We buy URD cable.

How URD is built, at 15 kV and 25 kV

The construction is simple by medium voltage standards: a stranded aluminium conductor, a semi-conducting conductor shield, cross-linked polyethylene insulation, and a neutral made of copper wires laid concentrically over the insulation. Some cable has a jacket over that neutral and some does not. The jacketed version is the one that survives twenty years in Gulf Coast soil.

Sizes run from 2 AWG up to 1000 MCM, with 1/0 and 2/0 aluminium carrying most residential loops and larger sizes feeding three-phase runs and commercial pads. The neutral is either full size or reduced, and the jacket print tells you which. That ratio matters to a buyer because it changes how much copper is in a reel that is mostly aluminium.

Developer and utility surplus in Harris County

A subdivision is built on a forecast. The utility or the developer's contractor orders cable for the whole phase, installs the loops the houses need, and keeps the rest on a reel. When the next phase is redesigned, moved or sold, that remainder sits. Reels that were opened for one pull and never used again are the common case, not the exception.

Utility work produces the other half. A reconductor or a riser replacement leaves cut lengths with the neutral already trimmed. Storm stock that ages out of a rotation comes back as full reels. Contractors working under a utility contract return what they did not install, and the return is often a single reel with a tag and a hand-written footage note.

• Full reels from a phase that was replatted or sold
• Opened reels with one pull taken off the length
• Offcuts from padmount to meter pedestal loops
• Reels returned by a utility contractor at close-out
• Aged storm stock rotated out of a utility yard
• Unjacketed URD with the neutral exposed

Tags on URD reels are frequently the only record of footage. Photograph them before the reel is moved, because a reel that has been sitting outside for two summers will not have a readable tag afterwards.

What comes back from a padmount

A padmount transformer is fed from one side and feeds service laterals from the other, and every one of those runs is a cut length when the pad is relocated or a loop is reconfigured. Typical pieces run from thirty to eighty feet of 1/0 or 2/0 aluminium, cut at both ends, with the neutral and insulation exposed where the terminations were made.

Those pieces are workable cable. The questions are whether the insulation was damaged during removal, whether water sat in an open end, and whether the concentric neutral was cut back so far that the cable is no longer useful as a neutral-carrying run. A pad loop that was cut clean and coiled on site is worth reviewing; one dragged out by a backhoe usually is not.

Length matters less here than it does on a feeder. A forty foot pad loop in good condition is a normal piece to buy, because the next pad relocation will need exactly that kind of run. Coils that were rolled rather than folded keep their insulation round, and round insulation is what a splice kit is designed to sit on.

• Insulation free of gouges, ring cuts and backhoe damage
• Neutral intact, or cut back evenly rather than torn
• Ends sealed or taped, not open to the weather
• Jacket continuous where the cable is jacketed
• Coil diameter large enough that the cable was not kinked

Cable that was energised and cut out of service should be identified as such. It is bought, but it is graded as used rather than surplus.

Sending a URD lot

Give the voltage class, the conductor size, the neutral ratio if it is printed, the approximate footage and whether the cable is jacketed. A photograph of the jacket print and one of the reel tag answers most of it. For a dug-up lot, add a photograph of one cut end and say how the cable was removed.

Access is the other half. URD reels are heavy and usually stored at the back of a yard behind other material, so say what can reach them and whether a crane or a forklift is on site. If the reel has been sitting in standing water since the last storm, that is worth mentioning before anyone plans a route.