Burying wires -- personal experiences

[QDMQDMQDM]

Hello everybody,

Long time no see, but have been busy. I'd love to hear from anyone with personal experience of getting wires buried. I have just bought a house where I could conceivably swap a few fields with a farmer, take out some hedges, bury some cables and get... a (challenging-ish) cub strip.

QDM

[HiSpeedTape]

Taking out Hedgerows? Now, now that's not very environmentally sound is it? I'm sure the local planning authority would be the first blocker to your plan, closely followed by the nimbys and tree huggers. Forget it.

[pilotwolf]

Nothing like pi$$ing on someones parade HST!!

Not sure about the swopping fields and hedgerow bit but guess as long as they re your fields before you apply for the planning - if needed of course - then can't see that it d make much difference.

I know for a fact that the electricity companies will bury cables but I m 99% you ll have to pay the whole cost... call them? Not sure about BT though.

PW

[muffin]

I moved to my present house about 6 years ago. When we came here there was an 11Kv power cable right avross the back of the garden between me and my field. My next door neighbour decided he did not like the cable obstructing his view so he got the Elec Co to bury the wires and take down 3 poles. I had no objection of course as it got in the way of my helo approach. It cost him about £10k to get them to bury around 250 metres of cable and take down the poles plus moving a transformer. I contributed £600 for the bit that went past the back of my house. There are pics at www.rodsley.net if you want to have a look. The red lines are where the power lines are now - previously they went right up my neighbours field and across the top of mine.

I am pretty sure he had to pay the whole cost, but if you get the Elec Co to come in they will give you a quote for free.

[cubflyer]

I believe you can get the cables buried for free. But it maybe depends exaclty where they are and how much cable is on your land. After all the electric company have to come on to your land to inspect the cables at regular intervals and have to have your permission for the cables to cross your land. Probably no good if the cable is just going to your house, but if it supplies the next village then maybe you are winning!
The cables were buried at a strip where I fly some years ago and It was certainly done for nothing there.

[stiknruda]

Q3D3M3

welcome back, decided that I wanted a north/south strip to augment my easty/westy and had a quote from Eastern Electric 4 years ago to bury 330M and move a transformer for £11k.

That was plus VAT and I was expected to excavate the 3 mete deep trench, myself.

Spent a little of the money on more Avgas to perfect my cross-wind landings!

Grubbing out hedges is not generally a planning matter and if one can show that one has planted more hedging than one grubs out is generally a no-brainer for the Nimbys, HST.

Stik

[HiSpeedTape]

No correct, Hedges aren't but change of use is. NIMBYS and Ramblers exist to give us all a hard life and unless you live in splendid isolation, you're bound to have one within earshot/line of sight. Like rats, you're never further than 3 feet from one. They're the ones who'll p1ss on your parade.

[WorkingHard]

Chances are the poles are there by legal right from a wayleave. If so you couls try and ask the elec co to bury. move at a negaotiated cost OR give them notice to quit on the wayleave

[Mariner9]

No need to even bother with planning permish provided you comply (or pretend to comply) with the 28-day rule.

M9

[QDMQDMQDM]

That's incredibly helpful everyone, thank-you. I shall look into it. It's helpful to know that this is possible and, it sounds, fairly routine, and pretty expensive but not completely out of the question.

Stiknruda, how come you needed such a long segment buried. Did it run right up the middle of your proposed North-South strip?

QDM

[chrisN]

QDM, see your pm's. Chris N.

[david viewing]

Doubtless completely illegal in Nanny State Britain, but a common technique is to mole drain in an alkathene water pipe and then thread an ordinary cable though it. Safe enough if it's protected by an RCD but don't tell the safety police.

[stiknruda]

why 330metres?

Because the 3phase poles march straight across the narrow bit of my land and if it was doing, it was worth doing properly. I have a pole in the centre of my yard and another between 2 paddocks off to one side of the yard.

To do the job, the cable would need to terminate at a pole, that pole would need a bracing guy wire and the cable would enter the ground and run under the guy wire to another pole, run under its new guy wire and climb back up the pole!

Loosing a single pole but gaining 2 guy wires and relocating the transformer from the lost pole to a pole out in the field or on the edge of the property would have enabled me to put down a very long (900 metre) grass strip, but I would have then had to contend with a single braced pole in the yard and another in the middle of a field that someone else (David) farms.

As I operate under the 28 day rule, I was going to put this strip on David, my neighbour's land and thereby have 56 movements a year without planning permission being required. He was going to then use an equivalent area of my land (that he has been covetting for a long time) so that both parties would benefit.

However 4 years later, I suppose that I am pleased that we thought about it, agreed that we could do it but ultimately chose not to - the biggest deciding factor was the £11k. A second strip, an additional 28 movements realistically would never have been worth the cost or hassle.

As long as one is on good terms with the neighbours, never overflies those that don't like your aircraft noise, never does circuits (there is obviously the odd go-around), only aerobatts in the overhead once a year at your annual bash, invites these folk to the same bash, and does not have a stream of traffic circling to land every Saturday and Sunday then the 28 day rule works very well and is not too restrictive! I always offer to take them flying but generally my invitations are not often accepted!

DV's post about mole-draining an alkathene pipe...... that is exactly how I buried the BT cable a metre deep, that ran over my threshold. Mr BT just left me a km reel of cable and and I re-routed it up the side of my farm-track right to the house, using a home made attachment on the back of another neighbour's Caterpillar D4. I dug the bit that goes across my lawn in by hand as I didn't need any more fury from the ex-wife when she realised I'd tracked over it!

Stik