I did a search and found some discussion on wind turbines but not more typical power lines running through a property. If there is one out there, happy to be directed to it.

I'm looking at buying 25 acres that has six 3 phase power poles/lines running through it to build a home. Assuming I'm past any issues with them being an eyesore for me or any health issues, what should l be concerned about or questions I should be asking. The poles were installed in 2008 and are in great condition. I understand the easement is 10 ft on either side and nothing built under or above. Prime home sites on the parcel are at least 150 - 200 ft from the lines. Typically wouldn't be considering but given that land where I live is hard to find and very expensive, seeing it as a potential opportunity to get in at a good land basis if I can do my homework and get comfortable. Thanks.

Sounds like it may be cheaper to run electricity to a new home with the poles that close

Should be generally fine with them being that far away

The good news is you will have multiple locations for dove during dove season.

Definitely 2 of the check marks on the pro side of the ledger.

10 feet on either side sounds too narrow to me, I would read the actual easement. Also, does the easement specify how they enter your property for regular maintenance and storm restoration. Do they have to repair the access area and easement area after access? Heavy equipment plus a thunderstorm makes for a very muddy mess. If those areas check out snd you are comfortable with them, sounds like a good deal.

Big Bucks said:

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10 feet on either side sounds too narrow to me, I would read the actual easement. Also, does the easement specify how they enter your property for regular maintenance and storm restoration. Do they have to repair the access area and easement area after access? Heavy equipment plus a thunderstorm makes for a very muddy mess. If those areas check out snd you are comfortable with them, sounds like a good deal.

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Yes, I have talked to the coop already who confirmed the 10 ft. Agree it seems narrow. Good point on the repair, I'll confirm. They seem very eager to be good partners with land owners but their priority would be restoring power if they needed. He and I discussed the size of their trucks, trailers, etc. I would likely put up two access gates at each point where the easement crosses the property line. Just to make is as easy on them as possible and hopefully reduce impact to all areas outside the easement.

Good deal. See if they will pony up on the gates for ease of access. All they can tell you is no, snd if you show how it will make restoration quicker they may pay for the gates or the installation. May be screwed though if it wasn't negotiated in original easement. If there are any low crossings see if they will install a culvert to prevent property damage and also for easier access for inspections and restoration. Never know until you ask.

Big Bucks said:

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Good deal. See if they will pony up on the gates for ease of access. All they can tell you is no, snd if you show how it will make restoration quicker they may pay for the gates or the installation. May be screwed though if it wasn't negotiated in original easement. If there are any low crossings see if they will install a culvert to prevent property damage and also for easier access for inspections and restoration. Never know until you ask.

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Good ideas, thanks.

I have big power lines behind my house. Only once in the last 20 years has Oncor sent a crew to trim anything. They did trim everything extending into the easement and removed anything in the easement. The easement behind my place sounds much larger than what you'll be dealing with. Nothing can be with 25' of these lines.

A 20 foot total width easement is pretty wide for a smaller pole lead. 10' is not unusual.

I have power lines across my place from before it was previously divided that go to my house and on to neighbors. They limit where I can build on the path but otherwise I don't notice them. They're not a danger unless you're using a crane or man lift or dropping a tree nearby.

Thanks all. I know there is a value impact but I"m going to try to get that (both for the land and the home) built in to the price I would pay for the land. Never know until you try...

I built my house about 75 yards from the 3 phase line that runs through my place and I can verify that it is indeed a great place for doves to land.I'd say it's an eyesore, but since I work for the power company, I'll just withhold any comment.

Honestly, it's not a big deal.

Ha. Thanks.

I'm a distribution power systems engineer here and work for a big utility. What Coop is it? I can likely tell you how their standards are, if they have good maintenance cycles on their facilities and so forth cause it's just a small industry. We share information and so forth.

10 foot easement is pretty typical with a lot of Coops especially older easements. Having three phase power on you land to me is actually a huge advantage value wise and also can save you some money on line extension.

If the line was built in 2008 pending their design specs and also material specs line should be ok but that depends on those factors. Also when the crews come out to work on the lines they will repair and maintain the right a way

BurnetAggie99 said:

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I'm a distribution power systems engineer here and work for a big utility. What Coop is it? I can likely tell you how their standards are, if they have good maintenance cycles on their facilities and so forth cause it's just a small industry. We share information and so forth.

10 foot easement is pretty typical with a lot of Coops especially older easements. Having three phase power on you land to me is actually a huge advantage value wise and also can save you some money on line extension.

