A pole on your property starts leaning after a windstorm, and the first question is the right one: whose problem is this? Sometimes it belongs to the utility and costs you nothing. Sometimes it is yours, and ignoring it ends with a red tag and no power. Here is how to tell the difference.

The Service Point Decides Everything

Your electric service has a hand-off spot called the service point. On one side of it, the utility owns and maintains the equipment. On the other side, you do. For most rural properties in Northeast Washington, the service point is where the utility’s overhead line attaches to your first pole or your weatherhead.

The plain-English version:

  • Poles along the road carrying lines to multiple properties: the utility’s. Whether your power comes from Avista or a rural co-op like Inland Power, those poles are theirs to maintain.
  • A pole on your land that serves only your property: almost always yours. These are private poles, also called meter poles or service poles. The utility delivers power to it; everything about the pole itself is the owner’s responsibility.
  • The meter: the meter itself belongs to the utility, but the meter base it sits in is yours.

A quick gut check: if the pole disappeared tomorrow, would anyone but you lose power? If the answer is no, the pole is probably yours.

Why This Surprises So Many Property Owners

Nobody mentions the private pole at closing. People buy rural property around Deer Park, Chattaroy, or Loon Lake; the pole has been standing for 50 years, and there is no reason to think about it until a storm, an inspection, or the utility flags it. Then they call the utility and hear the sentence that prompts most of our pole calls: “That one’s yours.”

Utilities inspect their connections from time to time, and when a private pole is rotted, leaning, or carrying failing hardware, they can refuse to keep service connected to it. That is the red tag. Once it happens, the clock is running.

Signs Your Private Pole Needs Attention

You do not need a bucket truck to do a basic check from the ground:

  • The pole leans noticeably, or the lean is getting worse year over year.
  • Pressing a screwdriver into the wood near the ground line finds soft, punky wood.
  • Woodpecker holes, deep checking, or visible rot anywhere on the pole.
  • The service mast is bent, the weatherhead is tilted, or wires are pulling away from their attachments.
  • Lights flicker in the wind. The connections up top may be loose or worn.

A pole past 40 years old deserves a look even if none of these show. Wood poles age from the inside, and the ground line is where they fail.

What to Do If the Pole Is Yours

Do not wait for the red tag. A planned replacement happens on your schedule, with a short, coordinated outage. A forced one happens after the utility disconnects you, in whatever weather that week brings.

A licensed electrical contractor handles the whole job: the permit, setting or replacing the pole, transferring the meter base and weatherhead, the state inspection, and scheduling the utility reconnect. It is one of those projects that touches three parties (you, the contractor, the utility), and a contractor who already works with the local utilities keeps it moving.

Floener Electric has set and replaced private poles across Northeast Washington and the Spokane area since 1992. If you are not sure what you are looking at, send us a photo of your pole. We will tell you whether it is the utility’s problem or yours, and what we would do about it either way. Call (509) 289-4251 or request a quote online.