Posts Tagged ‘buried cables’
No Fix
It’s official. The splice in the power wire to the barn was not the point of failure. Where does that leave things? Right where I didn’t want them. The electricians were unable to tell me where the break in the buried wire might be occurring.
For the time being, I have chosen to continue to rely on one “hot” line providing 120VAC to all the circuits in the barn. That is the way we have been operating since the problem initially occurred in January, and it has proved to be sufficient.
Since we haven’t been able to come up with an explanation for the failure of the one line, I’m concerned about the potential risk of the other line suffering the same fate, which would leave us with no power at all in the barn. The guys said they see this kind of thing with a surprising regularity.
Apparently, there is a lot more going on underground than I realized. The causes they’ve seen include tree roots, burrowing critters, and rocks pushing their way into the wires.
My plan, at this point, is to live with the risk. If the remaining power line suddenly fails, we will run an above-ground extension cord until we can get scheduled to have new wires bored beneath the driveway. I asked for a quote for the expense of this work and learned that although it wouldn’t be cheap, it would be less than I anticipated.
We will be saving up for that eventuality. Hopefully, we’ll have years to tuck away the funds.
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Thrice Foiled
I’m not afraid to admit when my methods fall short of success. I’m feeling a little sheepish that three different attempts have failed to locate the buried power line between the barn and the shop. My low-cost DIY method is lacking the technology of underground cable locators.
I have an eleven-year-old photo of the power cables coming out of the ground when they were accidentally cut. I know where the cables come out of the barn. What I am unsure of is how deep they are buried. I would be a lot more zealous about digging deeper if I was more confident I was in the right location.
My assumption that the cables –there are three– aren’t buried too deep is based on where they were cut in 2013. However, I didn’t witness the repair and reburying that occurred afterward.
First, I started a trench across the direction of the cables. The soil is heavy clay which makes the going difficult. Cyndie came to help and we discovered the ground on the slope above where I was digging was more forgiving dirt. We switched to probing the hill, meeting with several false alarms in the form of rocks.
After spending too much time getting nowhere, I gave in and decided to dig down at the spot where the cables come out of the barn so I could then trench along the cables to the location of the failed repair. I had hoped to avoid trenching across the lane behind the barn until we find out when an electrician can do a professional repair.
Doesn’t matter now because yesterday my digging beside the barn also proved futile. I got as deep as my arm could reach, which is the depth I know it should be from digging on the inside, but didn’t find the cables.
At this point, I’m thinking I should have spent money to rent a cable locator long ago because that’s probably what I’m going to end up doing if I can’t find those dang wires after one last try later this morning.
I can’t spend much time on it because we have two days left before our Iceland adventure vacation and there is grass to be mowed and compost piles to be moved among other miscellaneous things deserving my attention.
On the bright side, the weather for such projects has been glorious of late!
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Relative Something 