We buy storm-damaged conductor.

What water does under a jacket

Cable is not waterproof by construction, it is water resistant to a rating. A jacket keeps bulk water out of the insulation under normal conditions, for a defined period of exposure. Immersion is a different thing entirely: water enters at any unsealed end, migrates along the strands, and sits against the conductor where it cannot evaporate.

In medium voltage cable the shield is the vulnerable part. A copper tape or wire shield in contact with water corrodes, and a corroded shield is a fault path waiting to happen. In low voltage cable the damage shows up as discoloured copper and a jacket that has gone soft at the end. Aluminium conductor is less forgiving than copper in both cases.

Drying does not undo it. A wet conductor keeps corroding under a jacket that still looks intact, and the corrosion continues after the reel is moved indoors. That is why a storm lot is graded on what the water did rather than on how the cable looks a year later.

Harvey, Ike and the write-off pile

After a major flood, plants and contractors write off stock rather than test it. That is a rational decision at scale: the labour to inspect and dry thousands of feet of cable exceeds the usefulness of most of it. What gets written off is not always damaged, and what is damaged is not always obvious.

Insurance paperwork often follows the material into the yard. A write-off list with descriptions and quantities is useful, but it describes what was insured rather than what is inside the jacket. A line item saying 15 kV, 3/C, 500 MCM is a starting point, not a conclusion, and the physical review still starts at the ends.

Salt water changes the arithmetic. Coastal facilities in Texas City, Galveston and Freeport deal with chloride ingress, which attacks copper faster than fresh water and leaves crystalline deposits in the strands. A cable that sat in bay water for a week is graded more conservatively than one that sat in a flooded yard out at Katy.

• Fresh water or salt water, if that is known
• Depth the material sat in, and for how long
• Whether the write-off list matches the reels present
• Which reels stayed above the waterline
• Whether silt or mud is still in the wrap

Separating salvageable stock from metal recovery

Start with the ends. A sealed end, a taped end or a factory cap means the interior may be dry. An open end with discoloured strands, a swollen jacket or water visible between the conductors means the cable is wet through, and no amount of sun will dry the inside of a 500 MCM conductor.

Then look at reels that never went under. A reel submerged to the hub is wet at the outer layer and possibly dry further in, which is why the wrap count and the position of the waterline matter. A reel that stayed above the flood line is not a storm lot at all, whatever the paperwork says, and it should be described as ordinary surplus.

Separate the groups on the ground before photographing them. Wet and dry material in one frame cannot be reviewed, and no buyer will assume the good reels are the ones on top. The sorting takes an hour and changes the answer for the whole lot. Do it before the truck is booked rather than while the driver waits.

• Cut ends: sealed, capped, taped or open
• Waterline position on a partly submerged reel
• Jacket: soft, blistered, split or still firm
• Shield condition in medium voltage constructions
• Silt and odour in the wrap, which follow the water

Selling a storm lot without overstating it

Say what the water did. The street, the depth, how long the material sat, and whether it was fresh or salt water. A buyer can work with that. What a buyer cannot work with is a lot described as surplus when it spent four days under a bayou, because the first cut end settles the question anyway.

Split the description if the condition is split on the ground. Dry reels, wet reels and obviously ruined material are three different reviews. Presenting them together usually means the whole lot is valued at the worst of the three, which is not what a seller holding two good reels wants.

Photograph the waterline on any reel that was partly submerged. It explains more than the description does.