Flagpole installation acrossNew Hampshire

Flagpoles in New Hampshire

Mill cities on the Merrimack, the State House at Concord, and the shortest ocean coast in the country east of both. One quote carries the pole, the concrete it stands in, the flag and the labour.

Wind here. New Hampshire hardly moves on the wind map. The seacoast at Hampton and Portsmouth sizes to about 115 mph, and at Colebrook near the Canadian line it has eased only to around 105. Ten miles an hour across the length of the state, so wind is not what decides a pole here. Winter is. Footings go below a frost line the cities put at four feet, and freezing rain loads the flag, the rope and the pulley at once, at the top of the shaft where it does the most harm. The ice storm of December 2008 took the power from more than four hundred thousand customers in this state, over half of everyone connected, and some of them were dark for two weeks. The second decider is what the auger hits, because the till is full of boulders and the ledge under it is rarely far down. The code is the state's own and reads the same in Nashua as in Pittsburg, but each town enforces it and some publish a figure of their own, so we settle who signs the permit before a date is set.

• The Seacoast and Great Bay — About 115 mph from Seabrook up through Hampton, Portsmouth and Dover. The highest mapped figures in the state, and the only ground with salt in the air. A standard wall usually still does the work, so what would have gone into a thicker shaft goes into an anodized finish and stainless hardware.
• The Merrimack Valley — About 115 mph at Manchester, easing to 110 by Concord. Nashua publishes a figure of its own, 120 mph, and that is what a Nashua job is sized to. Gentle enough that the argument is usually about height and sightline rather than about the shaft. The exception is the open retail and warehouse frontage on the highway corridors, sized for open ground whatever the map says.
• Monadnock, the Lakes and the Upper Valley — Around 110 mph across Keene, Laconia and Lebanon. Easy on paper. What costs money out here is the hole, because boulders in the till and shallow ledge can stop an auger well above the depth the frost line asks for.
• The White Mountains and the North Country — About 105 to 110 mph through Berlin, Gorham and Colebrook, the lowest mapped figures in New Hampshire. The mountains fall inside the shaded special wind region on the map, which means the mapped number is only a starting point and the figure for a summit, a notch or a high ridge is settled with the building official before a shaft is sized. Mount Washington is up there, and nothing on that mountain is read off a map.

Flying the New Hampshire 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 New Hampshire flag →