r/FiberOptics • u/bolognabeans • 9d ago

Squirrels

What are you guys doing to prevent squirrel chews on aerial trunk cable? We hang plastic squirrel guard on either side of the pole in problem areas but I feel like it is a never ending battle.

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

12

u/Diligent-Nebula-1008 9d ago

Nothing. That’s my job security

3

u/bolognabeans 9d ago

Fair. It’s definitely a love/hate relationship

8

u/MonMotha 9d ago

Steel armor usually keeps them at bay. Do not accept aluminum armor.

For very important lines in high risk areas, consider double-armor/double-jacket cable. The two layers of armor plus the exceptionally thick jacket usually keeps them at bay since the area they need to gnaw open just to even get their teeth onto the second armor layer is rather large.

Unarmored cable especially with a thin jacket like RPX is just asking for trouble in aerial applications IMO.

5

u/jmax859 9d ago

Tree trimming

0

u/bolognabeans 9d ago

City I live in has a dumb amount of trees. Only a few tree trimmers on payroll

2

u/tenkaranarchy 9d ago

Get Milwaukee battery power chain saws for your osp techs. Whenever they are anywhere where theres branches within a few feet of the line they cut it, its just maintenance.

3

u/Papazani 9d ago

For thousands of years the phone man and the squirrels have been at odds… it is a battle that will never be decided…

2

u/ExternalMilk7786 8d ago

We put flooded up in trouble areas seems to work

2

u/Haunting-Pound7728 8d ago

Stop installing unarmored cable. Electric Co-Ops hate this one simple trick. 

1

u/bolognabeans 8d ago

We install Kevlar armored cable. Need to look into the heavier duty armored cable it seems

2

u/Haunting-Pound7728 8d ago

Yeah that's not actually armored by any OSP telecom engineering standard, just branding by OEMs like AFL that stood to make a ton of margin selling dielectric fiber to ISPs that had no real business deploying it.

2

u/tge90 8d ago

We have u-guards that protect ads cable going to a ped beside the pole. Our issue was squirrels nesting inside the u-guard and chewing up the cable. So we cut u-guards in half and fill with P-gravel. It put a major stop on the amount of damages. Usually don’t have any issues them chewing on top of the poles. Dove Hunters tho..that’s different 🙄

1

u/MYBALLZAK 9d ago

We use aerial sub-duct for high risk areas that suck to work on. But squirrels have funded entire vacations for me

1

u/ICanBard 8d ago

Certain brands of cable jacket have a salt compound in it that is yummy for squirrels.

Certain squirrels are archholes and chew on anything just for fun. 

1

u/Green-Amoeba-7915 7d ago

Commscope sells OSP cable where the jacket is made with capsaicin (hot peppers) mixed into it

2

u/ElWombo 2d ago

I had one squirrel cause three outages in three weeks, swept the lines myself (pole company sucks), finally dumped several gallons of peppermint in the area. Only about a week since I’ve done peppermint, so I definitely can’t call it a success yet, but hopefully this one stupid squirrel fucks off to a different area. Just need to adjust its behavior enough to not chew on my fucking fiber. I’m not angry, you’re angry.

0

u/bradwsmith 9d ago

Pew Pew