Moving powerlines on personal property? archived

Anyone ever worked with PSEG to have powerlines "rearranged" in their yard? Looking to buy a property that has powerlines running catercorner through the yard (and hanging pretty low) and hoping to get the power lines moved to a more "aesthetically" pleasing location. I believe its doable, although costly. Any insight is helpful. Thanks!

That's an interesting one...PSE&G obviously has an easement for use of the power lines...getting them to move the lines to another part of the property may be challenging. Good luck.

I am interested in your findings as we have a similar issue with cablevision lines running thru our backyard that we would like re-directed.

You can pay them to bury the lines but it's very expensive. A trench needs to be dug, pipe needs to be laid and the wires need to be temporarily removed( and more than likely replaced or lengthened) then reconnected. I would also let the neighbors know your the reason they have no cable for the day or power for that matter.

Wait for the next ice storm , then be around when they come to re - string them.

Yes, you can do it . About 10 years ago a client got a quote to move them.- it was a large piece of property and I believe the cost to move them was $50,000
YOu should give PSEG a call and get a quote .

We have a power line that runs through our backyard and are barely conscious of it. Same with the line to the house runs diagonally from the pole.

I just looked out the window and attempted to estimate how low it is: about midway through the upper window paine on our second floor.

You have two questions to ask PSE&G: How high should the line be and, once they measure it and it is of sufficient height, how much would it cost to bury the line.

Good luck.

When we bought our house, there were many low hanging, defunct telephone/ cable wires running from the house to the utility pole. We buried phone/cable lines as well as the electrical line to our garage and had people take down all of the wires we were not using. It involved hiring our landscaper to dig an 18" deep trench and then hiring an electrician, (I think it was Stacey) to run the electrical line through a tube from house to garage. We had cablevision come out and run the phone wire through the tube, too. I can't remember the exact cost, but I think it was ~2k when all was said and done, bulk of that went to Stacey- but they did a few other little things inside, too. We left the PSEG line, since it is pretty high up and would have involved digging another trench. In principle, you could do the cablevision one for a pretty low cost,esp if you dug out the trench yourself and laid the tubing. It is not too expensive to get the cable company to move the wire (I think it was under $100 when we did it). I'd make a few calls to the cable co, PSEG etc to see if it is worth it. For us it was- we absolutely did not want low hanging wires (esp electrical ones) in the yard.

Thanks everyone. Very helpful!

Lana,

Did the electrician cut the dead lines or did PSEG?

We buried the service lines to our house when we did a lot of yard and patio work. It required PSE&G to run the power down the pole in a protective covering and then our electrician took over with the line in a series of pipes in a trench to the electrica panel in the basement. (Cable and phone lines are down there as well.) Not cheap but worth it.

kmk, when was that? If you wanted FIOS, could you get it, and how? Or do you have it?

In other words, what happens when a new cable comes along after you bury your cables?

We buried a third empty tube on the property for exactly that reason. We have not yet gotten FiOS but, if we did, we would request the technician to run it down the pole adjacent to our property and into one of the three underground PVC pipes we put in for "Future Technologies".
The irony is that, because of VoIP, we have abandoned our copper phone lines and they occupy some of the real estate underground!

We did this work about 11 years ago, just before 9/11.

Knitengale- our project did not involve the PSEG wires- our electrician dealt with the electrical lines (took down old one and ran a new one from our box in basement), Verizon took down all of the abandoned phone lines. We switched to Fios after the initial work was done and the FIOS guy just threaded the fios line through the phone line tube and took away the old one. Electrical line has its own tube.

Don't you get EMFs from power lines no matter where they're buried?

I had a power line moved in front of my house. The line ran diagonally from the pole to the corner of the house. PSE&G came and moved it so it runs from the corner of the house straight out to the street along with my phone line. Cost: $0.00.

elspeth said:

Don't you get EMFs from power lines no matter where they're buried?

The drop in EMF radiation is governed by Coulomb's law: It's inversely proportional to the square of the distance. In other words, the farther you move away, the more rapidly the field strength drops. Also, electric fields are more easily blocked than magnetic fields, but even magnetic fields from underground lines drop more rapidly with distance than those from an overhead powerline due to the soil.

Every situation with PSE&G is unique. If you are polite and patient and you keep trying you can get someone who is responsive and helpful. When we had our underground service replaced we got many wild quotes from them at different times, up to 15k. They ended up doing it for nothing.