Help with damaged underground cables

[Robson689]

75mm is very shallow almost sounds like a temporary depth especially with it not being live

 

[JD6400]

I would say that they have no excuse to leave them so shallow and are having a laugh with the no resin stance .
But you have no excuse if carrying out ground works without cat scanning first , especially chain trenching . Sticking it on radio would have found these , to be honest I trust the radio feature more than power detection !
What depth were you trenching at ? Would you have gone through them anyway , even if they had been buried at a respectable depth .

 

[littlespark]

I would say that they have no excuse to leave them so shallow and are having a laugh with the no resin stance .
But you have no excuse if carrying out ground works without cat scanning first , especially chain trenching . Sticking it on radio would have found these , to be honest I trust the radio feature more than power detection !
What depth were you trenching at ? Would you have gone through them anyway , even if they had been buried at a respectable depth .

This is on the assumption that someone has informed him that there are cables there at all. If so, then, yes... he could have used the pulse tone feature of a CAT scan, but he would need to know where the cables were to access them to connect the pulse.
Just a regular CAT scan might have brought them up, but no power would mean it would just be shown as metal in the ground.

 

[pc1966]

As an aside, the Openreach engineers I was chatting to recently were moaning about the fibres they use being totally non-metallic (no SWA) so they cant be traced/found using any Cable Avoidance Tools.

When you wrote "CAT scan" my first thought was WTF do you need Computed Axial Tomography for?

 

[littlespark]

The number of times ive had to explain that a "cable avoidance tool" is not to be used to "find" cables.....

If you want to actually find a cable, then the best thing is indeed, an item of large plant equipment. Never fails.

 

[JD6400]

They should have informed the poor bloke , it is hard enough making a living with out prats keeping quiet .
But regardless of being informed of underground services or not , to open a cut with out scanning first is just poor and unsafe full stop.
We have both a walk behind bobcat trencher and a tractor mounted one amongst our ground works kit , and the carnage they can cause is bloody scary if not used with respect.
Granted it is still by the grace of God that you hopefully miss the unknown , but a bit of planning does help .
I tend to find if the cat puts up a metal signal it is normally BT or power any way , and even if it is an obsolete water pipe , the trencher will not like it much .

 

[Simon47]

The point I wish to address is their statement about not being able to do resin joints... unless I'm much mistaken, there is absolutely nothing in the regulations that would prevent them from signing off a cable with a resin joint in it. If they are adamant this is the case, ask them which regulation this would contravene and how it would contravene it. If they cannot provide a valid regulation (we can check it) then they are quite frankly talking garbage.

We already know the answer to that - they are talking bol...rubbish

Fibre repairs are possible but a very specialised job. If they were in duct then pulling a new one through would be the easiest/cheapest option I suspect (even if duct severed you can patch that). Otherwise if they were directly buried then I think there are companies who could do the equivalent of a resin joint repair for fibre, but cost trade off would need to be considered.

Well yes, they can be jointed, but it's going to cost. You'd need someone who could patch in a length of new fibre (so two fusion splices/fibre) and then either patch things up to contain it, or get someone else to do that. Will be expensive, I used to deal with a company that would put fibre in for us at my last job - the cable is cheap, putting the ends on is the expensive part. For that reason, it's often easier buying pre-terminated cables - just order by cable type/number of cores/length.

Without any warning given (but person who engaged you, or due care with tape and depth by installer) I would be arguing it is not my problem!

Indeed, IF there was no reason to expect anything to be there then it's not really your fault. But as already suggested, there may be clues that ought to have made you curious ...

Having said that, I was laying a path in our garden recently. I knew there was a cable (and water pipe) to the greenhouse, but was still surprised to find them where they were - the pick literally scuffed the SWA on its way past. Buried about 1" deep, if that At first I thought I was just tugging at yet another tree root.

 

[sanbernardelec]

Fiber repair is so expensive. That's why it is very easy for the other party to point their finger on you, I suggest let you insurance company do the work