Cable Fault Location Company

[ChrisJH]

Hi All

I am hoping for some advice. I am currently living in South Africa but am looking at moving back home to the UK. I have saved up enough money to purchase a cable fault location machine and was hoping to start my own little business. I haven't bought any equipment as yet and am still doing research. I suppose the initial info for me to explore would be demand for this service, competition for said service and the general feeling toward it as business opportunity whether it be HV,MV or LV. Can anyone tell me whether this would be a good business opportunity? Is there a demand for such a service in the UK? Is there a lot of competition in this industry? Etc. I am looking at running a one vehicle business and will most likely be based in the North West but am able to travel where ever the service is needed. Do you think I can make a decent living within such an industry? Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and kind regards,
Chris

 

[phil d]

if you are going for decent gear and can use it properly then yes I suppose there is a market,the key is knowing how to use it,a few years ago we had an issue on an MV cable in a chemical storage facility,a company came out and "located" the fault,after digging up a large area of specialist concrete we found no issues with the cable.the fault was in a cable pit with a removable cover some 30 mtrs away.I don't know the final outcome financially, but the concrete alone was about 4 grand for the replacement materials ,plus the hire of excavation equipment and labour for opening up then reinstating the concrete.That is a big hit for any company to take and lets face it if you say "dig the hole there" and you're wrong then you'll be the one taking the hit.A good idea yes,but it will need to be well planned and organised.

 

[misssweden]

Just out of interest, what kind of cable fault gadget where you thinking of getting?

 

[apprentice87]

The DNO have their own..... As Misssweden will tell you....

john...

 

[Blue Duck]

Canoeboy's favourite Website

 

[Tony S]

Get a thumper, brute force and ignorance wins every time!

To be honest it’s going to be a difficult area to break in to, there’s established companies that people like me (old) have used for years. You’ll have to topple them off their perch.

There’s also my brute force and bloody minded obstinate method of cable fault finding. 450A fuses on RB phases kept blowing but I couldn’t get in to burn to a solid fault. I was getting fed up so it was time for something drastic, 1½ x ¼” copper bar with a 1200A ACB as back up. It found the fault, it lifted the ground along with a tree which caught fire and blew the fault apart so it didn’t trip the ACB.

At some time in the past a switchroom had been demolished and the feeder cable jointed through. The trees roots eventually pulled the joint apart.

 

[Evans Electric]

Chris JH     to be honest  I think you may struggle to earn a living doing that .

As said abve ,  the electrical distriibution companies will have their own as will British Telecom , Gas , Water etc .

Building companies would not but they often consult cable plans etc.      Its not something I'd think of going into to be honest .

I'm guessing you would need some massive insurance cover also .  If you go for it I wish you luck .

 

[kerching]

TDRs are the way forwards....i have an old BICC faultman with blocking filter

and there is a dual/comparative trace TDR built into my JDSU HST3000. Saves a lot of time....you didnt know you needed one until,you use one

just reflecting

 

[Evans Electric]

Get a thumper, brute force and ignorance wins every time!

To be honest it’s going to be a difficult area to break in to, there’s established companies that people like me (old) have used for years. You’ll have to topple them off their perch.

There’s also my brute force and bloody minded obstinate method of cable fault finding. 450A fuses on RB phases kept blowing but I couldn’t get in to burn to a solid fault. I was getting fed up so it was time for something drastic, 1½ x ¼” copper bar with a 1200A ACB as back up. It found the fault, it lifted the ground along with a tree which caught fire and blew the fault apart so it didn’t trip the ACB.

At some time in the past a switchroom had been demolished and the feeder cable jointed through. The trees roots eventually pulled the joint apart.

Tony  are you related to the  forman at a contractor I worked for in the 70,s      If he attended a breakdown or machine fault first he  would  often put a bolt or whatever in place of the control fuse ,  when fault occurred , the transformer would melt , order a replacement and send me to fit it .  

The original fault was still there and I'd cop for sorting it as he would always be "Too busy" . 

 

[ChrisJH]

Hi Guys

Thank you for all the responses and advice. It seems as if it is leaning slightly toward the negative side with a little positive. Maybe a few more comments would change this but lets see. To be honest misssweden I haven't done too much research on the equipment as yet. I was hoping to see the general feeling towards the 'opportunity' before I got too carried away. I have had a look at the IUP Fault Wizard coupled with the Universal Locator UL30. The company I got this information from also offer intensive training on this equipment.

