When a limb comes down on an overhead service drop, the wire itself is the utility's problem. The mast it was attached to, the weatherhead on top of it, the meter enclosure and everything past that point belong to the house — and the utility will not reconnect until they are put right. The Electric Guys repair and replace service masts, weatherheads and meter enclosures across Pittsburgh and about thirty-three miles around it.
This is the job people discover at the worst possible moment: the street has its power back, the neighbours' lights are on, and one house is still dark because the mast is leaning away from the wall. It is an electrician's job, it needs coordinating with the utility, and it is worth understanding before the storm rather than during it.
Why choose The Electric Guys
- We know where the boundary sits. The utility owns the conductors to the point of attachment. Everything from there in is yours. Knowing which side a problem is on saves days of calling the wrong number.
- Utility coordination is part of the work. Disconnect and reconnect has to be scheduled, and an inspection usually sits between the two. That is ours to arrange, not yours to chase.
- We look at the whole assembly. A bent mast is often accompanied by a corroded weatherhead, a rotted meter board or a compromised seal that has been letting water down the conduit for years. Replacing only what is obviously broken means doing it again.
- Straight answers on urgency. Some mast damage is an emergency; some is a scheduled repair. We will tell you which.
Our service mast process
- Assess from the ground and the roof. Mast condition and plumb, the weatherhead, the drip loop, the point of attachment, the meter enclosure and the conduit seal.
- Establish who does what. What the utility must disconnect, what we replace, what the inspector needs to see.
- Schedule the disconnect. Coordinated with the utility so the house is without power for as short a window as possible.
- Replace the assembly. Mast, weatherhead, straps, meter enclosure and seals as required, anchored into sound framing rather than into whatever is left of the old fixing.
- Inspect and reconnect. Inspection signed off, then the utility restores the service.
Why this happens so often here
Terrain and trees. Greater Pittsburgh is hills, river valleys and a very large number of mature street trees standing over overhead distribution — which is a good description of most of the older neighbourhoods and nearly all of the townships. Summer thunderstorms bring limbs down; so does wet, heavy snow, which is the more destructive of the two because it loads a limb gradually until it goes.
The second factor is the age of the assemblies themselves. A mast fitted in 1962 and never touched since has had sixty years of freeze-thaw working at its fixings and sixty years of water finding its way past a weatherhead gasket. A great many of the masts we replace were not brought down by a single storm; the storm was just the last thing they were asked to survive.
Roof type matters too. A lot of the older city and South Hills housing has slate, and a mast fixing through slate is a different repair from one through asphalt shingle — it needs doing in a way that does not leave a leak behind the fix.
If the mast on your house is visibly leaning, if the weatherhead is missing its cap, or if the conduit above the meter is rusted through, none of those should wait for the next storm.
Serving Pittsburgh, PA and nearby
We cover the city and the surrounding communities — Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Monroeville, Penn Hills, Murrysville, Robinson, Moon Township, McCandless and Cranberry — and mast work is one of the calls that comes from all of them at once after a bad night.
Call or text (412) 501-7391 with a photo of the mast from the ground and we can usually tell you immediately whether it is urgent.