SAVINGS

How would you like to improve safety by reducing risk, saving man-hours and shortening wire stringing schedules – all while producing significant cost savings?  That’s exactly what our new patented Angle Dolly does by virtually eliminating wedged ropes and hard lines, eliminating the need to change out skookum or X100 blocks and eliminating the need to hold out sheaves with ropes or temporary fixed arms during each wire pull at each and every angle structure.  

To demonstrate, the following is a summary of a single circuit 69 KV transmission line rebuild in the central United States.  The project replaced 4/0 copper with 336 kcmil T-2 conductor and 3#7 copperweld with 0.587” fiber optic shieldwire.  The project contained 15 line angles spread between 6 wire pulls.  The wire stringing crew consisted of 15 men at a loaded man+equipment rate of $150/MH.  Roughly four days were cut from the stringing schedule by not having to change out the stringing blocks at each structure and less time was needed for each pull by not having to slow down or stop the pulls at each angle structure.  The time savings do not take into account any time saved by not having to install temporary fixed arms or positioning a man and bucket truck at each angle structure to hold out the stringing block.  The $150/man-hour and 15-person crew size translated into a savings of over $90,000 for the project.  Eighteen Angle Dollies were used on the job, yielding a savings of more than $5,000 per Angle Dolly.

More importantly, safety was substantially improved and appreciated by the linemen since no men were required to: aerially clear wedged or jammed sheaves; change out X100 blocks during the pull or; be positioned in a bucket truck at each angle to hold out the stringing blocks.

The time and cost savings for each job will vary depending upon a number of factors.  For instance, the same project with new construction only would have yielded a savings of roughly $70,000 since twelve of the crew-hours saved were attributed to the rebuild.  A double circuit project would double the project savings.  Also, the job highlighted was constructed in Iowa with one of the lowest men+equipment rates in the United States. If that same job were constructed in California, the saving would have almost doubled due to higher local rates.