Germany is the 4th cleanestCountry in the World…. There are days we go running in the woods near our small town….in 8k, I can’t find 1 piece of trash. Note If I do. I pick it up and put it in the next trash can I find. Love living here. So many great little things
You have to go to Japan then, not only is there even less litter than here in Germany, they even manage to keep everything clean without even having public waste baskets.
When travelling the US I was really stunned about the condition of the electrical supply units. Didn't expect this in the country which calls itself leader of the world.
whatever worked 100 years ago, we still do it (and also a lot of stuff that doesn’t work as well). there is no incentive to improve service for low-density neighborhoods.
@@MattSuozzo Yeah! Storm and falling trees cutting off cables: This worked 100 years ago. By the way: Do you transport water (+ pee & poo) overground, too in the US? Or do you dig holes, so that you can put pipes under the ground - but forget to put electricity cables into the same holes, before you fill them up again?
You can find hydrants every few meters! Just look for duct covers with "HYDRANT" or "W" written on them. The hydrants are underfloor as well, there are also symbols with a red border and black "H" pointing out where they are located. However, placement is standardized, so the firefighters usually know where they are without looking for the signs. (Edit: Ah, you pointed it out as well later on in the video...)
The near to signs red outlined "H" signs to locate the hydrant covers. you also find smaller blue signs for underfloor feshwater valves. And yellow for gas-pipelines.
They definitely are NOT standardized in any city I ever lived in. The signs you mention point out where exactly they are. Placing new hydrants is either coordinated with the local firefighters, or they are informed where they are placed. They usually are well aware of hydrants that are hard to find for some reason.
I think the most important reason why most of the cables in germany are belowground is, that for most of the time the utility companies were public owned and didn't need to make (a lot of) profit. All the bigger cities had "Stadtwerke" - municipal utilities and the shares of the bigger power suppliers were mostly public owned. Till the 90th there was only one stately owned telecommunication enterprise. If short term profit isn't so important it's much easier to built a much more expensive, but more durable system.
I believe the most important factor is that people in Germany simply don't like it. People would go crazy if there were cables hanging around everywhere.
@@NeovanGothIf they were used to it, they wouldn't think of it. There is a big difference between introducing something that wasn't there before, and something having been there as long as you can remember.
Before 2020, I rented out via Airbnb an old half-timbered house below a German castle, my family uses as an holiday home. Once I gave it to an American couple - maybe in their late 50s - who somehow imagined Germany as a third world country without any infrastructure. In any case, they asked very strange questions beforehand, e.g. to toilet paper and air raid shelters in case WW II bombs were found. (I have an approx. 1000 year old cellar under the house that survived two world wars, Napoleon and Gustav Wasa). Afterwards they gave me a bad review and actually claimed that I had lied about the fact that there was no electricity in the whole place and that even the drinking water had to be filtered and disinfected. Their evidence was a photo of the rooftops in the neighborhood that didn't show any power or telefon lines... and a picture of my Emsa water filter (for softer tea water) and Soda Stream. I always imagine how the two of them filtered their toothbrush water by the light of my old Kerosin carriage lamps and then disinfected it with my Soda Stream.😇
@@couchcamperTM nah, we got those people in germany as well. EU hubris came and got us long ago. americans should not put themselves below EU....we are a madhouse over here
Cable monkey here. We used to supply electricity via roof poles. These are being phased out (pun intended). All homes get everything underground. Older buildings being upgraded bit by bit. Also all homes are supplied with 3 phase electricity. So if you ever want to run an industrial cnc lathe in our bedroom, you can just do that. 😀
Running industrial machines in your bedroom would still be difficult. Even though all houses are connected to 3 phase power, only very few have 3 phase wiring in all rooms, especially not in the bedroom. Usually only the kitchen provides 3 phase wiring for connecting an electric stove, and even there you probably won't find a standard industrial power outlet.
@@A._MeroyMy distribution panel is 4 meters away from my bedroom. My house is old, like really german empire old so i got 3 phases but only 6mm² that is the real problem. I'd have to limit the acceleration parameters on that CNC almost to American values... almost 😛
@@Schlohmotion Electric stoves usually have a fixed connection. There is a clamp box in the wall (Herdanschlussdose = stove connecting can/box) and it legally has to be connected by a qualified electrician (though kitchen installers can get a limited qualification just for that).
@@VintageTechFan Correct. It isn't as easy as plugging in an extension cord and routing it to the bedroom. I would totally have the skill to connect a cord to the clamp box but I'm not legally allowed, and even if I were, I would have to disconnect the stove every time I want to use the CNC lathe (which would really suck)
I once visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, and there was one old wooden pole for electricity by the harbour and around 100 wires connected to it leading in all directions. That was very weird to me as a german.
Japanese cities have these too. In some areas they look like a big pile of Spaghetti and sometimes I thought that the pole starts bending because of them :D
Yep most stuff is underground in tubes including internet and telephone lines. That's why there is almost no downtime during a storm in Germany. In villages you might notice a few lines above the houses thats where the electric power comes in but in the cities they are also underground.
I was a little shocked going back through footage in the USA just how many parts of cities have above ground wires. only really dense areas with skyscrapers, etc. are underground 😅
The last few seconds of the video was when you realised that there are indeed Americans living in Munich too and of course we respect their culture and electrical traditions! 😂
It looks like some provisional solution. Maybe the underground cable failed and as they want to dig up the street and renew other supply or the sewage system anyway, but not at once, they set up some poles and cable for the street lamps. Sometimes such solutions have to last for a long time...
@@red.aries1444nope. There are indeed still legacy utility poles in use (especially in very rural areas), and very rarely even newly built (but despite its lower price, most municipalities won‘t approve a proposed utility line that‘s not buried nowadays - in part because the citizens don‘t want to have them over the ground). I have once used existing poles to more easily connect a neighbourhood to the PON when my company started the expansion of their fibre network in that town. But generally speaking, legacy utility poles are being removed over time, and new ones are very rare - their most common appearance is to connect a small rural dwelling of a few houses that would require kilometres of digging to connect underground. That is quite an investment: the digging works alone, without any actual cable or lines being bought, layer or installed, costs over 100€ per meter (and this is a trench of 60cm depth and 30cm width, as is common in telekommunication - electricity and others are buried deeper and are therefore more expensive)!
@@drgenio2006 Japan, unlike Germany, has earthquakes a lot, there having cables in the ground is much less of a good idea. Underground cables are more likely than overground ones to rip, and at the same time it is much more tricky to find out where exactly the damage happened and fix it.
@@hartmutholzgraefe I don't know why you explain this to me. you need to explain this to the original commenter who made a blanket statement with the distinctive smell of German arrogance and superiority (a hint of Zyklon B, which was already used some years ago to impose German superiority)
Fire hydrants are not "missing"; they are in the ground. Every firefighter has a "key" that can be used to unlock a valve on the watermain in the street and they can attach directly to the valve.
Not just a key. It is a "Standrohr" (standing tube) which you install on the hydrant and then a handle to open the valve. Basically you install a standing hydrant temporarely.
German Fire Hydrants are countless. Every few meters. They are simply hidden in the ground too. Firefiighters got a special wrench on their trucks, they unlock the little metal hatches in the ground with and pull them up. You get a hydrant that is clean, undamaged and unmanipulated and simply works. And you can place them in front of every house, because they are simply down in the sidewalk.
Every 50 to 70 meters in my city. I used to track them down for adding the positions to OpenStreetMap (to be seen on the OpenFireMap etc), you start to get a feel for when the next one will show up after a little while. Also pretty much every one has one of these red framed signs nearby showing how far away from the sign it is, so you can even find them when they are covered by snow, got overgrown, or have a car standing above them. We do have a few overground column-type ones, too, but I'd say it is less than one in hundred. They are usually near larger public buildings, in the neighborhood I know one near the hospital, one near the subway station, and a few all across the university campus.
America thinking building everything like the 1800´s is Hightech, in the meanwhile in Europe this means usuly you are not that developed and far behind.
New high-voltage lines are now also built below ground. E.g. SuedLink connecting Schleswig-Holstein with Baden-Württemberg will be a 525 kV HVDC line. This technology is not that new (was developed in the 1930s by Sweden and Germany) but so far used in the first place for undersea power lines.
Vienna does have overhead power lines in some of the suburbs, mostly in older neighborhoods, new blocks are also build completely with underground infrastructure. It's interesting to watch squirrels balance over these wires. And Vienna still has overground fire hydrants. But of course, that's Austria...
@@martinstock yes. However, prioritising cables is now under question as costs are too high. So it is possible that lines for high-voltage transmission comes back.
@@danielamaus Interesting. I was only aware that these exist in the Austrian countryside with its low population density of course. But in Vienna, that's shocking.
@@martinstock HVDC lines are exceptions for cross country transmissions and are put underground in some parts. normal DC lines for transmission are mostly above ground cause of the costs that come with putting them underground, distribution lines are mostly underground however.
I saw a video a few years ago. A US American and his 12-year-old boy are driving through German villages and the boy says sadly: "Dad, they don't have any electricity!"
After spending a certain amount of time in Germany, when you go back to the states you notice overhead cables everywhere and they're just so ugly and photograph-ruining. Thankfully some places (Seattle) are starting to get the cables underground and those towns look great.
Great video. Yea having everything underneath (most of the time) is quite nice. Maybe you have seen those small white signs with red around them? Those are hydrant signs or "hydrantenschild" and they tell you where the next hydrant is and how much water they can deliver. They also come in other colors for other things like gas pipes and so on. Usually the fire department has seperate books or more digitally tablets where they can check where fire hydrants are located while on their way to the fire
that is so smart! i’ve also seen city workers using them for cleaning/construction projects. i’m assuming fire departments also use them or do they have different ones? thanks :)
@@MattSuozzo It depends, some are only for the fire department, some for city workers but the big majority can be used by both depending on the laws of the city/state
@@MattSuozzo You can rent a connecting pipe with various adapter options and a water meter from the city's water department for cheap money and connect it to a normal hydrant. When the pipe is returned, the normal water price will be charged.
When my dad was still operating a farm here in Germany he also had a "Standrohr" to directly connect via a fire hydrant. He used it to refill his large pesticide sprayer without having to return home with his tractor first. That thing came with its own meter attached so he still had to pay for what he used.
I think this is true for most of Europe. Growing up in the UK during the 80's, I remember they were still in the process of moving stuff underground in the town where I lived. There were still some telegraph poles here and there, but I remember seeing BT cable junction boxes that had been installed in ground during the 1970's that were in serious need of repair. There was one outside my block of flats where I lived, where the covering slab had been broken and the box was just filled with rubble.
