Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

UTILITY CABLES NEED SPACE

With all the cables coming and going, this unfortunate tree does not have much room to grow without causing trouble.

Since I did not make the drive up or down the coast very often, the rare silvery-gray Bismarck palm that I could see slowly climbing into the skyline near the edge of Highway 101 through Santa Barbara seemed to be slightly taller every time I saw it. It grew slowly, but enough to notice since I only saw it less than annually. Then, when I drove by about a month ago, it was gone.

This exemplary specimen had been quite healthy and happy (even though Bismarck palms are not supposed to be happy on the coast). There was only one problem. It was under high voltage utility cables. As it grew, it got too close to the cables, so needed to be removed in order to maintain the minimal clearance required for high voltage.

Unlike other trees, palms have only single terminal buds that grow upward. They can not develop branches to grow around cables, so only die if the single bud needs to be pruned away. Complete removal is therefore the only option when palms begin to grow into high voltage cables.

Sadly, palms often get planted under utility cables. Many Mexican fan palms grow under cables because birds that eat their fruit drop the seed there. Queen palms are popularly planted around the perimeters of back yards, and along the back fence lines that are very often directly below and parallel to high voltage cables.

Trees that are not palms can get disfigured by pruning for clearance around high voltage cables, but generally survive. Trees with central leaders (single trunks) and strict form, such as spruces and redwoods, can get be so disfigured that removal may be more practical than pruning. Trees with more irregular form, like sycamores and elms, are somewhat easier to salvage. Unfortunately, crews hired to maintain clearance are unable to prioritize the health and structure of trees that get too close to high voltage cables.

Lower cables for telephone, television and house-drops (lower voltage cables that extend from utility poles to homes and other buildings) do not often justify pruning for clearance like upper high voltage cables do. However, these lower priority cables can still be damaged if too many limbs sag onto them or become abrasive as they blow in the wind. Really, it is best to avoid problems with utility cables by selecting and planting trees that are not likely to become too obtrusive. Palms, large trees and trees that are likely to be severely disfigured by pruning to maintain clearance should be kept at safe distances.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 36 Comments

Midnight Oil

P91027The electricity is still on here at 8:20 p.m.. I just turned the lights off to get the cool picture above. The outages in this region were scheduled to begin twenty minutes ago, so the electricity could be disconnected here at any moment. I may not finish writing and scheduling this to post later at midnight before that happens. So, if you are not reading this presently, you know why.

Before you waste another second thinking about that, I will tell you now that it makes no sense.

Scheduled electrical outages are now one of the consequences of living in this excellent place. We live with trees. Some of these trees are the biggest in the World. Some are very combustible. Regardless of the diligence of those who prune trees to maintain clearance from utility cables, big trees are likely to drop limbs onto cables, causing sparks that can ignite combustible trees.

The electricity just went out at 8:40 p.m..

As I was saying, we also live with weather. It happens to be excellent weather. It is pleasantly warm through summer, with minimal humidity and an almost constant cooling breeze. When the weather gets a bit too warm, it compensates with lower humidity and increased breeze. Unfortunately, this combination of weather is precisely what accelerates the worst of forest fires.

Scheduled electrical outages are intended to coincide with forecasts of weather conditions that are dangerously conducive to the initiation and perpetuation of forest fires. As inconvenient as they are, such outages are a sensible precaution.

The smoke that made such a colorful sunset earlier is from a fire in nearby forests, on the southern coast of San Mateo County.

Now, I will go to town to see if I can find someplace to get online to schedule this for midnight.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 7 Comments

Horridculture – Opposite Poles

P90904This is not about North and South. It is about a utility pole and a pole that remained from a redwood tree that was too close to it. One is there to support a variety of cables and a streetlamp. The other just wanted to grow into a redwood tree to join the rest of the forest. One has been deceased for many years or decades. The other was alive just recently, but is now only a stump.

The picture above shows how many cables the utility pole supports, as well as the streetlamp. When I did my internship in 1988, the arborists whom I worked with knew what each of the various cables were for; high voltage, lower voltage, cable television, telephone and whatever else was up there. Fiber optic cables have since simplified the telephone and television cables.

The picture above also shows how the unfortunate redwood tree needed to be cut back for clearance from the electrical cables. I was mortified to see this so prominently visible on the edge of a main road, because I should have noticed the problem earlier and just cut the tree down. Not too long ago I was pruning many other redwood trees for clearance from other streetlamps.

Those who pruned it instead, along with any other trees that were encroaching into the electrical cables, were very efficient with establishing clearance, but not so proficient with aesthetics. Obviously, I could not leave this tree like this on the side of the road. Even if I did not care what it looked like, I did not want it to regenerate and immediately encroach back into the cables.

The picture below shows my corrective pruning. The stump is certainly not dead, and will try to regenerate, but will be easier to keep down. If kept down long enough, it may eventually die.

