wondered what u guys r doing up there. I work on the trucks & booms on those trucks good to see what they r used for.

Hello everybody! Why don't you use concrete posts? Here in Brazil we no longer use wooden poles, as there is a risk of breakage. Thanks! Congratulations on the channel.

Yeah that fence around that transformer seems like more of a risk to working on it than keeping kids out, however you don’t want kids turning crispy… tough call

Dear ol’ miss dig. They don’t break the turtle 🐢 speed record coming out 😅 That would of been a whole lot easier in sun light 🤦‍♂️ great job

The fence should have been built where it has two gates that swing open so you have the entire front and side to escape if needed. You should ALWAYS have an escape route ready and in mind for everything you do regardless of what you’re doing cause ya never know. Thank you for the videos.

Safety is most important while you are working on live high voltage lines

Thanks!

Funny how we're always waiting on the com's companies. In CA or US, they all seem to not have any since of urgency.

I wish I was an outside wireman sometimes. Nope. Inside commercial and industrial for 35 years. Oh well. Still good fun.

Ich finde es immer wieder amüsant wenn ich die Elektriker Videos von Euch Amerikaner anschaue. Solche Arbeiten und Infrastrukturen währen bei uns in der Schweiz undenkbar und Eidgenössischen Starkstrom Inspektorat gar nicht zugelassen 😮 Wieso verlegt ihr Amerikaner eigentlich die Elektrische Infrastruktur nicht unterirdisch?und eine saubere Drehstrom Verteilung in allen Häusern Ihr hättet viel weniger Sturmschäden und keine Trafobrände 😊 Viele Grüße ein Schweizer Elektriker 😊😊😊😊

Hi Aaron, love your videos your the most professional lineman I know. I've been doing distribution work with a contractor for a few years and working on energized lines every day. But the company I'm working for doesn't have an apprenticeship program so I love watching you do your service troubleshooting calls. In theory if you had another guy on scene with you could you and the other guy have ran a mechanical for the one phase where the cut out was bad remove the leads off the cut out and changed ut out without service interruption?

Thanks for explaining the heck out of the upstream equipment, discussing methods, rationale, and potential issues. It makes it easier for my low voltage self to troubleshoot the effects of upstream issues. I've got a building right now I'm thinking is a very shaky, failing neutral, but that's a landlord or power company issue, according to the lease. I'd totally go through it, but the jobs with electricity where no electricity belongs I don't lose sleep about the landlord hiring a contractor. I get to play in enough sketchy panels as is. Good video, good info, and those protectors on your 20 kV gloves are slick... who makes them?

Glenn Campbell did for Linemen, what Top Gun did for the Navy. Maybe on a more regional scale, Wichita, to be exact. 😂

i know those digger derricks all too well when i worked as a mechanic (pre rona) i had to replace a main hydraulic line in the turn table it was one made by altec and it was horrid to do as they did not leave enough room in the turn table mount to get tools in there to break the line loose and when the line blew it shorted out and busted the control solenoids all in all it was around a 20,000 usd repair job

Last week i had a call about a pad mount that some tweakers tried to bust into, same building had part lights. Got there and tx was good except the handle was jacked up. Noticed a phase cutout open so double checked the other tx that was on the same lateral. Doors were wide open on it, all 2ndaries going into building were gone. (500kva feeding the place) Crazy part about this one was they had unbolted one of the primary bushings and pulled it out till it flashed over lmao. B & C phase were still energized. Whoever that did it had to have gotten arc flash like a mf and covered in oil lol

Respect i would not do that job.

had a situation locally where they were changing a series of poles (due to age) and the new poles are taller, so required a little added wire at the end of the run. The job seemed to take forever because of the narrow one-way street, and coordination between power, telco, and cable. Obviously, they had done the "call before you dig" routine, but as I watched them use the auger, I saw a hunk of sewer pipe come up (green schedule 80 with O-rings) and my first thought was oh shit there's gonna be a mess. I guess those guys can be wrong when it comes to locating pipes! BTW, no mess because it was a lateral and the rental house had been empty for a few weeks.

Im surprised the pothead pole didnt have the switches on them, itd free up some space on the buck pole at least. Good work boss!!

I worked for a old hillbilly foreman that said on a new pole hole no old pole removed that us grunts have to put every shovel of dirt into fill. Tamp like u live hard and fast. Thought u might like a old story. One more thing if we busted a wood tamp he would put a piece of ridgid pipe over the tamp handle and tamping we would go.

Our local co-op needs to seriously retrain some of their guys. Why? Read all the way to the end. I stay in an RV park. The owner of the park used to build and repair substation transformers. The co-op recently decided to upgrsde the meters to smart meters. The park is fed with a 50kva padmount at 19kv single phase primary, with a CT meter. To safely change the meter, you have to deenergize the padmount. The owner and I showed up after the coop guy had already pulled the bayonet fuse. He finished, then grabbed the fuse BARE HANDED and slammed it in. The owner and I were watching this and I whispered to him "Is he f*****g insane? He just slammed that fuse live with his bare hands!" He asked what we were talking about, and I told him what he did wrong. His response? "That fuse is on the 120v side, it's safe." 😮 Both the owner and I explained how so wrong he was, and why. He claimed his boss told him it was on the low side. I told him that he and his boss are going to die soon if they really think that. (Yes I am a total ass when it comes to stupid people doing deadly things ) Hopefully the message got through his thick head before he seriously gets hurt or worse.

