Help Us Keep Your Power On When You Landscape
During the long, cold winter months, many people often brighten up their day by planning their spring landscaping projects. When those seed catalogs arrive and you start thinking about those beautiful new gardens, be sure to consider the electric facilities in the area.
Look Up
- Many plants, shrubs and trees start out small but over the years grow extremely wide and tall.
- Look up to make sure your beautiful young tree won't interfere with power lines as it matures.
- Access Energy Cooperative tries to maintain a 20-foot clearance around all power lines.
Look Around
- Don’t forget pad mount transformers and switching cabinets - those little green boxes that control underground equipment.
- These ground level facilities need space for cooling and our line personnel need the clearance to work on them.
- They need a minimum of 12 feet of clearance in front and 3 feet on the back and sides.
- Shrubs planted too close can cause excessive heat build up reducing equipment life.
- This causes potential for increasing outages to you and raising costs to your cooperative.
Remember the Linemen
While most of our work is performed from the bucket of a truck sitting along side the road, there are still times when the only way to get the job done is to put on the climbing hooks and head up the pole.
- Obstacles when climbing poles, such as signs, birdhouses, trellises, vines and other foreign objects make it extremely difficult to climb poles.
- A climbing hook can be deflected by something as simple as a nail, causing a lineman to lose his footing and fall to the ground.
- Shrubs or landscaping art at the bottom of the pole possess a severe threat to a lineman should he fall.
With your help we can work together to minimize outages and provide a safe environment for all.