Underground Cable Locators and Fault Finders – Read The Basics

Overhead cables are exposed to a lot of outside factors such as the wind and the changing weather that can damage them easily. For this reason, a lot of cities and industrial zones use under-grounding to have the maximum protection and avoid unnecessary problems. Whether you are a clerk in your local government or a construction engineer you will need to have control over you underground cables.

Underground Cable Locator

To ease their own job, the personnel who installs and repairs underground electrical and communications cables uses their most essential tools – underground cable locators and fault finders. Utility companies and constructors heavily rely on this piece of test equipment and it should go without saying that local and construction engineer should make use of a high-quality underground cable locators.

The main function of the cable locators and fault finders is to identify the depth and location of the underground cable and find the precise location of all the flaws and breaks inside the cable. In some cases, an underground cable locator may be able to do simultaneously both operations, but in other situations, separate accessories are needed. Underground locators are used for finding or confirming the precise locations of water or gas inside the pipe and other types of undergrounding before the instalment of new equipment or pipes by the constructors. Even though this technology is not new, it’s constantly upgraded and becoming more easier and flexible to use than the first models. At the moment, every model that is manufactured can do improved job filtering out signals on your local ground or industry zone.

Locators

An underground cable locator is made from two essential parts: a hand-held receiver and compact transformer. They are battery-powered, easy to use and are protected in hard-resistant cases. The receivers find the underground lines by noticing magnetic fields that are created by the electrical current that goes through the cable. All the required info is shown in a window at the top of the cable locator.

The receivers tap on different frequencies with one purpose only to find and identify various types of utilities. In some cases, to find the electrical cable the only thing you need is to have the receiver unit, although there could be a static signal that is too strong and causes a disturbance.

Fault Finders

Fault Finders are designed for special faults or breaks inside the underground areas. The most used tools for finding faults are TDR Cable locator and an A-frame detector. The main function of the TDR cable is to identify faults in the power cables inside the tube. While the TDR cable is good

Fault finders are designed specifically to locate faults or breaks in underground electrical and communications cable. Two of the most common tools are TDR cable fault locators used to pinpoint major faults or breaks in power cables inside a conduit. The A-frame sheath fault detector is used to find ground faults in direct-buried cables and where the cable is broken. They only work when the conductor is connected to the ground.

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