I have a load buster for open front pad mounts

Great video as always @Bodescline. I am curious why planning an emergency shutdown to open the school's load on their main switchgear and isolating their load from the secondary of the transformer wasn't the approach to reduce the possibility of arcing. The bayonet fuse removal seemed quite elaborate and riskier, or am I missing something?

Im a 3rd step apprentice moving from a big city contractor in the greater toronto area where we just build and upgrade line to a small 5 man utility in rural ontario with trouble calls and similar work to the videos i see here. These videos are awesome as i feel i have an idea of what i can expect going in with little to no trouble experience. We have a 15 amp standard here in ontario before load bust is required. Is there an actual amperage requirement before its needed out your way

In my 'town', busted/rotted poles are all over: splinted, roped, propped up etc. Overhead wiring of all sort looks a mess. Rinky dink looking, all of it. Don't know how they get away with it. Lots of outages, especially accompany weather events. EDIT: Lots of listing/leaning poles as well... work appears to be all 'reactive'.

"That pole was rotten" lol

I’m going to take your kid to work day and I’m going to Nova Scotia power for that in cape, Breton shout out ghost to all the lineman’s across Canada

Линейщикам в нашей стране стоит завидовать.. Спасибо, что вы показываете, как должно быть👍

Those are really old cutouts Aaron, They have expulsion caps on them. Not many people know anything about them now. That’s a handy feature with that pad mount transformer with the lid Tipping’s up & back. I’ve never seen that before. Who makes that pot? That fence is in violation of our clearance on switching from that pad mount. I would take that fence apart if I could before switching out of it.

Is it possible to just parallel in another set of temporary cutouts or is it not safe to work on the broken cutouts while energized?

How come it aint got no arrestors on the b side bushings? Just dead end caps

Does 3 phase equipment of the customer or utility ever get damaged when pulling fuses one at a time?

Why wouldn't you shunt (jump across) the CO, replace the CO and remove the shunt? No loss or service, no grounded cage work..

👍👊‼️

Are the fuses on the pole sometimes referred to as an "air break"?

That fuse compound was certainly tight. Literally a minimum of space to use the hotstick.

Good to see you're not evil with the fence around the pad mount transformer, some people would cut the fence down and do the work.

Electrician/Lineman here, just wondering if you've thought to open the main service disconnect inside the school yo dump the load instead of having to pull the primary fuses on the PMT. Cheers from Vancouver Island, Canada.

⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️

I would like to know how you work with procedures, safety, tools and equipment. And when there are storms, how do you manage to serve customers as quickly as possible? Which company do you service?

Shouldn't you use a ceramic insulator on that new pole for fastening the neutral conductor of the triplex?

BEEN THERE DID THAT FOR 11 YEARS,,,

I have seen poles being set in my area. Sometimes, not always, but once every so often, they just leave the other pole there. 🤔 Why put in a new pole, but not take the other one away? Or cut it down flush with the grade? 🤷‍♀️🤔 Edit: Hello from Ohio, USA 🙂🤝

Hey Aaron, we’ve talked before but I forgot to ask… why do you guys never use a dirt bag when backfilling holes? You’d think NB power would give those to you for a more safe/ less strenuous job on your backs.

They use expanding foam on new poles around here.

Love your videos bud! I'm an apprentice undergound lineman in eastern canada, wondering if you got cutouts with the lever to blow the fuse where you're at. When we go help linemen on big storms, we open cutouts with load with a lever that'll blow the fuse, we can't use load busters on cutouts here. Keep up the vids bud!

8:54 Do you come back after the work is done to re-pressure the nitrogen in the tank? Do you know if your utility does dissolved gas analysis on their pad mount transformers?

Are you ever tasked with sourcing replacement pad mounts or substations?

I know nothing of lineman work. How insulated are those trucks you use? I saw the wire touch it and wondered what would happen if those wires were exposed.

I noticed the stick handle touched the fence. Is that ok?

☕🍳🥓🥞

How long do those wooden poles last put directly into the ground like that? Where I'm from, they put a short concrete pillar into the ground first and then attach the wooden pole to the side of the pillar above ground. Like this the poles last ages without rotting, usually far outliving the concrete pillars that get damaged by freezing water.

@bobsdecline couldnt you use mechaniql jumper and bypass the load and then cut the cutput jumper? So there would be no need for de-energizing the xfmr?

Why don’t you dump the lv at customer board then open tx fuses?

How can I get one of those caps?

What are those little cups full of white stuff under the bayonet fuses?

Is that a glass insulator @ 11:30?!

Years ago before health and safety hypnotised all workers we did these jobs straight away and without sitting in the truck 30 minutes talking about it.

I use a thermvision camera from the same manufacturer, but my Flir I3 is simpler and cheaper than yours.