Upgrade Service cable?

J

JoeNorm

Senior Member
Location
WA
Residential work. Customer has his whole yard dug up for water system and septic upgrades. I will be running power for both and upgrading a run to a detached garage. The trench has uncovered the service entrance cable run to the main house. It's URD run in water pipe with various broken sections where it is exposed. Likely around 50-60 years old He has asked if this is a good time to upgrade this service.

While the time would be now for the upgrade, I wonder if the expense is warranted? I figure it will be around $4K to re-run the 150ish feet into the house.

The URD in water pipe doesn't bother me much seeing as it's direct burial wire(the pipe is better protection than nothing). But should it bother me?

What would be your recommendation to the customer in this situation?
 
P

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
At 50 plus years old it might be time to look at replacing it.

I would not be worried about the pipe it is in. It is just a protective sleeve. If it has a few bad spots it does not matter much

Is there some way you can inspect the urd itself? Maybe run an insulation test. I realize an insulation test is probably close to $500 but if you have the ability to do it and the skill set and experience to properly evaluate it, you might get some kind of value from it to help your customer decide. Or not. It does not prove the cable won't fail next week.

These kind of things come down to pay me now or pay me later. Later might be a year or fifty years. No way to tell with any certainty.
 
Bill Annett

Bill Annett

Senior Member
Location
Wheeling, WV
Occupation
Retired ( 2020 ) City Electrical inspector
Knowing that someone has electrical conductors in water pipe or drain pipe would bother me. If someone down the road is digging and sees a drain pipe or a water line, I would think that they are thinking that they don’t want to damage that conduit but if they do, no big deal, I will only get wet. That water line is a big deal, it could kill them. At the least I would install some Electrical line burred below caution tape on the pipe and above the pipe.

Thanks, Bill
 
tortuga

tortuga

Code Historian
Location
Oregon
Occupation
Electrical Design
Had one like that. The expert backhoe operator found the lateral and had it in his bucket still hot, along with the old copper phone lines.
Utility did a temp repair while we came back later and put in a 3" conduit for the service lateral and a couple of 1" conduits for communications, utility had some updated standards for hitting the pole that required a special pull box nobody sells other than another local EC 6' off the pole, so might want to check on that also.
A side effect was the customer got fiber to the home which she said was worth every penny as it was a large family with lots of internet problems.
 
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