Lineman Pole Climbing: Rigging It Up

Pre-inspection of all ropes and rigging equipment associated with hanging a transformer. Demonstration of rigging to hang a transformer on a pole.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
This will be a demonstration on rigging equipment, to install rigging equipment with all inspections to install an overhead transformer on a wood pole. And I'm going to be touching and handling the equipment, so I've got to have all my personal protective equipment on. I'm going to do a self-check that I have everything in place. Start from head to toe: hardhat, safety glasses, chinstrap, leather gloves, proper clothing, proper footwear.

And then I'm going to start with my inspections. First, I'm going to inspect my rope blocks, the general condition of the rope blocks, the keepers, all the all the safety gates. These rope blocks are in good shape. The WWL, which is the weight rating on them, is 1,400 pounds. I'm going to check the rope. Rope is good, no tears, no cuts. Everything looks good, that knot's good.

Then I'm going to inspect my tag line rope, make sure that the knots are good. No tears, no no cuts, no real abrasion, just general wear. That rope's in good shape.

Next, I'm going to check my rigging rope which will be tied up on the pole to rig my rope blocks in. Looking at that rope, that's that rope is in good shape.

Check this rope. That will be the rigging rope that will be tied to the transformer. All good here. Very good there.

Next, I'm going to check my hand line, which will be used to bring materials up aloft while I'm on the pole. Taking a look at the hand line, all the knots, look at the gate on the on the handle, on the hook. Everything is good there.

My keeper is in there. No cuts, no tears, just gentle wear on that rope.
Here I got a splice in the rope. Take a look at that splice. That splice is good. Take a look at the hand line snap, at the chain link here. That chain link is nice and tight. Snaps working properly in the hook. And here's another chain link. Everything is good, everything is good there.

So, now I will begin the demo on how to, to actually rig this on the pole and then I'll go, go aloft and do everything alone. So, one of the first things I want to do is go ahead and get my transformer rigged.

This is a tag line, which will help pull the transformer out. Keep it from twisting when we pull it up. So, we're going to do, we're going to do a knot here. It's called a round turn with three half hitches. While I'm tying these knots, I'm going to check how much the transformer weighs. It's important to know what you're lifting.

Take a look, it has a material nameplate, all that information is on the material nameplate. This transformer weighs 194 pounds. Rope blocks are good for 1400. So, you see we have a lot of safety factor there. So, this rope would be rigged on top of the transformer and this rope would be where you would connect the rope blocks to pull it up to place it on the pole. Using a square knot and, you can see, I cross the rope. It just it just keeps it in place better and I kind of test it make sure the knots okay. I pull on this one, make sure the knot's ok, and then the next then the next thing I would do is rig my hand line. This will be the step that I would do aloft. You want to make sure that the gate on your hand line block is up. It protects the gate. And then you just rotate it around out of your work area.

Next, I would install my rigging rope above the hand line. And everything has to be kept under positive control. When I start climbing, you'll see I don't throw any straps, everything is passed around hand to hand. Same way with this rope. So, I'm going to take this rope around, keep it totally under control, secure one end of it. And I like going top, bottom to top. I think it just works a little better.

It's important to control everything. This will be a de-energized demo but if you're working in energized conductors, you must keep everything under positive control. So, you come back around, minimum of five wraps is what we're looking for here. Again, using the square knot, I got one, two, three, four, five. Checking everything is good. And you can actually straighten this rope out and if you got to move it around, or whatever you need to do with it, you can actually move it a little bit. Okay.

Next step would be install my rope blocks. The critical step is make sure, this called the fall line that fall line has to be at the top. So, you grab your rope blocks in this manner take them, you can work it right up through those ropes one at a time. Then gate out.

Here again, when you when you connect them up, we want to be consistent on the way we do things, with attention to detail. Make sure gates out down here. And what's going to happen, ground personnel will pull the transformer up and we're going to install it on a boat.