Hydro Pole

What the fuck is a Hydro Pole I thought. I had never realised they were an institution until one of our guests mentioned it in a CS comment, probably while he recommended our spot to the Hitchhiking Festival crowd.

P and myself were okay at electrical wiring. I had the schooling and theoretical knowledge, but P had the practical experience. He had done puxadas before for some of his past squats. According to him they were easy. I had never done one myself, but my EE degree had demystified electricity for me and I was keen.

P and Macieira agreed---the easiest electricity job is to wire directly to public lighting cable. It’s a safe bet since there’s little risk of it being high voltage, at least where we were. I decided to complement their street savviness with a bit of academic research. During one of my many bohemian nights out at bairro or somewhere equally beverage friendly, I mentioned to one of my former EE fellows that I was thinking of doing a puxada from one of the hydro poles. We both graduated around the same time, but while I went into the squishy arts of coding, he was a full fledged EE at the main electrical distribution company. I asked him about voltages around that area and he promised to send me some network diagrams.

One of the challenges you run into when connecting your derelict building’s electricity set up to a hydro pole is that you might accidentally plug into a high voltage line, which, if you don’t know what you’re doing, might mean you’ll be in serious pain or dead. I didn’t want to risk it, so I patiently waited for the diagrams. While I waited, P offered to do it several times but he never got to it. He did find, however, some really nice lead pipes that fit the pole perfectly for climbing. Macieira was also keen on having electricity and said he could ‘borrow’ some nice electrician gloves for us. It was like the perfect storm---network diagrams, electrician gloves and pipes to climb all the way up. All we needed was the actual climb.

Once I got the diagram and confirmation of the voltages. Turns out it was a plain old tri-phase + public lighting set up, all at low voltage and, apart from some sort of breaker, could go straight into feeding a socket. So I climbed.

First, I checked that my clothing was tight enough to climb. Not much but a big deal if any bits of clothing end up caught somewhere or dangling and touch a wire. Not something you want to see while touching high power lines.

I added a nice strap around my waist for safety. It was for psychological well being, but if I slipped I’d at least end up hanging from it, instead of dropping straight down. I checked my boots were insulating. Well, not really, I always wore boots back then, but I checked I wouldn’t be conducting electricity through my feet. I put several different pliers in my pockets, including a couple of high voltage ones I bought on purpose. They are cheap, but the handles are nice and insulated. I put a multimeter in another pocket. This turned out to be pretty useless but again, a lot of what I was doing was for peace of mind. I gathered all the pipes, cable and electrician gloves and was ready to start the climb.

Not all hydro poles are the same. Some have places to put your feet in, some have no space for feet at all and require ladders. In our case, all poles started without any space for feet, but as you went up they had some holes for feet further up some holes about 3cm in diameter. These were where you’d put something through to use as a ladder.

I parked my car on the footpath right next to the pole with a ladder on top of it. This was so I’d reach the lowest of the foot holes. It still meant climbing on top of my car but we did that all the time. From there it would be an easy climb. I grabbed the cable and wrapped my strap around the pole. According to the guys, once I got up there, joining the cable to the pole would be easy, since cables connect to hydro poles via moveable clamps.

Maybe it’s unusual, but I never feel stress in situations like these. Instead, perhaps due to not ever having a sense of danger, I hopped happily onto my car, then ladder, then right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. I was probably at 2m when foot holes ended. From there, I asked for the pipes and plugged them in one by one. First pipe in first hole, second pipe in second hole. Climb to second pipe. Pull first pipe out, put it in third hole. One level up. Pull second pipe out, put it in the fourth hole. One level up. Soon enough I was higher than I needed and sitting comfortably on one of the pipes, with my legs on another.

From there, I looked at the clamps. Hex bolts. No way I could open them properly. I looked at the lines. Several thick cables---those had to be the supply lines---and one thin. Macieira had told me the thinnest was usually lighting and I went with it. If I couldn’t open the clamps, there had to be another way to connect to the wire. I noticed the outer insulation on these cables was just plain brittle plastic. I put the electrician gloves on and used one of my pliers to grind through the insulation, then wrapped our cables around it. Another challenge was finding the neutral line. There was no doubt the thin wire was going to be at 220V at night time. But where was the neutral line? I guessed, tried the multimeter but ended up just going with what I thought was right. From there, it was only a matter of time until the electricity came on, I thought.

Once our cables were plugged in to the now exposed wires, I climbed down. All this lasted maybe 5 minutes. It felt like a lot more, but once I was done I just went on with my day.

Someone must’ve called the cops because once dusk hit there were a few of them outside again. We had tried to hide the cables, but didn’t succeed. They asked about ‘those cables on the ground’ but we said they were already there. Truth is our cables were already set up, all the way to sockets on each level, and S’s boombox was plugged in with some crust cassettes in it.

It was a fun coincidence---the police raid happened at dusk exactly when the public lighting was about to come on. We were all chatting to the police once all lights came on and the radio started blasting seriously loud music. The police asked what was that noise and we said ‘oh it’s just someone’s laptop’. Another lie. We got away with it and they went on with their day. We got to use night time electricity for the first time that day and for a while. My first hydro pole climb worked.

Not everyone was a fan of nighttime only electricity. I had a day job so didn’t really think of it, but the guys really wanted electricity at all times, especially for our fridge. A working fridge all day would up our comfort quite a bit. The guys convinced me to climb up and switch from lighting to mains. This time I was a bit less confident. While the lighting line only comes on at night, the other lines are always on, which means I could easily get zapped. Again, with no sense of danger and personal safety, I climbed up. I did exactly the same as before, except this time I could feel the electricity on my skin and hair. This wasn’t as easy as the last one. One mistake and I’d be toast. I decided to grind the insulation further apart to prevent a short circuit up there and used some insulation tape I had to cover whatever was open. It was pretty cute---big thick black cables grinded and covered with very thin purple tape. I kept thinking of the maintenance crew and what they’d think happened.

T’s design for the fabric rooms really shined with artificial lighting at night. Some of the guys had lamps, which together with the colourful fabric made the whole place look and feel like a spaceship. From the outside, the greyed out building was coming alive, shining in bright rainbow colours powered by stolen electricity. It was a great moment for me---stealing water, now stealing electricity. Scavenging public and private infrastructure for a bit of modern comfort.

It didn’t take long for the police to notice and one of the higher-ups from the local police department came over while we were near the pole one day. He said something like ‘either you guys take that down or I’ll come in here and kick you all out!’

Fair enough, I thought. I never liked the idea of stealing electricity. I wanted to live off the grid. The guys kept nagging me to go climb the pole again and plug us back in. I said I didn’t want to do it any more. I knew none of them would do it. This meant I got my way after all. It still meant I had to find an alternative.