Save a Tree or Two
I've just had a pleasant experience with Chugach Electric. Apparently, years ago when my neighborhood was wired for electric, not much thought was given to how close the house service ran to spruce trees on my lot. Trees that would eventually grow to great heights, which was not a problem, but also grow in diameter over the years which became a problem.
I called Chugach a few years back about the power lines rubbing against the tree and they sent out a crew that put some spiral wrap around the bundle hopefully so it wouldn't be absorbed by the tree. This was surely a temporary fix, There was plenty or sag in the line and I figured they could put some hardware stand off gadget on the tree to keep the line away.This summer a friend, who works at Chugach, and I were talking about this and she said she would put in a service order to have someone take another look. And so she did and they did. Their response was "the tree has to go."
So I called them back and asked what the cost was to have a service pole put in and was told $1100 at my expense. Having worked as a tree trimmer in my past life, I knew that it would be expensive for them to remove the tree: climb it, cut and rope sections down with a bull rope and there was another spruce tree close that should come out. I appealed to them that I would split the cost of the pole with them saving them the cost for the tree removal.
Lo and behold, I got a call back that they did the math and they agreed that a pole would be preferable and they would do it on their dime. Yippee!!!All I had to do was trim off the branches under the existing line so it could be lowered. No problem.
Sturgeon Electric contractors delivered the pole and Bowzer guarded while they did another job. Then they started in using their mini back hoe to carry the pole to the back yard.
And here's what you do when the pole is too tall. The climber was able to move the line over to the service pole without disconnecting it and splicing another piece.
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