Flagpole installation acrossWashington

Flagpoles in Washington

Two climates, one state: wet and mild west of the Cascades, dry and cold east of them. One quote carries the pole, the foundation, the flag and the labour on either side of the mountains.

Wind here. Wind is the flattest thing about Washington. The design speed runs from about 95 mph on the outer coast to about 105 mph at Newport in the northeast corner, and every town on this page falls between them at 95 or 100. Those are gentle figures, so the wind map is not what picks the pole here. Water is. West of the Cascades it rains most days from October into May, and rain is what rots a halyard, chalks a mill finish and seizes a plated pulley. Behind the rain sits the ground: the Cascadia subduction zone runs off this coast, and every waterfront city in the state has a district standing on fill over old tideland. That decides the foundation far more often than the wind does. Washington also leaves each city to fill in its own design table and to mark its own salt water coast, so we read the local one before we quote.

• The outer coast and the Olympic Peninsula — About 95 mph, and ASCE shades this ground as a special wind region, which means the map is not the last word and the jurisdiction sets the figure. Salt and permanent damp cost more here than wind does, so an anodized shaft, stainless fittings and a spare halyard on the shelf.
• The Puget Sound lowland — 95 to 100 mph from Olympia up to Bellingham. Standard wall covers most sites, so the money moves off the shaft and into the footing and the hardware.
• The Cascade crest and the passes — Around 100 mph, barely different from the valley floor. What changes at the passes is months of snow and ice on the halyard and the pulley, so up there the hardware is settled before the shaft is.
• Eastern Washington and the Palouse — 100 to 105 mph out to the Idaho line, the highest mapped figures in the state and still moderate. Cold is what changes, not wind: frost pushes the footing deeper and snow load enters the conversation. And wheat country offers a pole no shelter at all.

Flying the Washington 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 Washington flag →