board77

Do You Know What They Are?



They are those wires that anchor poles...telephone poles mainly but you know those wires that run down to the ground at an angle. Well a co-worker of mine is saying she's never heard of them before and they should be called the pole suport wires and that guy wire is some oilfield term she has never heard before.

Therefore or there with or whatever, do you know what they are?

Let the experiment begin.

Hey! You could pick two options on that poll!

I've heard of/used guy lines. I figured guy wires were something similar, but wire instead of cord.

I know them as guy ropes or guy lines, most commonly with tent ropes but I would understand their use elsewhere.

Yep, the "wire" tripped me but guy ropes and guy lines I know.

Ara-anna wrote:

Well a co-worker of mine is saying she's never heard of them before and they should be called the pole suport wires and that guy wire is some oilfield term she has never heard before.

How can she believe it to be an oilfield term if she's never heard of it before?

Yep, guy wires. When I was younger, I thought people were saying "guide wires," which actually does make a bit more sense than "guy wires," but, yeah. That's the term.

Well, lookie here. My young brain was onto something:

Quote:

guy: "rope, chain, wire," c.1350, "leader," from O.Fr. guie "a guide," from guier (see guide); or from a similar word in North Sea Gmc. The "rope" sense is nautical, first recorded 1623.

Doesn't everyone know?

apparently not

Never heard of it *shrug* Then again i've never had a conversation about the things

Then, Borry, you have not lived. Or, rather, you have lived under a rock until now.

Now, your education has been completed and you may go about the world a finished man.

I knew about guy wires aka the things that hold up power poles, but when I saw the title, odd images went through my head, trying to imagine what new, strange appliance could be called a "guy wire".

Any excuse to think of a thong, huh?

I'm surprised this thread hasn't taken a life of it's own on, being B77 and all.


Anyhoo....he has guy knifes.

I always though guy wires were the strings wives used to pull to make their husbands do their bidding. Kind of like Stromboli and Pinocchio.

But does anybody (else) know what a "span guy" is?

http://www.tpub.com/content/constructio ... 026_95.htm" target="_blank

Without looking it up, I'd guess it might be the wires on a suspension bridge or something like that.

<goes off to look>

Okay. Are those for power lines?

Well I learned something today....now I know what a span guy is.

Maybe I should print out that link and put it on someone's desk Monday.

LalaithUrwen wrote:

Without looking it up, I'd guess it might be the wires on a suspension bridge or something like that.

<goes off to look>

Okay. Are those for power lines?

Yeah. Or at least that's where I know about them from. (I guess they could be used elsewhere, too.)
Since power lines usually run beside the road, you often end up with a street right where your guy stake needs to be. So you put a pole across the street, run a guy wire overhead to the top of that pole and then run a regular guy wire from the top of the other side of that pole to the ground. That's a span guy.