Pole inspection

[Paul Koning]

I saw a power company crew (more precisely, a subcontractor) out the past few days, inspecting poles along the roads. I've seen this done before, as indicated by shiny inspection markers nailed to the poles.

This time I noticed something different.

I chatted with the crew briefly as we walked by. One of them was carrying a drill with a LONG drill bit, maybe 1/2 inch diameter and at least a foot long. When I looked at the poles the next day I noticed that nearly all of them had one or two holes in them, drilled downward at an angle, near the ground. Each of these holes was plugged with a big Torx screw, either painted black or covered with creosote, not sure which.

I also watch them hammer on a pole at various spots, which I understand, you want to hear a nice solid ringing sound. But the drill holes and the plugs made me curious.

Any ideas what this is all about?

paul

[Joel Phelps]

I understand that they are inserting wood preservative or insecticide

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> On Dec 24, 2025, at 4:15 PM, Paul Koning <pa0...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I saw a power company crew (more precisely, a subcontractor) out the past few days, inspecting poles along the roads. I've seen this done before, as indicated by shiny inspection markers nailed to the poles.

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[Mark Kinsler]

Yup.  I forget the name of the firm that does this, but yes, it's presumably deadly to both innocent insects and our glorious fungi.  Sometimes they'll use electronic stuff to judge the pole, but the poles last a very long time if not snapped off by Jeeter's pick-up truck or set afire by arcing conductors.  

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Mark Kinsler

512 East Mulberry Street
Lancaster, Ohio USA 43130
740-503-1973

[Paul Koning]

Interesting.  The company name was "Osmose" and the inspection tags have that name and something like "woodfume".  The truck's plates were from Georgia though some other marking on the truck mentioned New York.

paul

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[Paul Koning]

I looked a bit more closely.

Poles that were installed recently (in the past few years) have only an oval inspection tag, no "woodfume" mentioned, and no holes.  Older ones have holes.  The "woodfume" tag is actually a separate metal tab that's under the oval inspection tag, sticking out at the bottom, both nailed to the pole with one nail.  I also noticed that most of the older poles have an earlier inspection tag and woodfume tag dated 2010, but a few of them that look to be not quite so old have the 2010 inspection but no woodfume tag on that one.  So I guess they only do the treatment on poles that are "old enough".

One pole had a third tab attached as part of the new tag, with just the letters "TF".  No idea what that means.  It was a pretty old pole but it seems to be still intact; and a few other poles that actually have significant damage just have the ordinary tags.

Aha....  as usual, answers can be found on the Internet: https://www.reddit.com/r/Edmonton/comments/cqq0tt/what_are_these_tags_for_on_power_poles/

And the company I saw at work has a website: https://www.osmose.com/products-signs-tags-marking which shows the tags, and another page describes various wood treatments.

paul

On Dec 25, 2025, at 1:52 PM, Mark Kinsler <kins...@gmail.com> wrote:

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