Tree service for telephone line clearance in Canberra?

When you asked for a quote were you specific ? I had tree surgeons in recently and pointed out specifically what i wanted – walking around the yard with my list as the tree surgeons wrote their quote up. There was one minor mis-communication, but they resolved it in about 20 minutes without a quibble. I can recommend Spitting Chips. they were excellent.

I’d also like to thank the people who owned my house before me for planting three leylandia cypress trees under a power line.

2600 said :

From memory it’s 333V DC, but only when the phone line is ringing. Normal voltage is much lower.

75VAC on top of 48VDC when ringing, according to the info I could find. Enough to give you a jolt if you happen to be stripping a wire with your teeth when it’s ringing, at any rate…so I’m told.

Bear in mind, though, that the notion of “dangerous voltage” is pretty badly misunderstood. If I said I’d been shocked by 10,000V, a lot of people would wonder how I was still alive – but that’s pretty much what a nasty static shock from stepping out of your car will give you. To grossly oversimplify, it’s not the volts that are “dangerous”, it’s the amps (the current). And the current on a phone line is not enough to seriously hurt you, even if 500V was the correct voltage figure (though, seriously, still don’t strip the wires with your teeth).

As for the tree in question, there are no particular tree clearance rules for phone lines that I know of. Whether you actually need to do something very much depends on the nature of the tree – we have one that literally rests against the phone line just next to where it enters the house, but it’s a 30cm wide trunk, and doesn’t exactly sway in the breeze. The advice of the tree surgeon I had look at it was to not give it a second thought. Yes, if the tree fell over it could take out the phone line, but that could just as easily happen if a big tree 5m away fell over. If, on the other hand, you have a big branch that could sway a lot and swing through the line then maybe look at getting that one lopped.

From memory it’s 333V DC, but only when the phone line is ringing. Normal voltage is much lower.

They should have cleared the tree from the line though. This could get expensive.

Let your tree knock down a phone line and see how many new friends you make. Voltage or no voltage.

switch said :

Telephone lines don’t carry dangerous voltages

I would’ve thought 500V DC would be dangerous enough that is running through telephone lines.

Or have I got my voltages mixed up?

Telephone lines don’t carry dangerous voltages and hence are not a problem if branches touch them. Power lines on the other hand…