Wooden Pylons are used in Villages as well Concrete Pylons for Mid-Voltage (20KV) and Metal-Pylons High-Voltage(110/380KV). Also the Hydrant is in the Street, so it doesn't freeze during Winter.
The normal procedure in Germany goes something like this: 1. close the road for a month, 2. tear it up, 3. lay down the new cables, 4. work your way back up and close it again. Three days after that, the phone company repeats the process. Five weeks later, the city shows up and does it again for some new drainage pipes. By now, the top looks like a jigsaw puzzle, and they redo it entirely. The next year, those data cables are outdated and too slow, and they start all over. Basically, Germany is one big construction site that just keeps on going.
True, but to be completely honest, this is a phenomenon that occurs practically everywhere in industrialized nations and makes up a not insignificant part of the domestic construction industry. If such construction measures with integrated "occupational therapy" have added value, that is not the worst thing. Elsewhere, designated investment ruins are being built in the same way.
Not anymore. But I remember exacty such processes in the past. - Where I live now - there is a process going on - they do renew electric, water, sewage and fibre wire in one go" Takes a bit more than just one month, but had a loong planning time ahead. But the team around the mayor knew about the issues and did anything to minimise impact to people and business. They were invoked and explained. It always depends on the guys doing the job. And this time we have people with brains as mayor and team. . And I experienced people with no-brain too... :-( so in many cases I experienced the very same situation as you shared here.
Haha as if data cables would ever be considered outdated and too slow in Germany. At least here they rather try to shove 250 Mbit/s over telephone lines from the 60’s rather than opening the street just once to lay down future proof optical fibers that could be used for transfer speeds of hundreds of GBit/s.
Non visible utilities are a thing in most parts of the UK too. The residential area I lived growing up in the 1970s in the far north west of the UK had telephone and electric poles carrying these modern amenities to home. The park was built in the early or mid sixties I think, it was a new development when my parents moved in after they got married. The place we moved to across town in the early eighties was also new at the time, and by then, the infrastructure was all underground. I don't doubt Germany has more thought to town planning the the UK, but most of what you've noted seem things probably most countries just do better than the US. I imagine the mindset that you are living in the best country in the world is a real barrier to looking how other countries do things and making any changes for the better.
I grew up in a small village in the mountains (800 ppl. living there) here in Germany. There was a pole for energy directly next to our house. We were already connected to the underground system since the beginning of the 90s, but not all our neighbors. And as the powerline was making a curve there, our house was the "anchor". I think they removed it at the beginning of the 2000s when all neighbors had to connect to the underground cables.
As a German, I was in NYC in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy hit the city and I remember that we had no electricity for about 5 days in Manhattan midtown (in a building called the Archive, where we got an apartment from friends for free for 10 days), not even the toilets flushed, it was hell! I felt like I was in a 3rd world country. Here in Germany, I've never experienced a power cut for more than 2 hours, even during / after storms.
I am a 37 years old German and I experienced an unannounced power outage _once_. There was an excavator in front of my office building hitting something serious and there was no power for about 3 hours. For planned maintenance they announce it so you can prepare your fridge or whatever but that happened two me twice or so.
...and everything thinks it's normal and the way it has to be. It's not an issue in any discussion, no party is coming up with "Vote for us, stable elecricity with us".
@@Nils.Minimalist Oh that is untrue.. we have but indeed very rare power outages that last longer than a few minutes. I lived in the 2004/2005 are in the Region between Muenster and The Netherlands where the big steel poles for long distance high voltage (100kV) broke during ice.. we indeed suffered only a few hours because our area was switched to a different region supply . The people however living in the middle of the area had power out for weeks. In the Muenster region all petrol(US = gas) / diesel powered generators were sold out. Where I now live near Bad Nauheim Hesse an excavator killed an underground powerline .. but this was fixed in 36h.. what was in the freezer had to be disposed. Since the experience in Muenster I possess an auxiliary power generator + solar ( That helps me in other purposes such as outdoor activities and works)
it would be insanely expensive to bury all cables just for the sake of it.... i wonder what kind of idea people have about this. as if its all just astethics...?
@@simonschneider5913 you don't have to just bury them for an upgrade opportunity. look at The Netherlands, they slowly removed all the overhead lines cause they required new construction to have wiring underground, through the years it has resulted in the country being pole free!
@@simonschneider5913 that’s a beautiful city. I often cycle to Germany and back to The Netherlands with my parents who live in Dalen, we would cycle to little towns to get some supplies like Duplo and get a drink, it shook me when i went for the first time to discover how bike hostile Germany really is with its bike infrastructure compared to my country, i did ride on some segregated curb level bike lanes, but most were just paint and basically riding on the sidewalk while having to wait at some pedestrian crossing to get a green light while also needing to press the button and having to wait a ridiculously long time cause the signal wasn’t smart to see that there weren’t any cars coming. It really makes me appreciate we designed everything and how convenient it really is, you don’t see it untill you experience it.
@@simonschneider5913 aesthetics is mostly an afterthought. Main idea is maintenance. Underground lines don't get harmed by storms or ice buildup. It is a higher initial cost - but for that you save a lot on maintenance per year.
Well, about the last seconds: These are phone-cables, which are build overfloor where basic road construction-works are expected or where is a very old infrastructure. But yes, there are some very few.
Yep!Its the same in the Netherlands!No utility wires on the road!I would be mad to see all those wires on the road!Except of course the big wires high in the sky.They come directly from the electric plant and is for the connection to another part off the city,or even another village .But when the cables are on the site they go underground to the distributeur house. A small house in the middle off the neighborhood.From there are still in the ground to the Houses or the Flats.
Dude, not even in croatia, not netherlands, although in my village street, there's a situation like this last frame, not utilitu but lamp posts have that one phone cable strung, as not yet fiber optics for all and anywhere. Which is sad, because t com took over ht (hrvatski telekom) exactly because its excellent infrastructure very long ago, not sure was the war over yet when they went in. Fun fact, in the year 1990, or 91, not sure, only england and croatia were completley covered with magistral lines of fiber optics, so all cities were connected together, but not the uk and ex yu, just england and croatia (ex yu was a federation, so the post, banking, ensurance, health, police and all other systems bar military and pasports were separated, everyone had its own, our id cards were normal cards for instance, while serbian ones were like booklets, similar to russian ones, even grading systems in school were different, we had 1-5, they had 1-10, and so on), anyways looking like we haven't advanced as much, none the less the us in that regard looks just barbaric.
We dig it into the Ground to protect it against Weather like Lightnings or Storms, so there are way less Black Outs . Back in the 1960s we had free Wiring but everthing which is done new must be undergound. (Sorry for my English. I hope you get my Point.😅)
@@kris8742it’s the same in Germany, but we are trying to put those underground as well now. But some people are strange, they don’t want to see them high in the air , but don’t want the (longer) construction and cables underneath their feet either. 🤷♀️
Hi, wonderful vid :-)) "Privatstraße" (private street) is really rather rare in Germany. You're even allowed - I think - to walk across grounds which are marked "Privatstraße" if there is no gate like you showed in the vid (you're just not allowed to DRIVE there). Basically I think you could WALK anywhere you like; if you accidentally get on private ground, the landlord would inform you, I'm sure.
@@MattSuozzo Except the "getting hurt" part refers to slipping on ice (there's no law which forces owners to remove it from private streets, unlike public sidewalks around their property)... rather than getting shot by the property owner like in the US.
Haha. That ending. It’s something I’ve noticed over time in the UK. I grew up in a village with power and communications coming via pole but over the past thirty years those have been replaced by under road services and the estate where I now live has all the infrastructure hidden underground. Never really thought about it until now but I’ve not seen a pole in a while.
problem with this is, that we also buried our capability to switch to fast internet with that choice. With utility poles you can simply hang the glass fiber on them without any hassle. Burying the lines needs the ground to be dug out, be sure not to destroy anything else, and put tubes with the glass fiber in. Waaaaay more expensive! Back when they dug in power and telephone lines, they seldom used tubes, or better additional empty tubes in there to be prepared for the future.
oh they still made a fuss with that in the US too. why they wouldn’t string fiber for two more poles to my house, and instead wanted to provide me with DSL and 10 mbps… in 2021…. Luckily here in Munich I have fiber to my apartment. But I imagine older buildings won’t get that upgrade anytime soon :-/
It is not hiding the lines, it is much more reliable that way and there is almost no maintenance required for buried cables. So it costs less over time.
They are doing the same in the UK, but more slowly, obviously. Mostly, there are only phone lines left above ground now, but they are being progressively buried too. Our lane is prone to flooding throughout the winter, so our old (1750s) houses still have above-ground phone and electricity. For someone who came from an urban area, it was easy to forget this when I worked as a window-cleaner in rural areas, carrying an aluminium ladder over my shoulder. We lose our power in storms about once every five years when a tree falls across the road.
In the UK we do the same thing for the fire hydrants just a metal cover you lift up. We still have utility poles in the streets but I think they're only used for the old phone system which is being replaced by digital voip over the next year or two, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. A lot of the stuff gets buried under the street now, but it does make the street look a bit patchwork with potholes
The poles are still used for fibre connections and will be until a large amount of connections force it to go underground. Still too expensive for most though.
In Germany we have a loteof giantic steeltowers as Utility Pylons, not woods like in the USA but in some towns there are wood pylons on near the street but in most cities and toens, the electricity supply is in the Underground. The big 220 and 380kV pylons are between 60 and 90meters tall, standing on the land or near the Autobahn.
There are no utility poles in an awful lot of places in the US. In urban areas they seldom exist. The only reason they exist in as many places as they do in the US is because historically those areas used to be rural and could not easily be subsequently buried. But quite a lot of places do not have them.
When I was a kid in the 1990s, power lines were still above ground in our small german village. And then came the day we had both a storm and freezing rain. Half the village lost power for two days. That summer, everything was moved underground. There is of course a downside. Things tend to last longer, but when they break, you have to dig up half the street, and repairs take longer than on overground wires.
Nice Video, its always interesting to hear more about other peoples perspective on things. Some things to note. The Feuerwehrzufahrt is not really a fire lane, its an acces road to properties for the Fire department so the Fire trucks can get to the Side of the Building where they are needed. They are marked so people dont park infront of them because if they do they will get towed. Fire Hydrants are hidden below little manhole covers you can find them if you look for little rectangular white signs with a red border. They have numbers on the which will look something like this: H300 1,1 T 4,5 The H stands for Hydrant, the 1,1 on the left indicates that the hydrant is 1,1 meter to the left of the sign and the 4,5 indicates that the Hydrant is 4,5 meters in front of the sign.
