Flagpole installation acrossMichigan

Flagpoles in Michigan

Assembly plants and city halls in the southeast, lakeshore towns and college campuses on the west side, and hard frost under all of it. One quote covers the pole, the footing that has to reach below that frost, the flag and the labour.

Wind here. Michigan runs more than 400 miles from the Ohio line to Lake Superior, and the wind figure does not move across any of it. Detroit sizes to about 105 mph, Marquette to about the same, and so does everything in between. The state draws no wind map of its own and takes the model code figure, and no part of Michigan is a special wind region. So the map is settled in a line here, and three other things decide the pole. Frost is the first: the state residential code puts footings 42 inches below grade, top of the state to the bottom, and northern building departments can ask for deeper. The ground is the second, and it changes underneath you, from wet clay on the southeast lake plain to outwash sand on the west side. Ice off the lakes is the third. It loads a flag and a halyard forty feet up, where nobody can reach them until spring.

• One figure, top to bottom — About 105 mph in Detroit, about 105 mph in Marquette, about 105 mph everywhere between. That is a moderate number, and it is the same number statewide, so on most Michigan jobs the wind question is answered in one line and the ground and the winter decide the rest.
• The southeast lake plain — Monroe through Detroit and up into Macomb County sits on old lake bed. Heavy clay that holds water and works against a footing through every freeze and thaw. The shaft is the easy half of the job. The hole is the other half, and it is dug for what the auger brings up.
• The west side and the outwash — From Kalamazoo up through Grand Rapids and Muskegon much of the ground is glacial outwash, sand and gravel that drains fast and holds a footing loosely. Width does the work depth cannot, so the same pole takes a wider footing here than it would in clay.
• Open water, and the north — Frontage on Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Grand Traverse Bay or Lake Superior has nothing standing in front of it and is sized as exposed whatever the figure says. Then the ice: a frozen flag and a seized pulley forty feet up, out of reach until spring. Hardware and finish are picked for that, not for the map.

Flying the Michigan 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 Michigan flag →