Flagpole installation acrossTennessee

Flagpoles in Tennessee

State government and hospital companies in Nashville, freight and river work at Memphis, and university and factory towns the whole length of the valleys between. The pole, the concrete base, the flag and the labour arrive as one number rather than four.

Wind here. Tennessee is 440 miles from the Mississippi to the Appalachian crest, and the wind figure hardly moves across any of it. Memphis on the river and Bristol up on the Virginia line both come out at about 105 mph, and every town between them rounds to the same number. Wind is the one thing in this state that does not change. What changes is underneath. Shelby County and the ground around it sit over the New Madrid seismic zone; the Central Basin and the Great Valley are limestone full of caves and sinkholes; and in the northeast corner the standard stops treating the map as the answer and shades the mountains as a special wind region, where the design speed is meant to come from local conditions. So in Tennessee the pole is usually the straightforward part of the job and the hole is not.

• West Tennessee and the river counties — Around 105 mph, and wind is the easy part of it. What the code takes seriously out here is the New Madrid seismic zone underneath, so the money that would buy wall thickness in a windier state buys footing and anchorage instead.
• The Central Basin and the Highland Rim — The same 105 mph from Clarksville down through Nashville, Franklin and Murfreesboro. A standard wall covers most sites at that figure. The line that catches people out is the excavation: limestone runs close to the surface across the basin, and a foundation here is as likely to be cut as drilled.
• The Great Valley and the Cumberland Plateau — 105 mph again, through Chattanooga and Knoxville and up on the plateau above them. The figure is the same on the valley floor and on the ridge; the site is not, so a property on the brow of Lookout or Signal Mountain gets a heavier shaft than the map alone would buy.
• The northeast mountains and the Tri-Cities — 105 mph on the map, and the map says plainly that this is not the whole answer: the Appalachian ridges here are shaded as a special wind region. Exposed and high addresses get sized off the site rather than off the sheet, which usually means less height and a thicker wall than the same building would take in Nashville.

Flying the Tennessee 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 Tennessee flag →