Haha, this was fun. 🤣 BTW, if you want to see the opposite, maybe plan your next vacation trip to Bucharest, Romania. There you will see utility poles with massive cables. I just wonder if they fix a broken cable there or if they just let them be there as is and add another one to the poles.
As someone involved with infrastructure in Germany, I'm going to go the other way: This is not necessarily a good thing. Underground utilities are a big reason why Germany is decades behind other European countries when it comes to optical fiber internet adoption.
The Netherlands also has everything underground, fiber optics are ran through underneath the sidewalk. our country connected most people to fiber in a few years time. i'd say that the reason why Germany is so slow is because their construction schedules are so long and there's no strict deadline to complete something. in The Netherlands the telecom companies get money from the government to install it all, but they only get it if they install it all in time, if not than they'll risk getting fines just like our road constrction, that's why you never really see any highway construction in our country.
Same in the nordics too, everything is hidden, electrical wiring, fire hydrants, water tubing etc. We mostly don't use gas here, so underground gas tubing is really rare to find here.
Yep, most of the stuff is under the ground but it hasn't always been like that, I think these poles at the end may be there as a sort of monument, I know there is a small back street near me in the Netherlands where the wooden utility poles are kept as a sort of nostalgia. On my house there are still two small china clay tubes at the exterior wall where the overhead lines entered the house, old pictures of the street show that these were still there in the 1970s. The reason why they burry the electric lines now is not just because the street is better looking without them hanging in the air, but also safety concerns. Overhead lines are vulnerable to wind and ice, can fall down, transformer cans can spew burning oil around when they short out, cranes or ladders can touch them and they are often an obstacle for the fire brigade trying to extinguish a fire. The only risk of underground lines is that they can be hit by an excavator, you can't get trough them with a shovel though because its armoured cable. Companies which have to dig in the soil always have to inform themselves where cables are, on private property they normally run at a straight angle from the sidewalk to the front door. For the fire hydrants all fire trucks here have a couple of stand pipes and a hook to lift the lid off.
In Germany the use of utility poles in the streets for residential supply never was that much of a thing for what I know. What you still can see a lot in older neighborhoods, especially outside of cities, though, are power lines from roof to roof, installed on short rooftop poles. There is also a big difference in the way the grid is run. In most parts of Europe the distribution network is usually supplying entire neigborhoods with 230/400 V from a single transformer. In North America, the step down to 120/240 V is mostly done by pole-mount transformers that only supply power to a small number of buildings. The actual power lines operate with much higher voltages. I could imagine that it is way more expensive to run such a system underground
The difference is that in Europe everything is operated at 240V and in the USA at 120V. The 240V is regulated centrally from the high voltage, whereas in the USA the high voltage goes to the house and is regulated there to 120V or 2x120V. That's why you always see exploding power lines in Hollywood movies - it's the transformers on the poles. 120V lines have too much loss, so they are not laid in the ground, but rather transformed from the high-voltage lines for each house.
Always stunned me, going back stateside. Overhead power lines, like electricity had just been 'invented' and all the wiring had just been hastily strung up! All those hurricanes and stuff there, all the wild fires... You'd think someone would realize that burying power line would be more efficient, in the long run. Safer, too.
Putting wires into the ground is called "Erdverkabelung". I have been to Florida shortly after hurricane Irma in 2017. The hurricane caused such a long blackout. In some areas it lasted for weeks. Most likely the damage to the electricity infrastructure would have been less if they had "Erdverkabelung", there.
NY just got a huge ice storm, power was out for days in some areas. but that is not uncommon, which is weird now that I live here and the power never goes out 😅
In 45 years living in the UK I think I experienced a grand total of one power outage. And that lasted only 20 minutes. Compared to my first 12 months living in a major US city we had 5 power outages. One lasted for 3 days.
where I grew up in Germany, there are still power lines running from house to house along the roofs. It was a big fuzz when I was a kid as they changed it from 4 individual cables to 1 twisted cable of 4, but they are still not underground to this day (decades later). But in almost every neighborhood build after 1990ish they are definitely underground. some 80% of the entire power grid runs underground nowadays. Funny enough, were I live now, there are almost only standing hydrants like in the US and barely any sunken ones.
Utility poles *are* used in Germany. As the last sequence unveils: there are situation where you *have* *to* route the electricity and telephone out the underground and over some poles. As on large construction sites with large excarvations - and partially even out in the country side. There - on occasion - you find a row of utility poles that supply a far off single homestead with the main (underground) network. Here, where I live, phone and electricity had been rerouted underground in the early to mid 1980s. We're Germans, you know. We have a favour for underground things: supply, garages, railroad tracks and train statioins as well as for bunkers of any sort ... 🙂 Thanks for sharing !
Great humor. And interesting take on infrastructure differences. After watching your vid, I am sure that city planners will dig the hydrants back up, realising what income potential they are missing out on.
We would have to increase the fees for illegal parking dramatically first. It is so dirt cheap in Germany to break the law with the car, it often isn't even prosecuted because it isn't worth it...
Below ground electric has a number of advantages and a few disadvantages. The biggest reason is that the expense of putting them below is substantial. I am not sure what the ratio is like today - but years I learned it costs 10X as much to put the wiring below ground.
Well my house is also connected thru an overground electric cable. Its a small village and when it was electrified more than a 100 years ago there was no other solution beside digging a tunnel thru a rocky hill.
"Rettungswege"(Rescue paths) are usually used to avoid the construction of a second stairway. Any sort of community-Building need to have 2 rescue paths by law. But up to 22 m in height, the second stairway can be "provided" via rescue ladder from the fire&rescue, as long as the fire paths are maintained properly, that in any case its accessible in an emergency.
I live in rural Austria, the cable that connected to us and our neighbours was dug into the ground when I was a little kid (now I am 21) even it only runs over fields. Doesn't mean there are no low voltage poles anymore at all, when I look outside I still see enough lines that only connect one two houses or so^^
In modernized US Staats you schould also find (underflood) underfloor hydrants. (DN 80 2x52-C Brand Tamson (NL) 602,-USD). You can find Overfloor hydrants in Idustrie parks/ areas and also some big bulky hydrants in but they became rare. In some areas we have some charging stations, they are the new hydrants for accidents.
I was an exchange student in the MannheimHeidelberg area in the early 1990s, and the street I stayed on had had electrical wires that ran from rooftop to rooftop. And fire hydrants were under a cap in the street. By the way, that towing bit: is that Jamaica Plain?
You missed to mention the white relatively small signs with a red border. They dispay an elongated T which refers to the distance towards the middle of the street plus the deviation right or left in meters. The Hxxx above tells about the diameter of the ice underneath. Common are H100 and H300.
Congratulations! You are the first one I see, who recognized these differences. Every time I read about blackouts in the US after some storm or whatever, I add up the hours of blackout here, I have lived through: Less than 48 hours in almost 60 years, most of them in times of childhood, when we had still supply-poles. I guess, that it is much cheaper for the country in the long run to bury them underground, to say nothing about the visual impact.
even as a german i didn't know that fire hydrants were hidden like that, i also really took our cables for granted, even when looking at other countries like america thinking they did the same, at some point your mind just blends out the most obvious things
You see utility poles and overhead wires in rural areas in germany. but these vanish bit by bit. The village I grew up had electric and telephone wires on poles until 1998. Black outs in winter storms happened sometimes.
In Germany, we have Hydrants which are immersed into the sidewalks or the greenery along the streets. Fire brigades have a special wrench to heave them to the surface. And I suppose they have specifically marked maps in their navigation systems to help them find the next hydrant quickly.
We had hydrants on the parking area of a diy market. After the third hitting by a lorry, they went also below the street. And not all cables were burried in the street. The house of my father and his next 5 neighbours have pols because the rewiring in the house to the main panel would be to expensive and to destructive to the old houses. You can get a fine for parking above a subfloor hydrant. So you should look out for little white/red outlined signs indicating the position in meter measurement.
We have recessed water hydrants in UK too, They're marked with little yellow "headstones" against the nearest wall. I must admit I hadn't noticed the hidden services on my trips there, my estate in UK has the same, so I'm used to not seeing them, I didn't realise this was national policy in Germany, that is kind of cool.
I would assume it comes down to how long people expect houses to last...from what I gather about the US houses are considered to be old once they pass 20 or 30 years - I can't put my fingers on what exact time span a house is expected to last in Germany, but I can guarantee no one who builds a new one expects it to be demolished in his/her lifetime - I would be surprised if people thought demolishing a new house would even be realistic in their kids lifetime. And once you build for generations it makes sense to reduce upkeep over building costs and seek permanent solutions...
> but I can guarantee no one who builds a new one expects it to be demolished in his/her lifetime And that's not wrong. I mean, you see people buying houses from the 1950s, 1960s and bringing them up to current energy standards with a new roof maybe, renewed basement sealing, added outer insulation, new triple pane windows - but the house itself, it's still good. It's like a robust skeleton for the additional measures and then it's good to live in again for 40 or 50 years.
After WW II, there was ample opportunity and space to think about better infrastructure planning in Europe and, in Germany in particular. Cities with street cars do have overhead catenaries, though.
It’s the same in the uk, they are on the side of the road and on the pavement/footpaths and are identified by a yellow drain cover or a black H with yellow background either on a sign attached to a wall or on a yellow concrete post for easy visibility
A further point to the hydrants: You don't even have to search for one. There are signs (just search for hydrant sign germany) which show the position of the next one down to the centimeter... Given you know how to read them ;): Top number is the pipe size in mm (relevant for a) what to "screw on" as well as how much water you can draw max per minute). The "T" below is the position relative to the sign: number on the left -> distance left from the sign, right the same. Number on the bottom: distance away from the sign. I.e., 2,0 on the right side, 3,5 on the bottom: from this sign you'll find a hydrant 2 meters to the right, 3.5m out. Those signs may also indicate other infrastructure: fire hydrant signs are white with red border. Blue signs indicate freshwater, yellow is gas (as in natural gas, for heating and cooking purposes). Same goes for rainwater, sewage, etc.pp. manholes... note that for all other purposes than fire hydrants this is a "can", not a "must".
well, europe more or less collectively stopped using utility poles like 60-80 years ago. All Telephone and Electricity cables are in cable tunnels below the sidewalk or road, you got acess points in regular intervals. German (and again also most of europe) Hydrants are recessed into the ground. (Unterflurhydrant - Below Ground Hydrants) The oval cast iron lids you see on the sidewalk are the hydrant acess points. (they are also marked by specific signs on the roadside/wall) You open the lid, take your hydrant mounting aperture (the so called Standrohr, basicly a slim Hydrant) from your emergency vehicle, slot it in, give it a turn to lock it, then you open the recessed valve, et voila, you got water. And yes there are also over the ground hydrants around, but they are rare. (Überflurhydrant) The Unterflurhydrant was introduced like 50? years ago
The same in the UK. Hydrants are below ground with a yellow painted cast iron cover and marked with a nearby yellow sign with a black 'H' on it. Note to visitors from Germany it's not a Bushaltestelle.
