High voltage electric towers?

[NC Appraising]

FHA appraiser Req.

Appendix D: FHA Appraisal

Site Hazards And Nuisances
The appraiser must note and comment on all hazards and nuisances affecting the subject property that may endanger the health and safety of the occupants and/or the structural integrity or marketability of the property, including: subsidence, operating and abandoned oil and gas wells, abandoned wells, slush pits, heavy traffic, airport noise and hazards, runway clear zones/clear zones, proximity to high pressure gas, liquid petroleum pipelines or other volatile and explosive products, residential structures located within the fall distance of a high-voltage transmission line, radio/TV transmission tower, etc., excessive hazard from smoke, fumes, odors, and stationary storage tanks containing flammable or explosive material.

If hazards or nuisances are observed, the appraiser must describe the condition(s) and make a requirement for repair and/or for further inspection, and prepare the appraisal “subject to repairs” and/or “subject to inspection” in the site section of the report. Supporting documentation provided by the appraiser may include extra photos or copies of site studies or analyses, property reports, surveys or plot plans, etc.

 

[NC Appraising]

And

J. OVERHEAD HIGH-VOLTAGE TRANSMISSION LINES
No dwelling or related property improvement may be located
within the engineering (designed) fall distance of any pole,
tower or support structure of a high-voltage transmission
line, radio/TV transmission tower, microwave relay dish or
tower or satellite dish (radio, TV cable, etc.). For field
analysis, the appraiser may use tower height as the fall
distance.

For the purpose of this Handbook, a High-Voltage Electric
Transmission Line is a power line that carries high voltage
between a generating plant and a substation. These lines
are usually 60 Kilovolts (kV) and greater, and are
considered hazardous. Lines with capacity of 12-60 kV and
above are considered high voltage for the purpose of this
Handbook. High voltage lines do not include local
distribution and service lines.

Low voltage power lines are distribution lines that commonly
supply power to housing developments and similar facilities.
These lines are usually 12 kV or less and are considered to
be a minimum hazard. These lines may not pass directly over
any structure, including pools, on the property being
insured by HUD.

 

[Riick]

If hazards or nuisances are observed, the appraiser must describe the condition(s) and make a requirement for repair and/or for further inspection, and prepare the appraisal “subject to repairs” and/or “subject to inspection” in the site section of the report.

...thus, this appraisal requires the repair of the location of the aforementioned high-voltage transmission line, moving it some 150' South, Southwest (SSW)....

 

[Mike Boyd]

Can you imagine what kind of fat check the utility would write you if their tower fell over on your house?

You would not be able to cash the check had you been inside the house! You'd be DEAD!

Yes, towers are designed to collapse on themselves. However, in a category 5 hurricane, I would not count on it. To determine how high the tower is, each tower is numbered. Write down that number and call the power company. They will tell you how high it is. There is a geometric way to calculate it. However, it has been 50 years since I have had to do it. Has something to do with the shadow. Some towers are constructed with wood poles so that it looks like a two legged T. I've known many of those that have fallen down in wind storms around 75 MPH.

 

[timd354]

You would not be able to cash the check had you been inside the house! You'd be DEAD!

Yes, towers are designed to collapse on themselves. However, in a category 5 hurricane, I would not count on it. To determine how high the tower is, each tower is numbered. Write down that number and call the power company. They will tell you how high it is. There is a geometric way to calculate it. However, it has been 50 years since I have had to do it. Has something to do with the shadow. Some towers are constructed with wood poles so that it looks like a two legged T. I've known many of those that have fallen down in wind storms around 75 MPH.

The geometric way to calculate height is through triangulation...the simplest way to do it is to take a protractor with a weighted string attached to the center of the base of it (this makes a cheap sextant) and walk back from the base of the tower until you get to a point where, when looking along the base of the protractor while holding the protractor upside down pointing the base towards the top of the tower causes the string to to indicate an angle of 45 degrees from the point where you are standing to the top of the tower....this indicates that you are now standing the same distance from the base of the tower as it is tall (assuming that the ground is relatively flat)....so you can now measure the height you are from the base of the tower, which will equal its height.

You can also use other angles to determine the height, but this requires the use of a scientific calculator or a trigonomic table.

The shadow method does not work unless you perfrom an incredibly complex calculation that requires you to know the latitude that you are located at, the time of day (the sun moves across the horizon causing shadows to be shorter in the middle of the day and longer in the morning and evening), date (you must look up the tilt of the earth on that day in relation to the sun - the changing tilt of the earth is why shadows are longer in the winter than the summer), so that you can correctly calculate the angle of the sun on the horizon. Safe to say, the shadow method is not the method to use.