Cutting the cord in an urban environment

[thallo]

It’s a small success but thought I would share in case anyone faces the same problem. I live in San Francisco and have a very small amount of space for my palm and succulent collection. The city ran out of money before they could underground utilities on my street. We have a WEB of utility wires spanning from the sidewalk to our home. One cord was directly over my largest garden space. I had resigned myself to planting palms under it in a way they could grow up and around. But last week we got our first small dose of rain and the transformer on the pole down the street exploded and started a fire on the utility pole. That got me thinking of how we could reduce wires. 
 

I haven’t had a landline anywhere I’ve lived since 2001. We’ve been in this place for two years without a landline. I looked closely and it was an AT&T box. I found some helpful threads online that explained how to call the repair line ... I did that last a Friday and requested the line be removed. They came at 7:45am today (the following Monday) and cut it down and removed the box from my siding!

You don’t need an active landline to have the wire removed.  You just have to get past the att telephone robot/AI and directed to the repair team. I had to choose the option to report a line down to get the repair staff on the phone and then made my request.

I didn’t have to pay anything for this removal  

I know some people need a landline ... just throwing this info out to anyone with small spaces further restricted by utility lines!

My new Beccariophoenix alfredii can now grow up into a huge, open overhead space!

Happy growing!

Trey

PS - sorry for the dirty window shots. One tenth inch of rain doesn’t do much to clean away  7 dry months of pollution and wildfire ash!

 

 

Edited November 16, 2020 by thallo

[Kim]

Wish I could get rid of all the wires connecting to my house! Ugly...

[Johnny Palmseed]

I think this is a great idea. Eliminate the unnecessary clutter which isn’t being used anymore and is unlikely to be needed in the future. I went through a difficult process of removing old underground cable and phone lines which were severed and replaced with new. Of course they never pulled out the old lines and it seemed like whenever and wherever I would dig, I would hit one of these. I put the good cable line in a PVC conduit since that is all we use now. Weirdly enough, the phone line had not been disconnected at the service entrance but had been cut underground by the phone company sometime after we ended service.

[WaianaeCrider]

After 53 years w/the land line and same number the wife and I decided to save about $350 a year by using only our cell phones.  Nothing to do w/palm but a good excuse to spend some of that money on m ore palms and her to spend it on quilting projects.  LOL