5:06 Oh, that's my daily commute to work, at least before I switched to working from home. The open-air lines are actually still around here, but more in rural areas. But even there they are gradually being dismantled. As I'm having my roof renovated and insulated, I've applied for the line to be removed from my roof and for me to have a so-called underground connection. This has now been done and I can renovate my roof without having a cold bridge. In the end, underground cables are also cheaper for the energy suppliers. There is no storm damage to the cables, no need to replace pylons and no need to cut back trees and bushes. Although the initial installation is more expensive, an underground cable is also significantly cheaper when calculated over the years.
Its the same in the UK - electricity cables, gas - its all underground. We don't have large obviously visible red fire hydrants on street corners. We have them flush in the ground, or in a wall. In the UK, hydrants are marked as being yellow squares with an upper case 'H' in black, in the middle of the yellow square.
The 3-door box at 4:49 is VDSL (broadband internet via phone wires) ... The orange box at 4:54 is a power ditribution box for construction sides ... Yes, Germany doesn't like to much cable-spaghetti in the air (except tram / train & sometimes Trolley-Bus ... only old non-upgraded villages still have these (in East-Germany until 1990s, in West-Germany until 1970s?) ... THe poles at 5:18 seem to be a temporary installtion or a well preserved legacy installtion (Note: the city of Stuttgart has plenty of streetlight wires in the air hold by house facades (like used for the Tram in the past) ) ... Nearly all hydrants are underground (the rusty oval lid, P.S. I used one & installed the adapter in the past) , do never block an underground hydrant!
Here in rural northern Germany we had this kind of wiring till the 1970s. After than it vanished and was put below the ground because due to the susceptibility to faults.
@@MattSuozzo I think, in the US they haven‘t learned at the same level and experience like Germany or Switzerland. We‘ve special ‚apprenticeships‘ in this field. It is ‚security- relevant‘ (!!)
That's actually something that strikes me sometimes when I see videos from the US. It all looks so ancient... There are also "real" hydrants in Germany. Haha! Nice ending. Yeah, in some places you still see them. 😅 The tiny village my mom lives in was upgraded just a few years ago. Until then it all ran above ground. Funny thing is, the old house on her property was connected above ground to these poles. The new one she built was connected below ground, but the poles were still there cause they hadn't upgraded it yet. So the wire went down the pole, into the ground and then into the house. They knew sooner or later the poles would go and decided to be prepared. 😅
When i was in school, our teacher told us about electricity. And she hold us, that "sometimes, when houses are reeeeelly old, you can see the wires that provides electricity to these houses - hanging overground !" I came home with the schoolbus and had to realise we live in an really old house 🙂 That was around 1995. The house finally became underground-cables only 5 years ago as one of the last ones in the whole city
@@MattSuozzo This house was build 1956. It was build on subsidized land by displaced people (german people that had to leave what was prussia once and became poland after WW2). Small houses with thin walls (but brick and mortal), build by pretty poor people just 11 years after WW2. So maybe it was even at that time also just a cheap solution for cheap homes?!
@@MattSuozzo The power lines never had as many poles as in the US, and there were no transformers on them. Instead, we had small towers called "transformer houses" that transformed the electricity down to 380 V for an entire neighborhood. From there, the (usually five) lines went from house to house, with poles in between only where necessary. The landline telephones, on the other hand, had their own masts, which ran a cable along the street. When I was a child in the 1970s, the telephone masts were being decommissioned on a grand scale and my father, who worked at the then still state telecommunications office (later Telekom), got them for free or cheap and brought them home by the truckload. We children had to help remove screws and small iron signets from them so as not to ruin the saw blade. We used them to heat our house, which, when I think back, was not very environmentally friendly as they were heavily treated with chemicals to prevent rotting. At the same time, urban sewage systems were being built all over Germany to relieve the groundwater and the rivers and lakes, which at that time were quite polluted and resembled cesspools. This opportunity was used to lay all supply lines and sewers underground.
My mother lived in a house from the 60ies in a small village where only the telephone landline was overground. Electricity was underground. In an appartment from the 90ies some telephone lines were overground for the first years and we had some defects caused by lightning. What you still might find are cables connecting light poles. We (Austria) still have overground hydrants, too. But I don't think there are any parking laws.
You do get the kinds hydrants you're expecting in Germany too, but they're usually set back from the street so we can still hook up the hoses even if someone is parked nearby. Sometimes there's a funny cylindrical shroud over the top, so you might not recognise them. In theory, inside of cities and towns, there's a maximum distance between hydrants of 150m (whether they work or not is another matter...)
Money considerations can never be completely ignored...but here in the US those considerations force a short sighted and penny-wise pound foolish funding environment to most infrastructure.
It takes 30 inches of snow to hide the fire hydrant closest to my home. It's easy to find from 100 yards away. It does not need a hoof pick to get the lid latch cleared of debris. Dogs have a special purpose for it. But... The German hydrant will not get struck and damaged by a car.
There is an advantage to an above ground hydrant. Anyone who has witnessed a fireman trying to use a European hydrant will know that they are often a struggle to get open. The valve fills with crud, and the whole thing rots in its damp dark hole. I've seen three big blokes struggling to open a below ground hydrant valve before now. It may seem like nothing, but when a building is on fire every second counts.
I live in the Netherlands near the Belgium border. There aren't any border checkpoints since we've been in the Benelux for ages. A good way to know whether you are in the Netherlands or Belgium is too look whether there are any cables above ground.
Some of the many overhead cables in the US are for cable TV/Internet connections and telephones, maybe other things. I maintain my mother's home and in the backyard there are a myriad of cables in the air. Behind the backyard fence, the neighbor has a huge tree which has which has huge limbs weighing on a couple of these cables. Electric cables are much higher. Talking to the neighbor led nowhere so I called the cable companies about it. Their response was basically, well if it ain't broke, we don't fix it.
All the cables are underground. Germany is blessed with stable ground. I live in Japan which is prone to mild to severe earthquakes at least somewhere in the country every week. So I think I can understand their reluctance to put their cables underground. But Japan does have national healthcare like Germany does!
Interestingly, in our side street in a German village our aboveground cable is going to be removed right now and replaced by a power supply line in the ground. We also get new street lamps, twice as many as before. I think, this is also done to booster the German economy because we had no problems with the cables before. And now they turn darkness into daylight.
When you asked if we noticed anything missing, my first thought was “litter!”
Germans never dig litter under the ground.
And Graffiti.
Germany is the 4th cleanestCountry in the World…. There are days we go running in the woods near our small town….in 8k, I can’t find 1 piece of trash. Note If I do. I pick it up and put it in the next trash can I find. Love living here. So many great little things
@@craigm.5674 You should run across America picking up litter 🙂
You have to go to Japan then, not only is there even less litter than here in Germany, they even manage to keep everything clean without even having public waste baskets.
When travelling the US I was really stunned about the condition of the electrical supply units. Didn't expect this in the country which calls itself leader of the world.
USA is a third world country
whatever worked 100 years ago, we still do it (and also a lot of stuff that doesn’t work as well). there is no incentive to improve service for low-density neighborhoods.
@@MattSuozzo Yeah! Storm and falling trees cutting off cables: This worked 100 years ago.
By the way: Do you transport water (+ pee & poo) overground, too in the US?
Or do you dig holes, so that you can put pipes under the ground - but forget to put electricity cables into the same holes, before you fill them up again?
@@thorbeneK I think they dig a hole, put a tank in it, send a truck with a pump, to pump it out every so often. 😊😊
@@stephenlee5929 😂 The US-American way of efficiency. 😜👍
You can find hydrants every few meters! Just look for duct covers with "HYDRANT" or "W" written on them. The hydrants are underfloor as well, there are also symbols with a red border and black "H" pointing out where they are located. However, placement is standardized, so the firefighters usually know where they are without looking for the signs.
(Edit: Ah, you pointed it out as well later on in the video...)
The near to signs red outlined "H" signs to locate the hydrant covers. you also find smaller blue signs for underfloor feshwater valves. And yellow for gas-pipelines.
usually they are at most 200m apart.
Same with gas and the water supply
They definitely are NOT standardized in any city I ever lived in. The signs you mention point out where exactly they are.
Placing new hydrants is either coordinated with the local firefighters, or they are informed where they are placed. They usually are well aware of hydrants that are hard to find for some reason.
We have the underground H hydrants here in the UK too, the fire brigade do checks on then
I think the most important reason why most of the cables in germany are belowground is, that for most of the time the utility companies were public owned and didn't need to make (a lot of) profit.
All the bigger cities had "Stadtwerke" - municipal utilities and the shares of the bigger power suppliers were mostly public owned. Till the 90th there was only one stately owned telecommunication enterprise.
If short term profit isn't so important it's much easier to built a much more expensive, but more durable system.
This applies for almost any country in Europe...
I believe the most important factor is that people in Germany simply don't like it. People would go crazy if there were cables hanging around everywhere.
@@NeovanGoth Since this is common almost everywhere in Europe, nope it's more related to public utility companies
It's the public that pay US infrastructure also, the difference is in how the money is spent (subsidized to the contractors).
@@NeovanGothIf they were used to it, they wouldn't think of it. There is a big difference between introducing something that wasn't there before, and something having been there as long as you can remember.
Before 2020, I rented out via Airbnb an old half-timbered house below a German castle, my family uses as an holiday home. Once I gave it to an American couple - maybe in their late 50s - who somehow imagined Germany as a third world country without any infrastructure. In any case, they asked very strange questions beforehand, e.g. to toilet paper and air raid shelters in case WW II bombs were found. (I have an approx. 1000 year old cellar under the house that survived two world wars, Napoleon and Gustav Wasa).
Afterwards they gave me a bad review and actually claimed that I had lied about the fact that there was no electricity in the whole place and that even the drinking water had to be filtered and disinfected.
Their evidence was a photo of the rooftops in the neighborhood that didn't show any power or telefon lines...
and a picture of my Emsa water filter (for softer tea water) and Soda Stream.
I always imagine how the two of them filtered their toothbrush water by the light of my old Kerosin carriage lamps and then disinfected it with my Soda Stream.😇
Wait - they never pressed a light switch?
lol murricans. unless it's for war they never leave their couintry, and if they do it's even more embarrasing xD
Yep give me Europe any day.
this is impressive! how do these people even find their way to other countries?
