Dropping phone lines?

Brock Mayo

TreeHouser
Joined
Dec 3, 2012
Messages
171
Location
Cottage Grove, OR
Hey all,

Just wondering if you drop phone lines yourselves, or do you have the phone company or an electrician do it? Just did a job with phone lines and house drops. Seemed hard to coordinate the power company and the phone company on the same days, so I dropped the 2 phone lines myself. Surprisingly easy, which made me wonder if it was SOP? Thanks

Brock
 
Brock: My limited experience with dropping any/all com/housedrop lines is that it sucks with a half-life. Almost ANY ammount of rigging is probably preferable to waiting on the good folks who are actually licensed to complete the task here in Washington.

That said... I'd be hugely interested to hear what the gents have to say... great thread.
 
If you can get the plastic box open, it's nothing to disconnect them. Most boxes are accessible, but I've ran a couple across that I couldn't open.
 
I have dropped phone and cable lines. Usually we just undo the high connection on the house and lay them down and work over the top of them laying them on the ground. I also have worked with crews that disconnect power lines from the house tape the ends up and pull it out of the way. I was told by the utility guys it's ok to disconnect them yourself as long as the ends never touch, but i'll let them do that.
 
Funny, I just today told some clients to remove 4 of the 9 comm lines under a tree. I'd bet no more than 2 or 3 are active anyway. I look them over to see how easy the disconnect is. If it had too many staples I let the comm company deal with it. If there's a convenient connection and not many lines.... well, they come down easy enough
 
We drop phone and cable lines as SOP for 30 years... rarely need to actually disconnect the line, just drop it from the house and let it lay. Occasionally a problem if the wires go under the siding or over a roof, so they can't be droped... We will disconnect cable tv lines by unscrewing them if needed.. NO big deal.. IN the old days we'd call for the power company to drop lines in the morning then come back after lunch or at the ned of the day and put em back up. Rarely need to do that now as its usually just faster to rope everything from the bucket...

I never did drop power lines on purpose, but had to put one back together once.. LONG run to the pole and the cable had been spliced so it separated at the splice.. never could have pulled them back tight by hand, so I rigged a prussic on each side with some old half inch line, then used the skid loader to tension the system, tied it off, then VERY CAREFULLY stuck the three wires back in their respective plugs.... I used a fiberglass step ladder but certainly wasn;t counting on it to be dielectric.
 
I remember my boss calling the phone company once to get the lines dropped. They told him that they don't offer that service. He then said that he was calling in for a repair and cut the lines with the pruner pole. I prefer to lower and if necessary unhook from the house box. Just remember that there is a small amount of voltage in those lines. It can make hooking them back up in the rain a bit challenging.
 
Twice I reached up and cut phone lines w lopper head when there was no simple way to disconnect. Tried to make cut near building where it could be fixed from a ladder. Main service drop is certainly the power companies dept.
 
Yeah, but it he would have moved it with a throw line.....

Or if two guys each grabbed an end of the throw line and just kind of jerked it out of the way real quick.....no I mean real quick......you can't imagine how quick I am at flicking throw line.....

(Idiotic sarcasm to illustrate a point from a throwline over a wire thread.) :)
 
I called once to have them dropped said it was $95 to have them dropped. I had know from past experience it was only $50 for a repair. I then told them oh wait I just need to schedule a repair 1600 today. They replied it would be only $50 for that. I proceeded to cut.
 
I've cut and spliced back together phone lines with no complaints numerous times. Just match up the colours.
 
I've unclipped them, cut them, pulled them em masse off a post (recently and accidentally) always repaired them somehow.
Up to now, never paid.
 
The power lines are crimped on around here. You can use a split bolt to reconnect. I have done it.
One of my biggest pet leaves when I was trouble man. Asking for big trouble not only for you, but for the customer and power company as well, even if you had the training, rubber gloves, fire retardant clothing, and all other ppe to do it safely. Connecting copper entrance cable to an aluminum service drop with split bolt connectors will eventually cause connector failure EVERY TIME, which will not only interrupt the customer's power and bring the trouble man out to make repairs, but could also create an arc as it fails which could start a fire, not to mention damage to appliances and equipment if the neutral fails first.

Thankfully, all the phone drops here are underground now, CATV mostly overhead. Getting the cable company out to drop a service is pretty well impossible so there aren't any other options other than to work around them or drop them yourself.
 
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