Kidron Electric Inc. (Kidron, Ohio) has been setting poles and meters almost as long as the company has been in business. But in Apple Creek, Ohio, 6 miles west of Kidron, the 70-year-old company was faced with the different challenge of locating an AEP Ohio secondary line on private property on the customer side of the meter.

AEP Ohio, a subsidiary of American Electric Power (Columbus, Ohio), owns and operates 46,344 miles of distribution lines and 9226 circuit miles of transmission in Ohio and the northern panhandle of West Virginia. The AEP subsidiary serves 1.5 million customers in 920 communities including Apple Creek, population 973.

The challenge for Apple Creek was avoiding AEP's service line. The line ran almost parallel to the span of poles that Kidron was preparing to install next to the new Fairlawn Mennonite Church construction site. The crew estimated that the service drop was buried 36 inches and spanned about 300 yards from the utility pole on Emerson Street to the new church building. The power line crossed the same area where several of the poles were marked for digging.

In most cases, before any excavation occurs, the first thing the Kidron crew does is call Ohio Utilities Protection Service, the state's one-call notification service. But, because the job was on private property, the crew decided to locate the only utility that had previously been installed, that being AEP Ohio's electric line.

Locator Advances

Up until two years ago, Kidron had used a variety of locators that typically were only able to perform one function at a time. For example, if the operator decided to insert a tracer tape inside a non-conductive conduit, and induce and pick up the signal on the tracer tape, he or she used one device. If the locator was attaching directly to the target phone or electric cable and inducing a signal, the crew would use a different locator.

At a contractors' meeting, Kidron saw a demonstration of a completely new type of locator. This multi-functional locator could pick up any common frequencies from any range of transmitters at the push of a button. RIDGID (Elyria, Ohio) has been manufacturing the SeekTech SR-20 for three years. RIDGID is typically known for its hand tools, many of which Kidron has used in the past. The main reason Kidron purchased this locator was because of the many features available at one time.

The SR-20 basically has three modes: passive, inductive and direct connect. It not only traces transmitted frequencies, but it also offers advanced passive modes that allow users to search for other metallic lines that might be present. It also has a unique mapping display and audible tones. The receiver provides left-right direction arrows and constant digital depth. As the operator gets closer to the target line, the numbers get higher in real time.

Sweep the Area

The second thing the Kidron crew does on every job is sweep the area with the locator in the passive trace mode. In this case, this was mainly near the utility pole to make sure there were no other utilities in the ground. The telephone and cable TV risers had been installed at the pole, but there were no signs of anything in the area, except for the service drop. AEP's service drop had been installed early to the church for the construction project.

Energized lines are not something to mess with if at all necessary, so the third step in this locating process was to decide which method to use to locate the buried cable, the conductive or the inductive procedure.

The inductive or direct-connect procedure includes de-energizing the conductor. Crews disconnect the conductor from the load side of the breaker to ensure safety. The lead from the transmitter box is then attached directly to the bare wire of the utility being located. The other lead from the transmitter is attached to a ground stake, planted perpendicular to the target line. When the current is transmitted through the lead wire, the locator recognizes this unique signal and interprets the necessary data via digital gauges and graphics on the locator.

Kidron mainly uses the conductive or direct-connect mode when other utilities are nearby to minimize bleed-off and signal distortion. In very dry soil conditions, which make the soil non-conductive, crews sometimes pour water around the grounding rod to increase conductivity. On the Apple Creek job, Kidron selected the inductive clamp mode, because it is less intrusive and easy to connect.