@@couchcamperTM nah, we got those people in germany as well. EU hubris came and got us long ago. americans should not put themselves below EU....we are a madhouse over here
Cable monkey here.
We used to supply electricity via roof poles. These are being phased out (pun intended).
All homes get everything underground. Older buildings being upgraded bit by bit.
Also all homes are supplied with 3 phase electricity. So if you ever want to run an industrial cnc lathe in our bedroom, you can just do that. 😀
Running industrial machines in your bedroom would still be difficult. Even though all houses are connected to 3 phase power, only very few have 3 phase wiring in all rooms, especially not in the bedroom. Usually only the kitchen provides 3 phase wiring for connecting an electric stove, and even there you probably won't find a standard industrial power outlet.
@A._Meroy Not crafty enough to lay a cord from the kitchen to the bedroom? That sounds like a personal skill issue to me.
@@A._MeroyMy distribution panel is 4 meters away from my bedroom. My house is old, like really german empire old so i got 3 phases but only 6mm² that is the real problem. I'd have to limit the acceleration parameters on that CNC almost to American values... almost 😛
@@Schlohmotion Electric stoves usually have a fixed connection. There is a clamp box in the wall (Herdanschlussdose = stove connecting can/box) and it legally has to be connected by a qualified electrician (though kitchen installers can get a limited qualification just for that).
@@VintageTechFan Correct. It isn't as easy as plugging in an extension cord and routing it to the bedroom. I would totally have the skill to connect a cord to the clamp box but I'm not legally allowed, and even if I were, I would have to disconnect the stove every time I want to use the CNC lathe (which would really suck)
I once visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, and there was one old wooden pole for electricity by the harbour and around 100 wires connected to it leading in all directions. That was very weird to me as a german.
Sounds normal to me xD
It’s very normal in the 3’rd world countries
@@kasperkjrsgaard1447 I know, but I was very surprised to see these kind of chaos in the US
Japanese cities have these too. In some areas they look like a big pile of Spaghetti and sometimes I thought that the pole starts bending because of them :D
@@RenegadeSamuraiYes, but in Japan it‘s on purpose-to better resist the frequent earthquakes.
Yep most stuff is underground in tubes including internet and telephone lines. That's why there is almost no downtime during a storm in Germany. In villages you might notice a few lines above the houses thats where the electric power comes in but in the cities they are also underground.
I was a little shocked going back through footage in the USA just how many parts of cities have above ground wires. only really dense areas with skyscrapers, etc. are underground 😅
I life in a small town with 400 people in germany. We got underground cables ~30 years ago...
@albundy7718 -
Even on the country side the last old power poles get replaced by undergorund
@@Killerspieler0815 not true where i am. and its not for lack of money.
@@MattSuozzo thats because it is damn expensive and makes no sense when theres not a specific reason.
The last few seconds of the video was when you realised that there are indeed Americans living in Munich too and of course we respect their culture and electrical traditions! 😂
😆😆😆
I guess this was made for all the american CZcamsrs. We do not want to make them feel too bad about outdated infrastructure. 😉
It looks like some provisional solution.
Maybe the underground cable failed and as they want to dig up the street and renew other supply or the sewage system anyway, but not at once, they set up some poles and cable for the street lamps.
Sometimes such solutions have to last for a long time...
On this poles are mostly Internet and Telefon cabels,there buried later;)
@@red.aries1444nope. There are indeed still legacy utility poles in use (especially in very rural areas), and very rarely even newly built (but despite its lower price, most municipalities won‘t approve a proposed utility line that‘s not buried nowadays - in part because the citizens don‘t want to have them over the ground). I have once used existing poles to more easily connect a neighbourhood to the PON when my company started the expansion of their fibre network in that town.
But generally speaking, legacy utility poles are being removed over time, and new ones are very rare - their most common appearance is to connect a small rural dwelling of a few houses that would require kilometres of digging to connect underground. That is quite an investment: the digging works alone, without any actual cable or lines being bought, layer or installed, costs over 100€ per meter (and this is a trench of 60cm depth and 30cm width, as is common in telekommunication - electricity and others are buried deeper and are therefore more expensive)!
In most European cities, wires are underground. Only third-world have them along and above streets. 😅
xD
I didn't know Japan was a third world country?
Exactly, Japan has everything above ground and South Korea too
@@drgenio2006 Japan, unlike Germany, has earthquakes a lot, there having cables in the ground is much less of a good idea. Underground cables are more likely than overground ones to rip, and at the same time it is much more tricky to find out where exactly the damage happened and fix it.
@@hartmutholzgraefe I don't know why you explain this to me. you need to explain this to the original commenter who made a blanket statement with the distinctive smell of German arrogance and superiority (a hint of Zyklon B, which was already used some years ago to impose German superiority)
Fire hydrants are not "missing"; they are in the ground. Every firefighter has a "key" that can be used to unlock a valve on the watermain in the street and they can attach directly to the valve.
It's their childish view of the world. Try to add anything simple they don't know, they will complain 'it's to complicate'.
yeah he literally showed us in the video lol, maybe watch it all next time before commenting
Not just a key. It is a "Standrohr" (standing tube) which you install on the hydrant and then a handle to open the valve.
Basically you install a standing hydrant temporarely.
German Fire Hydrants are countless. Every few meters. They are simply hidden in the ground too. Firefiighters got a special wrench on their trucks, they unlock the little metal hatches in the ground with and pull them up. You get a hydrant that is clean, undamaged and unmanipulated and simply works. And you can place them in front of every house, because they are simply down in the sidewalk.
Every 50 to 70 meters in my city. I used to track them down for adding the positions to OpenStreetMap (to be seen on the OpenFireMap etc), you start to get a feel for when the next one will show up after a little while. Also pretty much every one has one of these red framed signs nearby showing how far away from the sign it is, so you can even find them when they are covered by snow, got overgrown, or have a car standing above them.
We do have a few overground column-type ones, too, but I'd say it is less than one in hundred. They are usually near larger public buildings, in the neighborhood I know one near the hospital, one near the subway station, and a few all across the university campus.
America thinking building everything like the 1800´s is Hightech, in the meanwhile in Europe this means usuly you are not that developed and far behind.
for some reason every new house in America is made to look like it was built in 1700s (Colonial style).
@@MattSuozzoOf which Material are most of the Living Houses made of in the US?
Masonry, Concrete, Wood?
@@Balkonwhiskycardboard and asbestos? 😁
Fun fact: not only in Europe, also in certain "third-wold" cities.
@@samyagdrstiYes, some asian cities even let germany look old fashioned.
To be honest, most (if not all) cities in Western Europe don't have overhead power lines. Basically, only high-voltage lines are above ground.
New high-voltage lines are now also built below ground.
E.g. SuedLink connecting Schleswig-Holstein with Baden-Württemberg will be a 525 kV HVDC line.
This technology is not that new (was developed in the 1930s by Sweden and Germany) but so far used in the first place for undersea power lines.
Vienna does have overhead power lines in some of the suburbs, mostly in older neighborhoods, new blocks are also build completely with underground infrastructure. It's interesting to watch squirrels balance over these wires. And Vienna still has overground fire hydrants. But of course, that's Austria...
@@martinstock yes. However, prioritising cables is now under question as costs are too high. So it is possible that lines for high-voltage transmission comes back.
@@danielamaus Interesting. I was only aware that these exist in the Austrian countryside with its low population density of course. But in Vienna, that's shocking.
@@martinstock HVDC lines are exceptions for cross country transmissions and are put underground in some parts. normal DC lines for transmission are mostly above ground cause of the costs that come with putting them underground, distribution lines are mostly underground however.
Haha, you're the first American (as far as I know) to realize that!
I saw a video a few years ago. A US American and his 12-year-old boy are driving through German villages and the boy says sadly: "Dad, they don't have any electricity!"
@arnodobler1096 😆😆😆
@@arnodobler1096"Look at the kitchen! There's no fridge!" I told the kids we keep our food outside.
After spending a certain amount of time in Germany, when you go back to the states you notice overhead cables everywhere and they're just so ugly and photograph-ruining. Thankfully some places (Seattle) are starting to get the cables underground and those towns look great.
@@LythaWausW 😜 👍
Great video. Yea having everything underneath (most of the time) is quite nice. Maybe you have seen those small white signs with red around them? Those are hydrant signs or "hydrantenschild" and they tell you where the next hydrant is and how much water they can deliver. They also come in other colors for other things like gas pipes and so on. Usually the fire department has seperate books or more digitally tablets where they can check where fire hydrants are located while on their way to the fire
that is so smart! i’ve also seen city workers using them for cleaning/construction projects. i’m assuming fire departments also use them or do they have different ones? thanks :)
@@MattSuozzo It depends, some are only for the fire department, some for city workers but the big majority can be used by both depending on the laws of the city/state
@@MattSuozzo
You can rent a connecting pipe with various adapter options and a water meter from the city's water department for cheap money and connect it to a normal hydrant. When the pipe is returned, the normal water price will be charged.
When my dad was still operating a farm here in Germany he also had a "Standrohr" to directly connect via a fire hydrant. He used it to refill his large pesticide sprayer without having to return home with his tractor first. That thing came with its own meter attached so he still had to pay for what he used.
Most Electric Powerlines & Communication cables in Germany went Underground during the 70s .
Same in Denmark.
Where I lived in the 1960s, all cables were already underground.
Small countries can do that.
@@davidlynch9049That argument makes absolutely zero sense
I think this is true for most of Europe. Growing up in the UK during the 80's, I remember they were still in the process of moving stuff underground in the town where I lived. There were still some telegraph poles here and there, but I remember seeing BT cable junction boxes that had been installed in ground during the 1970's that were in serious need of repair. There was one outside my block of flats where I lived, where the covering slab had been broken and the box was just filled with rubble.
Wooden Pylons are used in Villages as well Concrete Pylons for Mid-Voltage (20KV) and Metal-Pylons High-Voltage(110/380KV).
Also the Hydrant is in the Street, so it doesn't freeze during Winter.
Not true, _Oberflurhydrants_ don't carry water, they don't freeze either. (Unless it's very cold, when _both_ freeze.)
above ground hydrants don't freeze either and some european cities have them above ground. it's not a requirement, just preference.
The normal procedure in Germany goes something like this:
1. close the road for a month,
2. tear it up,
3. lay down the new cables,
4. work your way back up and close it again.
Three days after that, the phone company repeats the process.
Five weeks later, the city shows up and does it again for some new drainage pipes.
By now, the top looks like a jigsaw puzzle, and they redo it entirely.
The next year, those data cables are outdated and too slow, and they start all over.
Basically, Germany is one big construction site that just keeps on going.