If the line was built in 2008 pending their design specs and also material specs line should be ok but that depends on those factors. Also when the crews come out to work on the lines they will repair and maintain the right a way

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Hey, thanks. It's Bandera Electric Cooperative.

Bandera EC has some good design and material specs. They only thing to watch for would be the wood poles. At one point they had a sole source agreement with a certain distributor/pole plant that the wood poles had some issues not meeting AWPA and ANSI standards for utility poles. Typically a wood pole should last 20 plus years if it meets all the AWPA, ANSI and the utilities wood pole specification.

Also most utilities have wood pole inspection programs like with Osmose that are contracted to conduct pole inspections and treat poles that they find any rot or flag poles that are beyond treatment and the utilities install new poles.

Feel free to DM if you ever have any questions on any thing. I have some good contacts there as well if you ever need to reach out to their Engineering group.

BurnetAggie99 said:

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Feel free to DM if you ever have any questions on any thing. I have some good contacts there as well if you ever need to reach out to their Engineering group.

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Much appreciated. Great insight. They seem like a good group that looks to work with landowners as much as possible.

Not to derail, but great to see other coop and utility folks giving good solid advice to a landowner. As a coop employee, some individual management folks stink throughout the utility industry but most all employees want to do everything they can to help the public.

Agree. I get comfort in that we're dealing with a coop that seems to understand they are in the service business which includes respecting that land the are utilizing. Seems like common sense but of that is much lacking today.

1997 AG said:

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Agree. I get comfort in that we're dealing with a coop that seems to understand they are in the service business which includes respecting that land the are utilizing. Seems like common sense but of that is much lacking today.

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Get everything in writing. Never trust a utility company to do something in the future that was verbal or "how it used to be done". People will come and go and you will be stuck.

tamc93 said:

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1997 AG said:

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Agree. I get comfort in that we're dealing with a coop that seems to understand they are in the service business which includes respecting that land the are utilizing. Seems like common sense but of that is much lacking today.

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Get everything in writing. Never trust a utility company to do something in the future that was verbal or "how it used to be done". People will come and go and you will be stuck.

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Yep, all has to be in an instrument but the instrument (under review) seems fairly land owner friendly. Agree with your point though. At any time, anyone can be "hit by a bus" and the legal docs will rule.

Big Bucks said:

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Not to derail, but great to see other coop and utility folks giving good solid advice to a landowner. As a coop employee, some individual management folks stink throughout the utility industry but most all employees want to do everything they can to help the public.

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I agree 100%. It's a close knit industry with a lot of great people and I have a lot close friends along the way working in the industry. I've worked at a Coop for a lot of years which is the largest coop in Texas & also the largest coop in the nation and now work for largest municipalities in the nation but also Texas.

My dad also has 45 years of service as Construction Manager at the previous Coop I worked, he's set to retire finally next December. I also have uncles and cousins that also work in the industry as Engineers, Lineman, and operations & engineering managers. I guess you can say it runs in the blood as they say.

1997 AG said:

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BurnetAggie99 said:

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I'm a distribution power systems engineer here and work for a big utility. What Coop is it? I can likely tell you how their standards are, if they have good maintenance cycles on their facilities and so forth cause it's just a small industry. We share information and so forth.

10 foot easement is pretty typical with a lot of Coops especially older easements. Having three phase power on you land to me is actually a huge advantage value wise and also can save you some money on line extension.

If the line was built in 2008 pending their design specs and also material specs line should be ok but that depends on those factors. Also when the crews come out to work on the lines they will repair and maintain the right a way

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Hey, thanks. It's Bandera Electric Cooperative.

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You need to watch them close if you have any trees around their lines that require trimming. We have some acreage in Boerne, and I swear they killed a good deal of our oaks (50+) when the equipment they used had been used on trees with oak wilt and not cleaned.

Right of Way Agent, having done and am currently working on, Power Lines, here. (also done pipelines etc)

Few things. Newer easements come with an Exhibit (Map) and description of the exact width/length/location etc etc etc of the easement. That exhibit is legally binding to the utility company, meaning it protects the landowner. So they can run more lines within the easement but if they wanted to do an other real construction, they would have to pay you etc.

Older easements, ones in our grandparents generation, typically just described the property as a whole. These "Blanket" easements, in theory, gave the utility company permission to be on your property, but didn't specify where. However, there is a bit of a myth about old blanket easements letting companies do whatever they wanted. Judges don't tend to go along with that, so if an easement is, say, 50yrs old and doesn't have an Exhibit but it's been in the same location, same width, same length all of that time, odds are you're going to be ok with companies having to stay/work in that area.

