Flagpole installation acrossRhode Island

Flagpoles in Rhode Island

No address in Rhode Island is far from salt water, and it shows in what we sell here: shafts sized for wind off the bay, and finishes that survive the salt in it. Pole, foundation, flag and labour on one quote.

Wind here. Rhode Island does not leave you reading a map. The state building code prints a wind speed for each of its 39 cities and towns, and across 37 miles of width and 48 of length the whole spread is fifteen miles an hour: about 120 mph at Burrillville and Woonsocket, 125 mph through Providence, Pawtucket, Cranston and Warwick, 130 mph on Aquidneck Island and along the south shore, and 135 mph at the two far corners, Westerly and Block Island. So the figure is not what decides the pole here. The water is. NOAA counts 384 miles of tidal shoreline inside a state this size, which means a great many addresses look straight out over open water whatever their town carries, and that is the first thing we ask about.

• The northwest corner — Around 120 mph through Burrillville, Glocester, North Smithfield and Woonsocket, the mildest numbers in Rhode Island and the highest, stoniest ground in it. The shaft is the cheap part up here. The hole is not, because glacial till with rock in it can stop an auger short of the depth the footing needs.
• Providence, the Blackstone valley and the upper bay — Around 125 mph from Pawtucket down through Providence and Cranston to Warwick and Barrington. The number is the easy part. Tight sites, the made ground under the old downtowns and the mill yards, and the channelling between buildings are what add to the job.
• Aquidneck Island and the south shore — Around 130 mph at Newport, Middletown, Narragansett, South Kingstown and Charlestown. At 130 the strip a mile inland of mean high water becomes a wind-borne debris region: the code is allowing for what the wind picks up as well as what it pushes over. On that strip we start with heavy wall, an anodized finish and stainless hardware.
• Westerly and Block Island — About 135 mph in both, and they are as far apart as this state gets: Westerly on the Connecticut line, New Shoreham out in the Atlantic. These are the highest figures the state prints, so Hurricane series and nothing lighter. Block Island is a logistics job on top of that: the pole, the base and every fitting cross on the Point Judith ferry, so the order has to be right the first time. The code even allows New Shoreham a shallower footing than the mainland, 2 ft 6 in against 3 ft 4 in.

Flying the Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island flag →