True, but to be completely honest, this is a phenomenon that occurs practically everywhere in industrialized nations and makes up a not insignificant part of the domestic construction industry. If such construction measures with integrated "occupational therapy" have added value, that is not the worst thing. Elsewhere, designated investment ruins are being built in the same way.
At least in Europe we do not get electrocuted when the poles fall down in storms….
Not anymore. But I remember exacty such processes in the past. - Where I live now - there is a process going on - they do renew electric, water, sewage and fibre wire in one go" Takes a bit more than just one month, but had a loong planning time ahead. But the team around the mayor knew about the issues and did anything to minimise impact to people and business. They were invoked and explained. It always depends on the guys doing the job. And this time we have people with brains as mayor and team. . And I experienced people with no-brain too... :-( so in many cases I experienced the very same situation as you shared here.
Haha as if data cables would ever be considered outdated and too slow in Germany. At least here they rather try to shove 250 Mbit/s over telephone lines from the 60’s rather than opening the street just once to lay down future proof optical fibers that could be used for transfer speeds of hundreds of GBit/s.
Can't complain about that. My 500 inhabitant village has fiber optic cables now.
It does not cost more to have a hydrant underground. That's where the main waterline is. And they wont freeze.
Non visible utilities are a thing in most parts of the UK too. The residential area I lived growing up in the 1970s in the far north west of the UK had telephone and electric poles carrying these modern amenities to home. The park was built in the early or mid sixties I think, it was a new development when my parents moved in after they got married. The place we moved to across town in the early eighties was also new at the time, and by then, the infrastructure was all underground.
I don't doubt Germany has more thought to town planning the the UK, but most of what you've noted seem things probably most countries just do better than the US. I imagine the mindset that you are living in the best country in the world is a real barrier to looking how other countries do things and making any changes for the better.
I grew up in a small village in the mountains (800 ppl. living there) here in Germany. There was a pole for energy directly next to our house. We were already connected to the underground system since the beginning of the 90s, but not all our neighbors. And as the powerline was making a curve there, our house was the "anchor". I think they removed it at the beginning of the 2000s when all neighbors had to connect to the underground cables.
Good timing: we are having an ice-storm today in NY and every time I hear a crack I cringe and wait for the power to go out💀
The dreaded National Grid emails about outages in your area xD
As a German, I was in NYC in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy hit the city and I remember that we had no electricity for about 5 days in Manhattan midtown (in a building called the Archive, where we got an apartment from friends for free for 10 days), not even the toilets flushed, it was hell! I felt like I was in a 3rd world country. Here in Germany, I've never experienced a power cut for more than 2 hours, even during / after storms.
I am a 37 years old German and I experienced an unannounced power outage _once_. There was an excavator in front of my office building hitting something serious and there was no power for about 3 hours. For planned maintenance they announce it so you can prepare your fridge or whatever but that happened two me twice or so.
...and everything thinks it's normal and the way it has to be. It's not an issue in any discussion, no party is coming up with "Vote for us, stable elecricity with us".
@@Nils.Minimalist Oh that is untrue.. we have but indeed very rare power outages that last longer than a few minutes.
I lived in the 2004/2005 are in the Region between Muenster and The Netherlands where the big steel poles for long distance high voltage (100kV) broke during ice.. we indeed suffered only a few hours because our area was switched to a different region supply . The people however living in the middle of the area had power out for weeks. In the Muenster region all petrol(US = gas) / diesel powered generators were sold out. Where I now live near Bad Nauheim Hesse an excavator killed an underground powerline .. but this was fixed in 36h.. what was in the freezer had to be disposed. Since the experience in Muenster I possess an auxiliary power generator + solar ( That helps me in other purposes such as outdoor activities and works)
In some smaller villages you can find the electricity cables on poles.
it would be insanely expensive to bury all cables just for the sake of it.... i wonder what kind of idea people have about this. as if its all just astethics...?
@@simonschneider5913 you don't have to just bury them for an upgrade opportunity. look at The Netherlands, they slowly removed all the overhead lines cause they required new construction to have wiring underground, through the years it has resulted in the country being pole free!
@@miles5600 netherlands is way ahead of germany in terms of infrastructure. i lived in aachen..! :)
@@simonschneider5913 that’s a beautiful city. I often cycle to Germany and back to The Netherlands with my parents who live in Dalen, we would cycle to little towns to get some supplies like Duplo and get a drink, it shook me when i went for the first time to discover how bike hostile Germany really is with its bike infrastructure compared to my country, i did ride on some segregated curb level bike lanes, but most were just paint and basically riding on the sidewalk while having to wait at some pedestrian crossing to get a green light while also needing to press the button and having to wait a ridiculously long time cause the signal wasn’t smart to see that there weren’t any cars coming. It really makes me appreciate we designed everything and how convenient it really is, you don’t see it untill you experience it.
@@simonschneider5913 aesthetics is mostly an afterthought. Main idea is maintenance. Underground lines don't get harmed by storms or ice buildup. It is a higher initial cost - but for that you save a lot on maintenance per year.
Well, about the last seconds: These are phone-cables, which are build overfloor where basic road construction-works are expected or where is a very old infrastructure. But yes, there are some very few.
it took a while to find those few poles…. around a construction site. pretty sure they are temporary :)
Yep!Its the same in the Netherlands!No utility wires on the road!I would be mad to see all those wires on the road!Except of course the big wires high in the sky.They come directly from the electric plant and is for the connection to another part off the city,or even another village .But when the cables are on the site they go underground to the distributeur house. A small house in the middle off the neighborhood.From there are still in the ground to the Houses or the Flats.
Dude, not even in croatia, not netherlands, although in my village street, there's a situation like this last frame, not utilitu but lamp posts have that one phone cable strung, as not yet fiber optics for all and anywhere.
Which is sad, because t com took over ht (hrvatski telekom) exactly because its excellent infrastructure very long ago, not sure was the war over yet when they went in.
Fun fact, in the year 1990, or 91, not sure, only england and croatia were completley covered with magistral lines of fiber optics, so all cities were connected together, but not the uk and ex yu, just england and croatia (ex yu was a federation, so the post, banking, ensurance, health, police and all other systems bar military and pasports were separated, everyone had its own, our id cards were normal cards for instance, while serbian ones were like booklets, similar to russian ones, even grading systems in school were different, we had 1-5, they had 1-10, and so on), anyways looking like we haven't advanced as much, none the less the us in that regard looks just barbaric.
We dig it into the Ground to protect it against Weather like Lightnings or Storms, so there are way less Black Outs .
Back in the 1960s we had free Wiring but everthing which is done new must be undergound.
(Sorry for my English. I hope you get my Point.😅)
it was a good move! we also had a bad winter storm (for here) and power was not affected. I can’t say it’s the same case in NY after a winter storm…
Yes here in Australia In the cities we have gone underground but due to the long distances HT cables are still above ground.
@@kris8742 HT?
@@Balkonwhisky High Tension [high voltage] power lines
@@kris8742it’s the same in Germany, but we are trying to put those underground as well now. But some people are strange, they don’t want to see them high in the air , but don’t want the (longer) construction and cables underneath their feet either. 🤷♀️
Hi, wonderful vid :-)) "Privatstraße" (private street) is really rather rare in Germany. You're even allowed - I think - to walk across grounds which are marked "Privatstraße" if there is no gate like you showed in the vid (you're just not allowed to DRIVE there). Basically I think you could WALK anywhere you like; if you accidentally get on private ground, the landlord would inform you, I'm sure.
And you are not shot!!!
Same meaning as street inside a huge factory. It's just not owned by the public. And if the owner grants access to it's property is very individual.
most signs I see basically say “if you get hurt, it’s not our fault” which allows you to walk through at your own risk 😂
@@ReinholdWygas-sq1zm YEEEES! - that's a REAL bonus :-)))
@@MattSuozzo Except the "getting hurt" part refers to slipping on ice (there's no law which forces owners to remove it from private streets, unlike public sidewalks around their property)... rather than getting shot by the property owner like in the US.
Haha. That ending. It’s something I’ve noticed over time in the UK. I grew up in a village with power and communications coming via pole but over the past thirty years those have been replaced by under road services and the estate where I now live has all the infrastructure hidden underground.
Never really thought about it until now but I’ve not seen a pole in a while.
problem with this is, that we also buried our capability to switch to fast internet with that choice. With utility poles you can simply hang the glass fiber on them without any hassle. Burying the lines needs the ground to be dug out, be sure not to destroy anything else, and put tubes with the glass fiber in. Waaaaay more expensive! Back when they dug in power and telephone lines, they seldom used tubes, or better additional empty tubes in there to be prepared for the future.
oh they still made a fuss with that in the US too. why they wouldn’t string fiber for two more poles to my house, and instead wanted to provide me with DSL and 10 mbps… in 2021…. Luckily here in Munich I have fiber to my apartment. But I imagine older buildings won’t get that upgrade anytime soon :-/
Fibre networks are in the ground in UK with the rest of the utilities. They are expanding the reach of superfast broadband over time.
It is not hiding the lines, it is much more reliable that way and there is almost no maintenance required for buried cables. So it costs less over time.
They are doing the same in the UK, but more slowly, obviously. Mostly, there are only phone lines left above ground now, but they are being progressively buried too. Our lane is prone to flooding throughout the winter, so our old (1750s) houses still have above-ground phone and electricity. For someone who came from an urban area, it was easy to forget this when I worked as a window-cleaner in rural areas, carrying an aluminium ladder over my shoulder. We lose our power in storms about once every five years when a tree falls across the road.
In the UK we do the same thing for the fire hydrants just a metal cover you lift up.
We still have utility poles in the streets but I think they're only used for the old phone system which is being replaced by digital voip over the next year or two, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out.
A lot of the stuff gets buried under the street now, but it does make the street look a bit patchwork with potholes
The poles are still used for fibre connections and will be until a large amount of connections force it to go underground. Still too expensive for most though.
In Germany we have a loteof giantic steeltowers as Utility Pylons, not woods like in the USA but in some towns there are wood pylons on near the street but in most cities and toens, the electricity supply is in the Underground.
The big 220 and 380kV pylons are between 60 and 90meters tall, standing on the land or near the Autobahn.
There are no utility poles in an awful lot of places in the US. In urban areas they seldom exist. The only reason they exist in as many places as they do in the US is because historically those areas used to be rural and could not easily be subsequently buried. But quite a lot of places do not have them.
In all the major U.S. urban centers east of the Mississippi (and some to the west), utility poles are still in effect.
When I was a kid in the 1990s, power lines were still above ground in our small german village.
And then came the day we had both a storm and freezing rain.
Half the village lost power for two days.
That summer, everything was moved underground.
