Electricity Today T&D Magazine

Taking care of your grounds and jumpers

A lineman’s ground and jumper cables look and feel like they’re built to last forever, but looks can be deceiving. They get tossed in the truck, dropped in the mud, left hanging in the rain, and generally overlooked. With everyday use, we start to take them for granted. And slowly the wear and tear adds up, compromising their mechanical and electrical reliability. That’s why the care, maintenance, and regular testing of your grounds and jumpers are so important.

Take your personal protective grounding personally

Grounds
Grounds are essential cables that contribute to your...

Line-construction contractors can do their best to train the management, offer safety training and equipment and trust the foremen who are appointed to a job, but it is an inherently dangerous business. Despite all the safeguards, some new linemen say this is what some foremen tell them about safety procedures: “That’s the way you may have learned it in training, but this is how it’s done on the job...”
Training is designed to keep linemen safe. But is that training and equipment being put to proper use? The answer varies depending on the job and the foreman—more so than the...