Flagpole installation inBozeman, MT

Flagpoles in Bozeman

Montana's fourth-largest city and its university and technology centre, sitting about 4,800 ft up in the Gallatin Valley with the state's busiest airport eight miles down the road. We cover Bozeman and the Gallatin County area, including the Montana State University campus, Main Street and the downtown blocks, the Bridger Mountains and Bridger Canyon, Hyalite Canyon, Four Corners, Belgrade and the airport at Gallatin Field, and the road south toward Big Sky.

Wind here. Bozeman sits in an inland, high-altitude area, which works out to roughly 115 mph under the code your town uses. That figure decides how wide and how thick the pole has to be, so we check it against your address before we quote. Bozeman publishes the highest design wind speed of any Montana town we cover: 115 mph as a 3-second gust, five above Billings and ten above Missoula. It asks for more under the ground as well. A site-specific soils report comes in with the permit application and a final observation report before the footing is inspected, and the bottom of that footing goes to 36 inches under a single-storey building and 48 under a two-storey one. Then there is the review. The city drew a Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District over its older core in 1991 and it now takes in more than four thousand properties; exterior work inside it needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before the building permit is issued, so on or near Main Street that application comes first, and we prepare the drawings for it. Last, the calendar: at this elevation the ground is frozen for a long stretch of the year, and the pouring window is narrow enough that a pole wanted for a spring opening should be ordered in the autumn.

Most of the people who call us from Bozeman are university and school buildings, the hospital and its clinics, optics and software offices out in the business parks, hotels and restaurants downtown, churches, and community associations toward Four Corners and Belgrade.