New Standard Specifications for Wood Poles

E P R E S E N T A T I V E S of communication, power and light, and transportation utilities, of producers, and of public and general interests have cooperated in the preparation of the new uniform standard specifications for wood poles that were recently approved by the American Standards Association.1 The new specifications cover dimensions and material requirements for northern white cedar, western red cedar, chestnut and southern pine poles, but rules for preservative treatment are not included. Specifications for lodgepole pine and Douglas fir poles are in preparation. Pole specifications deal with natural rather than fabricated products. Heretofore, the larger utilities have purchased poles of the various species under specifications that have grown up more or less independently. Confusing differences in material requirements and in the dimensional tables have resulted. Economic production and utilization require the arrangement of the natural cut of pole timbers into groups defined either by top diameters and lengths, or by classes in which circumferences at the top and butt are specified in addition to length. The letter designations, such as A, B, and C, that have been applied to these classes, have had no common meaning. A pole of a given length and class of one species has not generally been equivalent in strength rating to one of the same length and class of another species; and in most cases, the longer poles of a given class have not had the same strength rating as the shorter poles of the same class.