There is of course a downside. Things tend to last longer, but when they break, you have to dig up half the street, and repairs take longer than on overground wires.
Nice Video, its always interesting to hear more about other peoples perspective on things. Some things to note.
The Feuerwehrzufahrt is not really a fire lane, its an acces road to properties for the Fire department so the Fire trucks can get to the Side of the Building where they are needed. They are marked so people dont park infront of them because if they do they will get towed. Fire Hydrants are hidden below little manhole covers you can find them if you look for little rectangular white signs with a red border. They have numbers on the which will look something like this:
H300
1,1 T
4,5
The H stands for Hydrant, the 1,1 on the left indicates that the hydrant is 1,1 meter to the left of the sign and the 4,5 indicates that the Hydrant is 4,5 meters in front of the sign.
Haha, this was fun. 🤣 BTW, if you want to see the opposite, maybe plan your next vacation trip to Bucharest, Romania. There you will see utility poles with massive cables. I just wonder if they fix a broken cable there or if they just let them be there as is and add another one to the poles.
As someone involved with infrastructure in Germany, I'm going to go the other way: This is not necessarily a good thing. Underground utilities are a big reason why Germany is decades behind other European countries when it comes to optical fiber internet adoption.
The Netherlands also has everything underground, fiber optics are ran through underneath the sidewalk. our country connected most people to fiber in a few years time.
i'd say that the reason why Germany is so slow is because their construction schedules are so long and there's no strict deadline to complete something.
in The Netherlands the telecom companies get money from the government to install it all, but they only get it if they install it all in time, if not than they'll risk getting fines just like our road constrction, that's why you never really see any highway construction in our country.
Das ist BS, denn du kannst die Kabel durch die Röhren schießen.
Same in the nordics too, everything is hidden, electrical wiring, fire hydrants, water tubing etc.
We mostly don't use gas here, so underground gas tubing is really rare to find here.
Yep, most of the stuff is under the ground but it hasn't always been like that, I think these poles at the end may be there as a sort of monument, I know there is a small back street near me in the Netherlands where the wooden utility poles are kept as a sort of nostalgia.
On my house there are still two small china clay tubes at the exterior wall where the overhead lines entered the house, old pictures of the street show that these were still there in the 1970s.
The reason why they burry the electric lines now is not just because the street is better looking without them hanging in the air, but also safety concerns.
Overhead lines are vulnerable to wind and ice, can fall down, transformer cans can spew burning oil around when they short out, cranes or ladders can touch them and they are often an obstacle for the fire brigade trying to extinguish a fire.
The only risk of underground lines is that they can be hit by an excavator, you can't get trough them with a shovel though because its armoured cable. Companies which have to dig in the soil always have to inform themselves where cables are, on private property they normally run at a straight angle from the sidewalk to the front door.
For the fire hydrants all fire trucks here have a couple of stand pipes and a hook to lift the lid off.
In Germany the use of utility poles in the streets for residential supply never was that much of a thing for what I know. What you still can see a lot in older neighborhoods, especially outside of cities, though, are power lines from roof to roof, installed on short rooftop poles.
There is also a big difference in the way the grid is run. In most parts of Europe the distribution network is usually supplying entire neigborhoods with 230/400 V from a single transformer. In North America, the step down to 120/240 V is mostly done by pole-mount transformers that only supply power to a small number of buildings. The actual power lines operate with much higher voltages. I could imagine that it is way more expensive to run such a system underground
The difference is that in Europe everything is operated at 240V and in the USA at 120V. The 240V is regulated centrally from the high voltage, whereas in the USA the high voltage goes to the house and is regulated there to 120V or 2x120V. That's why you always see exploding power lines in Hollywood movies - it's the transformers on the poles. 120V lines have too much loss, so they are not laid in the ground, but rather transformed from the high-voltage lines for each house.
Always stunned me, going back stateside. Overhead power lines, like electricity had just been 'invented' and all the wiring had just been hastily strung up! All those hurricanes and stuff there, all the wild fires... You'd think someone would realize that burying power line would be more efficient, in the long run. Safer, too.
Underfloor wiring is far more reliable as they're resistant to storms and catastrophic weather conditions.
At houses there are small plates saying where the hydrant is, like 2.5 meters away from the wall and 0.3 meters to the left.
Putting wires into the ground is called "Erdverkabelung". I have been to Florida shortly after hurricane Irma in 2017. The hurricane caused such a long blackout. In some areas it lasted for weeks. Most likely the damage to the electricity infrastructure would have been less if they had "Erdverkabelung", there.
not most likely, its a fact that the damage would have been less severe.
You're crazy. What's next? NOT building houses from cardboard so they are storm resisitant?
@@sualtam9509 😂
All electric cables are underground, less dangerous for everybody and less electric outage during storms and snow!
NY just got a huge ice storm, power was out for days in some areas. but that is not uncommon, which is weird now that I live here and the power never goes out 😅
In 45 years living in the UK I think I experienced a grand total of one power outage. And that lasted only 20 minutes. Compared to my first 12 months living in a major US city we had 5 power outages. One lasted for 3 days.
where I grew up in Germany, there are still power lines running from house to house along the roofs. It was a big fuzz when I was a kid as they changed it from 4 individual cables to 1 twisted cable of 4, but they are still not underground to this day (decades later). But in almost every neighborhood build after 1990ish they are definitely underground. some 80% of the entire power grid runs underground nowadays.
Funny enough, were I live now, there are almost only standing hydrants like in the US and barely any sunken ones.
Oh I remember when our electrical lines were buried underground when the road was renewed. That was in the mid/late 2000s in a town of ~1500 people
Utility poles *are* used in Germany. As the last sequence unveils: there are situation where you *have* *to* route the electricity and telephone out the underground and over some poles. As on large construction sites with large excarvations - and partially even out in the country side. There - on occasion - you find a row of utility poles that supply a far off single homestead with the main (underground) network. Here, where I live, phone and electricity had been rerouted underground in the early to mid 1980s. We're Germans, you know. We have a favour for underground things: supply, garages, railroad tracks and train statioins as well as for bunkers of any sort ... 🙂 Thanks for sharing !
Great humor. And interesting take on infrastructure differences.
After watching your vid, I am sure that city planners will dig the hydrants back up, realising what income potential they are missing out on.
We would have to increase the fees for illegal parking dramatically first. It is so dirt cheap in Germany to break the law with the car, it often isn't even prosecuted because it isn't worth it...
it‘s a no-brainer
Below ground electric has a number of advantages and a few disadvantages. The biggest reason is that the expense of putting them below is substantial. I am not sure what the ratio is like today - but years I learned it costs 10X as much to put the wiring below ground.
Well my house is also connected thru an overground electric cable. Its a small village and when it was electrified more than a 100 years ago there was no other solution beside digging a tunnel thru a rocky hill.
When I moved to the US , the electrical was like 20 years behind. Impulse dimmer, Impulse switch , what is that?
"Rettungswege"(Rescue paths) are usually used to avoid the construction of a second stairway. Any sort of community-Building need to have 2 rescue paths by law. But up to 22 m in height, the second stairway can be "provided" via rescue ladder from the fire&rescue, as long as the fire paths are maintained properly, that in any case its accessible in an emergency.
ahh this makes so much sense. thank you for sharing!
The overhead wires are still common in the newer federal states in rural areas.
newer meaning eastern?
In Italy too - all the cables are belowground, arranged by projected distances, deepnesses and colors too (power vs communications vs fiber)
I live in rural Austria, the cable that connected to us and our neighbours was dug into the ground when I was a little kid (now I am 21) even it only runs over fields. Doesn't mean there are no low voltage poles anymore at all, when I look outside I still see enough lines that only connect one two houses or so^^
We have the same hydrants as well as some more traditional or even very old ones in Poznań, Poland.
In modernized US Staats you schould also find (underflood) underfloor hydrants. (DN 80 2x52-C Brand Tamson (NL) 602,-USD). You can find Overfloor hydrants in Idustrie parks/ areas and also some big bulky hydrants in but they became rare. In some areas we have some charging stations, they are the new hydrants for accidents.
Well, in rural areas you can still find utility poles, at least there's still a lot of houses that get power through above-ground power lines there.
Your videos are very pleasant and divertissant to watch. They also have some Casey Neistat vibes to them. Subscribed! :)
thank you 🙏🏼
I was an exchange student in the MannheimHeidelberg area in the early 1990s, and the street I stayed on had had electrical wires that ran from rooftop to rooftop. And fire hydrants were under a cap in the street. By the way, that towing bit: is that Jamaica Plain?
It’s actually NJ on my way from Newark Airport to Manhattan, but still the NY metro region :)
You missed to mention the white relatively small signs with a red border. They dispay an elongated T which refers to the distance towards the middle of the street plus the deviation right or left in meters. The Hxxx above tells about the diameter of the ice underneath. Common are H100 and H300.
Congratulations! You are the first one I see, who recognized these differences. Every time I read about blackouts in the US after some storm or whatever, I add up the hours of blackout here, I have lived through: Less than 48 hours in almost 60 years, most of them in times of childhood, when we had still supply-poles. I guess, that it is much cheaper for the country in the long run to bury them underground, to say nothing about the visual impact.
A lot of people in my country always complain about anything here. Thank you for pointing out something positive😊.
even as a german i didn't know that fire hydrants were hidden like that, i also really took our cables for granted, even when looking at other countries like america thinking they did the same, at some point your mind just blends out the most obvious things
You see utility poles and overhead wires in rural areas in germany. but these vanish bit by bit. The village I grew up had electric and telephone wires on poles until 1998. Black outs in winter storms happened sometimes.
Spaghetti lives in Southeast Asia. How it works? Heck if I know. But, it does.
I’ve never been but it looks insane xD
The UK is the same. All utilities are underground, including hydrants
In Germany, we have Hydrants which are immersed into the sidewalks or the greenery along the streets. Fire brigades have a special wrench to heave them to the surface. And I suppose they have specifically marked maps in their navigation systems to help them find the next hydrant quickly.
Around my area, we still have roof level wires. They usually connect multiple houses together and go to a transformer station in the neighborhood.
oh interesting, where about in Germany is that? thanks :)
@@MattSuozzo Baden Württemberg, rural area. I've meanwhile moved to a bigger town where most but not all cables are underground.
We had hydrants on the parking area of a diy market.
After the third hitting by a lorry, they went also below the street.
And not all cables were burried in the street.
The house of my father and his next 5 neighbours have pols because the rewiring in the house to the main panel would be to expensive and to destructive to the old houses.
You can get a fine for parking above a subfloor hydrant.
So you should look out for little white/red outlined signs indicating the position in meter measurement.