The second picture below shows the stripped trunk in two sections that are nearly eight feet long, and a short bottom section that is a bit more than two feet long. The two long sections are straight enough for gate posts (although there is another plan for them). It is a sad demise for the formerly healthy and sound redwood tree, but became necessary to keep the electricity on.P90904+P90904++

Posted on by tonytomeo · 8 Comments

Beehive

P90629KKIncandescent light bulbs were the standard form of electric lighting for more than a century after their invention. It took a while for fluorescent and halogen lamps to become popular; and by the time they did, high intensity discharge (HID) lamps had already become available. Nowadays, light emitting diode (LED) lamps seem to be replacing all sorts of electric lighting.
For a brief time in the late 1980s, high intensity lamps that were being used for large scale applications and street lamps became a fad for exterior household lighting. They worked nicely for driveways, so many of us believed that they would work just as nicely for night lighting of home gardens and patios.
By that time, most of us had realized that the sickly yellowish glare of the sodium vapor type of high intensity lamps that were so common as street lamps was not at all appealing around the home, and was downright unflattering for foliage and flowers in the garden. Mercury vapor high intensity lamps became more popular for such applications instead, even though their slightly bluish bright glare is no more inviting.
During this time, while the renowned landscape designer Brent Green and I were still studying horticulture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, his father had a rather fancy mercury vapor lamp installed in his backyard.
Of course, Brent was furious! He had put so much effort into cultivating a remarkably inviting outdoor living space, only to have it illuminated at night like an industrial warehouse. When turned on, the lamp made a constant buzzing hum. It hung from a wall like a big glowing paper wasp nest. Brent referred to it at the ‘beehive’.
The quality of light produced by modern electrical light sources has fortunately improved since then. Nonetheless, contraptions such as this street lamp suspended on an otherwise exemplary ponderosa pine are not easy to warm up to.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 2 Comments

Trees Need Clearance From Utilities

30320thumbPalm trunks grow in only one direction; upward, toward sunlight and away from gravity. Each trunk is equipped with only a single terminal bud. If that bud encounters an obstacle, it can not be pruned around it. Palm trunks that get get too close to high voltage cables, or that might sway too close with a breeze, must therefore be removed to maintain minimal clearance from the cables.

Queen palms are notorious for getting planted under high voltage cables because they are so often impulse purchases that get planted without much planning. They are popularly planted along rear fences, exactly where high voltage cables are often located. Mexican fan palms often grow along rear fences as well because that is where birds and rodents are likely to drop the seeds.

Trees with single central leaders, like redwoods, spruces and certain pines, will be disfigured if their main trunks need to be topped for clearance from cables. Removal of such trees is often more practical than this sort of disfigurement. More extensively branched trees like sycamores, ashes, oaks and elms, are more adaptable to clearance pruning if it is not too severely disfiguring.

It is much simpler to not plant trees that get too large under high voltage cables. Elsewhere in the garden, where there is enough lateral (side) clearance, vertical clearance is not such a problem for larger trees. Small trees like redbud, purple leaf plum, photinia and various pittosporums, either do not get tall enough to reach upper cables, or will require only minimal pruning for clearance.

Below high voltage cables, the lower cables are for lower voltage, telephone and television. ‘House-drops’ are the cables that extend from utility poles to houses and other buildings. Although clearance is not so important for these lower risk cables, limbs that lean on them and blow around in wind can be abrasive. Sagging limbs can cause utility cables to sag more than they should.

Unfortunately, those who prune trees for utility clearance are efficient, but rarely arboriculturally correct.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 5 Comments

Easements Really Should Be Easier

70802thumbLike Michael Jackson said, “You got an easement on down the road.”. . . or something like that. In older neighborhoods, that is where the utility easements are usually located. These are zones for utility poles that suspend electrical, telephone and television cables. When electricity first became available, that was the easiest place to put the cables, and the practice continued for decades.

Utility easements in middle aged neighborhoods are usually at the rear boundaries of back yards. They were put there to get out of the way of shade trees in front yards, particularly street trees. Where there are alleys in back, easements are on one side of the alley or the other. The same applies to narrow streets with easements. More modern neighborhoods have subterranean utilities.

Those of us who must contend with easements know how difficult they can be. Trees that encroach too closely to the high voltage cables on top of the poles must be pruned for clearance, even if such pruning disfigures or kills them. Lower cables for telephone and cable television sometimes get tangled with vines or big shrubbery because clearance from vegetation is not such a priority.

Utility providers have access to easements to maintain their systems. So do the tree services that have the grim task of pruning encroaching vegetation for clearance from high voltage cables. They do what they must to maintain reliable service; which is unfortunately not always compatible with what we want for our trees. Clearance pruning is too often unsightly, but it is very necessary.

The only way to avoid unsightly and disfiguring clearance pruning to to only plant trees that will not encroach into high voltage cables. Of course, in small gardens with big easements, the choices of trees that stay proportionate to available space are very limited. Except for Mediterranean fan palm or palms that stay very short, palms should never be planted below utility cables. They grow only upward, and can not be pruned around cables, so must be removed when they get too close.