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The people I spoke with said that the field guys who came the first time had recorded nothing in the notes about poles. It may be that that was deliberate so they could decide when the time came. Dunno. I put in the second pole. They look great and should be plenty for a fiber optic cable. Mounted as they are on high spots I should have 20' clearance over the driveway and they don't cross the road at all. The longest unsupported section is over jungle so no problem if it sags there.
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The people I spoke with said that the field guys who came the first time had recorded nothing in the notes about poles. It may be that that was deliberate so they could decide when the time came. Dunno. I put in the second pole. They look great and should be plenty for a fiber optic cable. Mounted as they are on high spots I should have 20' clearance over the driveway and they don't cross the road at all. The longest unsupported section is over jungle so no problem if it sags there.
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First thing out of the installers mouths this morning was that they can't install to the poles I put in. Too small. Must be at least 4" pipe for their line. They pulled out an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet with a diagram specifying many details that were necessary. Nowhere did it specify size of pipe. It did say that the "Demarc structure" (pole) must be strong enough to safely support a man on a ladder.
So I will remove the 2 3/8" OD pipes and put in 4 1/2" OD pipes at 3 1/2 times the price. The field tech guys were great although an opportunity was missed for them to tell me about the 4" pipe when I first talked to them. I am darn PO'd at the main office because I asked them flat out what the minimum size was and they couldn't tell me. I could have gotten the pipes required if they had not been useless.
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Scroll back to where I suggest that you need an actual "site survey" to get real answers...
If you're on the same side of the road as the poles, your demarc pole need not be tall enough for a ladder, in which case any size pipe will be fine -- I've seen several like this, though it's possible the rules have changed since they were installed.
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I like the guys who came out but they said nothing when I suggested replacing some of the 6' T-posts with 12' T-posts, yet when they showed up yesterday they said "has to be 4" pipe minimum". They also reiterated 15' height minimum. As for the home office, they could have put me in touch with field guys, either those who came to my place already or others, who could have made the declaration about 4" pipe over the phone. I could then have put in the correct pipe closest to the road and switched out the one closest to the house. Now I have to switch both, almost twice the work. I am so pissed.
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Scroll back to where I suggest that you need an actual "site survey" to get real answers...
I also mentioned the 4" pipe immediately after your first post, but I'm sure "I told you so" doesn't help anything or make you feel any better. On the positive side, most people would have been too embarrassed to share this experience, but since you did, others can learn from it.
I'll make one more suggestion: dig the hole deeper than 1'. 5' is overkill, but 1' has the potential to collapse when the 200lb. guy leans a ladder against it. Go at least 2'.
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True enough My 2 cents but I had given the horse the opportunity to give me the info straight from his mouth, twice. Even asked them point blank. Yes, I could have done their job for them better. Shame on me. As for how they did their own job, well.....
Even the drawing they gave me yesterday does not give a minimum size pipe.
These poles are never going anywhere. I have chiseled holes into solid rock. I am making them as deep as I can but I won't lose any sleep worrying about it. 5 feet deep makes sense in soil where the pipe is strong enough to tear through the soil but the pipe will bend before the rock gives.
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I just got done chiseling out the last pole. I would periodically rock the pole at its natural frequency to try to break the remaining concrete. When the concrete finally broke and I got the pole removed I could see there was less than 2 inches of concrete left around the pole. At 6" embedment the pole was bending like a buggy whip with no signs of the concrete cracking. This concrete was only 3 or 4 days old, still very green.
I need both skinny poles to build a kind of A-frame to erect the larger poles. That's gonna be a bit tricky.
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Not tricky so much as a royal PITA. 21' of 2" sch 40 steel pipe weighs 75 lb. 21' of 4" pipe weighs 225 lbs. I was never gonna walk a piece of that up. I did build the A-frame and once I got that cranked mostly upright with a come-along I was able to lean a ladder up against that and make a self supporting tripod. I then attached the come-along near the apex and cinched the loose end around the pipe a few feet from the middle so it would mostly lift the pipe but the pipe would hang sort of vertical, or could be induced to go vertically into the hole. Much fiddly but also painful manual labor later, the pole is in the hole, vertical, with concrete curing around the base.
I was going to do both today but I forgot to tie ropes to the top so ended up needing the tripod to stay in place til the concrete cures enough.
Home Depot had one bucket of anchoring cement. I used about half in the bottom of the hole. I was hoping it would go further but only filled 6" or 8" of the hole. I finished up with regular concrete mix around the top. That thing ain't goin' nowhere.
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Now that I think about it I mixed the anchoring cement really runny so it would readily go into the narrow space between the pipe and the walls of the hole. I bet a lot of it went under the end of the pipe and into the middle. I had left some crushed concrete in the bottom but removed most of it just before placing the pipe. One nub of rock holding the pipe up wold allow space everywhere else.