We have recessed water hydrants in UK too, They're marked with little yellow "headstones" against the nearest wall.
I must admit I hadn't noticed the hidden services on my trips there, my estate in UK has the same, so I'm used to not seeing them, I didn't realise this was national policy in Germany, that is kind of cool.
In England fire hydrants are undet rectangular manhole covers on thr sidewalk. There is usually a yellow plaque with a letter
H nearby.
I would assume it comes down to how long people expect houses to last...from what I gather about the US houses are considered to be old once they pass 20 or 30 years - I can't put my fingers on what exact time span a house is expected to last in Germany, but I can guarantee no one who builds a new one expects it to be demolished in his/her lifetime - I would be surprised if people thought demolishing a new house would even be realistic in their kids lifetime. And once you build for generations it makes sense to reduce upkeep over building costs and seek permanent solutions...
> but I can guarantee no one who builds a new one expects it to be demolished in his/her lifetime
And that's not wrong. I mean, you see people buying houses from the 1950s, 1960s and bringing them up to current energy standards with a new roof maybe, renewed basement sealing, added outer insulation, new triple pane windows - but the house itself, it's still good. It's like a robust skeleton for the additional measures and then it's good to live in again for 40 or 50 years.
the " least robust" part of a german house is the roof, and that has a 80 year lifespan before needing inspection and MAYBE rebuilding
After WW II, there was ample opportunity and space to think about better infrastructure planning in Europe and, in Germany in particular. Cities with street cars do have overhead catenaries, though.
It’s the same in the uk, they are on the side of the road and on the pavement/footpaths and are identified by a yellow drain cover or a black H with yellow background either on a sign attached to a wall or on a yellow concrete post for easy visibility
A further point to the hydrants: You don't even have to search for one. There are signs (just search for hydrant sign germany) which show the position of the next one down to the centimeter...
Given you know how to read them ;):
Top number is the pipe size in mm (relevant for a) what to "screw on" as well as how much water you can draw max per minute). The "T" below is the position relative to the sign: number on the left -> distance left from the sign, right the same. Number on the bottom: distance away from the sign. I.e., 2,0 on the right side, 3,5 on the bottom: from this sign you'll find a hydrant 2 meters to the right, 3.5m out.
Those signs may also indicate other infrastructure: fire hydrant signs are white with red border. Blue signs indicate freshwater, yellow is gas (as in natural gas, for heating and cooking purposes). Same goes for rainwater, sewage, etc.pp. manholes... note that for all other purposes than fire hydrants this is a "can", not a "must".
Live wires is just sooo old school. They’ve been underground in Denmark too.
i need to make it up there someday soon! greetings from Munich :)
well, europe more or less collectively stopped using utility poles like 60-80 years ago.
All Telephone and Electricity cables are in cable tunnels below the sidewalk or road, you got acess points in regular intervals.
German (and again also most of europe) Hydrants are recessed into the ground. (Unterflurhydrant - Below Ground Hydrants)
The oval cast iron lids you see on the sidewalk are the hydrant acess points. (they are also marked by specific signs on the roadside/wall)
You open the lid, take your hydrant mounting aperture (the so called Standrohr, basicly a slim Hydrant) from your emergency vehicle, slot it in, give it a turn to lock it, then you open the recessed valve, et voila, you got water.
And yes there are also over the ground hydrants around, but they are rare. (Überflurhydrant)
The Unterflurhydrant was introduced like 50? years ago
The same in the UK. Hydrants are below ground with a yellow painted cast iron cover and marked with a nearby yellow sign with a black 'H' on it. Note to visitors from Germany it's not a Bushaltestelle.
5:06 Oh, that's my daily commute to work, at least before I switched to working from home.
The open-air lines are actually still around here, but more in rural areas. But even there they are gradually being dismantled.
As I'm having my roof renovated and insulated, I've applied for the line to be removed from my roof and for me to have a so-called underground connection. This has now been done and I can renovate my roof without having a cold bridge.
In the end, underground cables are also cheaper for the energy suppliers. There is no storm damage to the cables, no need to replace pylons and no need to cut back trees and bushes. Although the initial installation is more expensive, an underground cable is also significantly cheaper when calculated over the years.
Here in Denmark, the december 1999 hurricane left many areas withot power for days. This doesn't happen since we got the cables in the ground.
Its the same in the UK - electricity cables, gas - its all underground. We don't have large obviously visible red fire hydrants on street corners. We have them flush in the ground, or in a wall. In the UK, hydrants are marked as being yellow squares with an upper case 'H' in black, in the middle of the yellow square.
The 3-door box at 4:49 is VDSL (broadband internet via phone wires) ...
The orange box at 4:54 is a power ditribution box for construction sides ...
Yes, Germany doesn't like to much cable-spaghetti in the air (except tram / train & sometimes Trolley-Bus ... only old non-upgraded villages still have these (in East-Germany until 1990s, in West-Germany until 1970s?) ...
THe poles at 5:18 seem to be a temporary installtion or a well preserved legacy installtion (Note: the city of Stuttgart has plenty of streetlight wires in the air hold by house facades (like used for the Tram in the past) ) ...
Nearly all hydrants are underground (the rusty oval lid, P.S. I used one & installed the adapter in the past) , do never block an underground hydrant!
Here in rural northern Germany we had this kind of wiring till the 1970s. After than it vanished and was put below the ground because due to the susceptibility to faults.
damn, that’s really impressive. no way America ever gets that in rural areas…. thank you for sharing :)
@@MattSuozzo yes it was expensive. But it pays in the long run. Only long distance high voltage lines are still in the air today.
@@MattSuozzo
I think, in the US they haven‘t learned at the same level and experience like Germany or Switzerland.
We‘ve special ‚apprenticeships‘ in this field. It is ‚security- relevant‘ (!!)
That's actually something that strikes me sometimes when I see videos from the US. It all looks so ancient...
There are also "real" hydrants in Germany.
Haha! Nice ending. Yeah, in some places you still see them. 😅
The tiny village my mom lives in was upgraded just a few years ago. Until then it all ran above ground. Funny thing is, the old house on her property was connected above ground to these poles. The new one she built was connected below ground, but the poles were still there cause they hadn't upgraded it yet. So the wire went down the pole, into the ground and then into the house. They knew sooner or later the poles would go and decided to be prepared. 😅
When i was in school, our teacher told us about electricity. And she hold us, that "sometimes, when houses are reeeeelly old, you can see the wires that provides electricity to these houses - hanging overground !"
I came home with the schoolbus and had to realise we live in an really old house 🙂
That was around 1995. The house finally became underground-cables only 5 years ago as one of the last ones in the whole city
that’s a great story! out of curiosity, when do you think your house was built? aka when did buried electric lines become the norm? thanks :)
@@MattSuozzo This house was build 1956. It was build on subsidized land by displaced people (german people that had to leave what was prussia once and became poland after WW2). Small houses with thin walls (but brick and mortal), build by pretty poor people just 11 years after WW2. So maybe it was even at that time also just a cheap solution for cheap homes?!
@@MattSuozzo The power lines never had as many poles as in the US, and there were no transformers on them. Instead, we had small towers called "transformer houses" that transformed the electricity down to 380 V for an entire neighborhood. From there, the (usually five) lines went from house to house, with poles in between only where necessary. The landline telephones, on the other hand, had their own masts, which ran a cable along the street. When I was a child in the 1970s, the telephone masts were being decommissioned on a grand scale and my father, who worked at the then still state telecommunications office (later Telekom), got them for free or cheap and brought them home by the truckload. We children had to help remove screws and small iron signets from them so as not to ruin the saw blade. We used them to heat our house, which, when I think back, was not very environmentally friendly as they were heavily treated with chemicals to prevent rotting. At the same time, urban sewage systems were being built all over Germany to relieve the groundwater and the rivers and lakes, which at that time were quite polluted and resembled cesspools. This opportunity was used to lay all supply lines and sewers underground.
My mother lived in a house from the 60ies in a small village where only the telephone landline was overground. Electricity was underground. In an appartment from the 90ies some telephone lines were overground for the first years and we had some defects caused by lightning. What you still might find are cables connecting light poles.
We (Austria) still have overground hydrants, too. But I don't think there are any parking laws.
@@reinhard8053 thanks for the info! greetings from Munich :)
You do get the kinds hydrants you're expecting in Germany too, but they're usually set back from the street so we can still hook up the hoses even if someone is parked nearby. Sometimes there's a funny cylindrical shroud over the top, so you might not recognise them. In theory, inside of cities and towns, there's a maximum distance between hydrants of 150m (whether they work or not is another matter...)
there are a few poles left, very old houses even have electricity poles on the roof, and most poles left are telephone cables.
Money considerations can never be completely ignored...but here in the US those considerations force a short sighted and penny-wise pound foolish funding environment to most infrastructure.
Very interesting Video! What is the song at 3:55? Maybe you should link it in the description.
Greetings from Germany!
The track is Wherever U Go by Curli Loxx. Greetings from Munich :)
www.epidemicsound.com/track/p3D4DmWsWb/
It takes 30 inches of snow to hide the fire hydrant closest to my home. It's easy to find from 100 yards away. It does not need a hoof pick to get the lid latch cleared of debris. Dogs have a special purpose for it. But... The German hydrant will not get struck and damaged by a car.
There is an advantage to an above ground hydrant.
Anyone who has witnessed a fireman trying to use a European hydrant will know that they are often a struggle to get open.
The valve fills with crud, and the whole thing rots in its damp dark hole. I've seen three big blokes struggling to open a below ground hydrant valve before now.
It may seem like nothing, but when a building is on fire every second counts.
I live in the Netherlands near the Belgium border. There aren't any border checkpoints since we've been in the Benelux for ages. A good way to know whether you are in the Netherlands or Belgium is too look whether there are any cables above ground.
Some of the many overhead cables in the US are for cable TV/Internet connections and telephones, maybe other things. I maintain my mother's home and in the backyard there are a myriad of cables in the air. Behind the backyard fence, the neighbor has a huge tree which has which has huge limbs weighing on a couple of these cables. Electric cables are much higher.
Talking to the neighbor led nowhere so I called the cable companies about it. Their response was basically, well if it ain't broke, we don't fix it.
All the cables are underground. Germany is blessed with stable ground. I live in Japan which is prone to mild to severe earthquakes at least somewhere in the country every week. So I think I can understand their reluctance to put their cables underground. But Japan does have national healthcare like Germany does!
Interestingly, in our side street in a German village our aboveground cable is going to be removed right now and replaced by a power supply line in the ground. We also get new street lamps, twice as many as before. I think, this is also done to booster the German economy because we had no problems with the cables before. And now they turn darkness into daylight.