Yesterday in the pissing rain I got soaked (along with my gear) helping another crew clear up this failure.
Now we've had constant rain over the last few days (approx 70mm) but pretty sedate, no winds or storms.
Anyway, the report was that a large tree fell and took out the power to a home blocking the driveway. It was an acrea-age property and the power wires were internal, 130m long strung between poles.
By the time I got there a sparky had already pulled the fuses and a neib had the clients fridge/freezer running on a geni.
Anyway, here's the pics in order of a my story.
This is the section that fell
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Here you can see the wires that were brought down
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This is a close up of the fallen section
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This is looking at the remaining tree
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This is a close up of the remaining tree where it fell from
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This is looking at the back of the tree where the section fell from
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Bit lower down the trunk on the back side
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And looking at the remaining part of the tree's canopy
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Now, here's how it goes.
The cost to restring the power supply to the house is approx $4500+
It's also not much different to go underground for the 130m so the insurance company is going to do that.
The rest of the costs, well, you can imagine, us and the electricians etc. We did fell the remaining section and insurance agreed to it as it was hazardous, but the customer had to pay for the part that was from ground to the tear out!
Anyway, the failure had significant VTA signs, even a blind man could see the tree half dead. But am I being cynical by saying what a bonus as now the client had his tree work done and underground power for the measly $200 excess ... what a bargain and what a message to tree owners ...
... ignore it then claim it on insurance.