contractors laying cables, what is it?

stardanny · 7 Dec 2014

While sitting outside a cafe having a cuppa, I saw contractors laying down cables underground and was pulling by a huge winch truck. What is the cable they are laying?

It look like red or brown thick cables about 30mm x 3 cables bunch together. The contractors were having a hard time trying to get it in lol!

Daniel.[/b]

bernardgreen · 7 Dec 2014

What was the name on the side of the winch truck. ?

Thick cables can be multi-pair telephone cable or single core 11kV electrical cables.

Three in a bunch suggest most likely they were electrical cables

RF Lighting · 7 Dec 2014

This stuff?

westie101 · 7 Dec 2014

Probably what RF Lighting showed a picture of, it's HV triplex cable, the core is solid aluminum and can be up to 300mm2 so is not easy to bend.

Lectrician · 7 Dec 2014

Ugly stuff when going up a pole!

stardanny · 7 Dec 2014

RF Lighting said:
This stuff?

That's it

Daniel.

333rocky333 · 7 Dec 2014

In milton keynes was it by any chance

Spark123 · 7 Dec 2014

Is that the same stuff they run up to Wasdale Head Westie?

westie101 · 7 Dec 2014

Is that the same stuff they run up to Wasdale Head Westie?

Nope that was a custom built 3 core XLPE insulated, lead sheathed, double wire armour, PVC covered 70mm2 Aluminium Core. Approx cost £50/metre

Though Triplex is designed to be buried in the ground in damp conditions in water at any depth we are told it has a life expectancy of 10 years.
We were looking at it for a job in Derwent Water but chose a land route instead for this reason

JohnD · 7 Dec 2014

the colour is the key for modern plastic-coated services.

Red is high voltage cable

Black is for what electrical folk call low-voltage cable, but is what goes into your house as "the mains"

Grey is phones (like BT)

Green is TV and some internet cables and associate optical fibres and phones which may be all together

Purple is traffic lights and similar road signals

Yellow is gas pipe

Blue is water pipe

Old services will not be the same. In a previous life I was interested to see oak ducting filled with pitch, with busbars inside, coming from the old power station in Ipswich, when the road was being dug up.

RF Lighting · 7 Dec 2014

Thought traffic lights were orange? I may well be wrong though.

JohnD · 7 Dec 2014

perhaps

I did it from memory because I couldn't find a reference

RF Lighting · 7 Dec 2014

You did well to remember that much! I'd love to have seen a photo of the old busbars. I'm fascinated by the history of electrical installation techniques

JohnW2 · 8 Dec 2014

JohnD said:
I did it from memory because I couldn't find a reference

See (pages 7 and 8 of this) ... which shows significant differences from what you recollected - including a failure to distinguish between HV and LV electrical cables - other than that HV is "red or black", whereas LV is "black or red"

.

Kind Regards, John

Lectrician · 8 Dec 2014

Traffic signals are usually orange, purple being used motorway services. Lighting on standard roads is still usually black.

The green is not used by BT for any fibre, they still use grey.

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contractors laying cables, what is it?

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