Flagpole installation inOlympia, WA

Flagpoles in Olympia

The state capital: a government town at the head of Budd Inlet, with a small working port, a college and the whole apparatus of state agencies gathered around one campus. We cover Olympia and the Thurston County area, including the Washington State Capitol campus, downtown and Percival Landing, Capitol Lake, the Port of Olympia, the Evergreen State College campus, the Eastside and the Westside, and the US 101 and Interstate 5 approaches.

Wind here. Olympia sits in a low-lying, tide-influenced area, which works out to roughly 95 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. Wind is the last thing we look at in Olympia. What decides the job is who reviews it and what is underneath it. Work on the Capitol campus goes to the Capitol Campus Design Advisory Committee, which advises the State Capitol Committee and the Department of Enterprise Services on how those grounds are designed and planted, and it has a view on height, material and placement. As for the ground, downtown Olympia stands on fill over the old Budd Inlet tideflats: the 2001 Nisqually earthquake shifted the masonry columns under the Capitol dome and shut the building for three years, and the same shaking liquefied patches of that downtown fill. A footing there starts with a soil report. The low ground also takes water on the biggest winter tides, so we set the base and the cleat above the flood line wherever the site allows it. Out on the Westside and toward Evergreen the soil is ordinary glacial ground and the work is straightforward.

Most of the people who call us from Olympia are state agency buildings, county and city facilities, veterans posts, schools and college buildings, downtown law offices and banks, and marinas and waterfront businesses.