I know some of this sounds Elementary to some of you, but I promise you, most people don't know this stuff.

Honestly, its encouraging to read some of the responses above, educated/informed landowners are a blessing. I get some occasionally that think a power company can, "come build a 50 story building" on their property, I'm not making that up. Unless a 50 story building is in the Exhibit, they can't build it.

OH, one thing, for all landowners. If you're ever approached by a Right of Way agent, Landman etc., if they call, leaves a note etc., Do yourself a favor and at least call them back or meet with them once. Do not curse, threaten or anything else. Avoidance/threats are not your friend here. Whatever the project is may not actually touch your property, they could just be needing to give you information, so at least talk to them once.

IF you want them to talk to a lawyer....actually have a lawyer for them to talk to. I can tell by the way it comes out of a persons mouth if they actually have a lawyer or not, and your BIL that happens to be a lawyer, may or may not be "your lawyer". I have had relatives/lawyers call and tell me that, quite frankly, they didn't wan to deal with it but they were doing it as a favor.

Odds are that, most of the time, you'll never have to deal with it anyway. However, its a good idea to have copy of your easement on file at the house though.

Bandera is great! With some buddies we had a lease north of Bertram. We had a trailer etc for our camp. One Saturday afternoon the transformer on the pole right at the house popped. We called and within 20 min a truck was there and a crew installed a new transformer twice the size of the original. Then the crew sat around with us for the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and talking about hunting coyotes.

Prolly helped that our land owner was a big big cheese in the co-op.

Woodpeckers destroyed a bunch of new poles going thru our timber tract.

Wearer of the Ring said:

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Bandera is great! With some buddies we had a lease north of Bertram. We had a trailer etc for our camp. One Saturday afternoon the transformer on the pole right at the house popped. We called and within 20 min a truck was there and a crew installed a new transformer twice the size of the original. Then the crew sat around with us for the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and talking about hunting coyotes.

Prolly helped that our land owner was a big big cheese in the co-op.

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Pedernales Electric Coop covers Bertram area out of the Bertram district. That's were my Dad works and I formally worked there in Johnson City at our headquarters as that's where Engineering was. PEC is the largest coop in the nation based on meters and service area

Thnx for correction.

Those copper infused poles deter fungus and termites but not woodpeckers. The older creosote poles could last up to 100 years. We have poles in our area on record from the 1920's.

Wearer of the Ring said:

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Thnx for correction.

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You bet. All PEC's design specs, system protection specs, material specs, I had a heavy hand in that as I was the Lead Engineer in the Distribution Design & Engineering Standards department.

Wanted to share with you something you might ask the COOP and get them to put in writing to you.
Texas Utility Commish is now long term planning " energy corridors" as it is way that they can run multiple easements through one property. These corridors open it up for the large transmission lines, fiber optics, pipe lines etc. They are doing this so when using ED they only fight the landowner once.
I would specifically ask them if it could become a corridor as that would be horrible for you. They have started using existing transmission line easements as pathways for the planned future corridors.
We found out about it quite by accident when we were contacted and were pretty concerned about what the future could hold.
Would not hurt to find out and make them guarantee it won't happen on your place.

1997 AG said:

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Big Bucks said:

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10 feet on either side sounds too narrow to me, I would read the actual easement. Also, does the easement specify how they enter your property for regular maintenance and storm restoration. Do they have to repair the access area and easement area after access? Heavy equipment plus a thunderstorm makes for a very muddy mess. If those areas check out snd you are comfortable with them, sounds like a good deal.

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Yes, I have talked to the coop already who confirmed the 10 ft. Agree it seems narrow. Good point on the repair, I'll confirm. They seem very eager to be good partners with land owners but their priority would be restoring power if they needed. He and I discussed the size of their trucks, trailers, etc. I would likely put up two access gates at each point where the easement crosses the property line. Just to make is as easy on them as possible and hopefully reduce impact to all areas outside the easement.

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We have probably over 6000 feet of line on our western border that runs into OKLA

It's maintained (owned) by Western Farmers Coop out of Anadarko - I was shocked at how happy they were to communicate with a landowner. They've been on the place to clear once since we've owned it but they check occasionally because of the amount of mature trees we have. They call me when they are nearby and check in and are happy to discuss anything I might propose when it comes to how the easement is maintained

They say it's rare for landowners to work with them or engage them which is kind of a head scratcher to me.

To your question - we really don't notice the lines much anymore except when youre directly underneath them - but they make good shooting lanes and food plots!

Really appreciate all of the responses and great information. Thanks.