Does anyone know how much this service would go for in the UK? I could potentially look at making this just a part of my business and include other services as well and not use the cable fault location as my primary/sole income? Any thoughts?

Thanks again,

Chris

 

[Andy™]

if you dont already know how to fault find, youre not going to get far

 

[ChrisJH]

It is not the first time that someone has said If you don't have any experience you will struggle to break into the market . Why is this? The equipment I have been quoted on seems extremely straight forward and easy to use. The display shows the distance in feet or meters to the fault location as well as the fault type. The system also has a cycle mode (thumb mode) for use in pinpointing the fault with a headset listening device. I have 13 years experience in the electrical industry which should help?

 

[misssweden]

Chris, I really don't mean to be rude or anything and I do work in a bit of a different field from most others on here, but there is more to fault finding than just using the equipment. From my experience with the kit I use at work, yes I can use it, but do I get as good results as the guys who has done it for years? No. 

 

[Andy™]

It is not the first time that someone has said If you don't have any experience you will struggle to break into the market . Why is this? The equipment I have been quoted on seems extremely straight forward and easy to use. The display shows the distance in feet or meters to the fault location as well as the fault type. The system also has a cycle mode (thumb mode) for use in pinpointing the fault with a headset listening device. I have 13 years experience in the electrical industry which should help?

it will be straight forward and easy to use if you know what you are doing.

connecting a few leads & pressing test is one thing, knowing what it is telling you is completely different

 

[ChrisJH]

Thanks guys. Appreciate your opinions

 

[Tony S]

You can do all the “intensive” training courses you like, you won’t gain experience.

There’s a 11kV cable in the picture below. Between the start and finish there are four cable types and ten joints. (I put four joints in and used two types of cable.) Using pulse reflection each joint shows as a fault, each cable type has a different characteristic. Older distribution systems rarely have a continuous cable run and need experience to in interpreting the test results.

If you think you’re going to get paid for finding a fault on a text book cable run you are dreaming.

Sorry for being so brutal but my advice is think again.

 

[Davethsparky]

It is not the first time that someone has said If you don't have any experience you will struggle to break into the market . Why is this? The equipment I have been quoted on seems extremely straight forward and easy to use. The display shows the distance in feet or meters to the fault location as well as the fault type. The system also has a cycle mode (thumb mode) for use in pinpointing the fault with a headset listening device. I have 13 years experience in the electrical industry which should help?

If it was that simple then everyone would be doing it themselves and there would be no market for specialist fault locating companies.

the first thing I notice is that you seem to be assuming that there will be only one fault in a cable, and that that one fault will adhere to to a specific characteristic which the machine will recognise. What will it do if there are multiple faults or a fault which does conform strictly to the textbook definitions? 

 

[phil d]

I've worked in telecoms as well as electrical,both for BT and Virgin.I remember one job when I'd just started at VM,I was still in the "puppywalking phase" going around with a guy who'd worked there for some time.Well we went to a call where the house was already cabled and the new tenant wanted to use the service,they'd put the links back in at the box but the guy had no service.My colleague asked me to test it and using a meter I had from my previous job I concluded that the cable was damaged in several places and needed replacing,the area manager was adamant I was wrong,what did I know,I'd only been there 5 minutes.Well they messed with it for ages and it wouldn't work,in the end they admitted defeat and pulled out the cable in an attempt to drag a new one in on the back of it.It was at this point they discovered that the cable had been cut in 3 places.When I was at BT before TDR's became widely available we used an ohmeter to detect cable faults,this was basically a wheatstone bridge and you got the readings then used a slide rule to work out the distance to the fault.The only problem was there were different figures for different size cables and if you had 2 different sizes connected together then your distances to fault were a mile out.Sometimes you'd have 2 faults and when you took the readings at each end naturally the figures didn't add up,this could lead to the inexperienced operator chasing his tail for hours.lol

 

[ISSWWW]

No, this is my favourite website

http://isswww.co.uk

And they offer Megger, another forum sponsor - who do cable fault locators

And

http://isswww.co.uk/megger-tdr1000-3-tdr-time-domain-reflector

Not forgetting

http://isswww.co.uk/megger-tdr2000-3p-advanced-dual-channel-tdr-time-domain-reflector

Thanks Canoe, and we don't put all our Fault Finding equipment on the site, we sell Megger (Seba), T&R , Baur , SMC although TBH T&R are a horrible company to deal with (very arrogant)

We deal with quite a few companies offering this kind of service and they do seem relatively busy, however these are highly qualified, experienced folk with lots of industry connections.