Flagpole installation acrossArizona

Flagpoles in Arizona

In Arizona the sun and the monsoon decide a flagpole, not the wind map. One price carries the pole, the footing, the flag and the labour of putting it up.

Wind here. Arizona's wind map hardly moves across the state: about 100 mph over the Phoenix valley, at Yuma and along the Colorado River, and roughly 105 mph at Tucson, in the southeast corner and up on the Colorado Plateau. That figure is not what decides the pole here. The sun decides it, because it is on the flag and on the finish nearly every day of the year. The monsoon decides it, because a summer thunderstorm here can put wind on a pole from one side at a speed no annual map describes. And caliche decides it: desert ground cemented hard with calcium carbonate, which makes a footing hole a different day's work, and a different price, from one augered in clay. Arizona sets no statewide building code either, so the figure that governs is whichever one the city or the county has written into its own code, and we check which that is before we price anything.

• The Valley of the Sun — About 100 mph on the map from Glendale across to Gilbert, and that is the least of it. The ground is flat, the buildings are low and set back, and almost nothing stands upwind, so we size these sites for open exposure. The money goes into an anodized finish and into a footing cut through caliche rather than into shaft thickness.
• Tucson and the southeast corner — Roughly 105 mph mapped, on the ground that takes the worst of the monsoon. A microburst is not in any annual figure, so exposure, hardware and the footing decide these jobs. The shaft itself usually does not have to change.
• The western desert and the river towns — Yuma, Lake Havasu City and Kingman sit at about 100 mph with no shelter of any kind for miles. Blowing sand strips a mill finish and the summer sun finishes a flag quickly, so an anodized shaft and stainless fittings come before any extra height does.
• Flagstaff and the Colorado Plateau — Around 105 mph up here, and beside the point. At 7,000 ft the flag freezes, the halyard ices up and the footing has to go below a real frost line, so winter chooses the wall thickness and the hardware, not the wind map.

Flying the Arizona flag? We sell it, sewn to the state's own design specification and sized to sit under the national flag on your pole. See the Arizona flag →