Early warning cable theft alarm

Those rats! There's no excuse for what they're doing. I've a mind to treat them like the rats that they are:

Put a skirt-like hood on the poles. I don't know how high your poles are but this will make it difficult for those thieves, maybe give you and the guys time to respond.

Alternatively, I'd put boody traps on the poles like sharp shards on the poles, breakaway footholds, something that will go bang when they touch it, etc. This won't stop them but it'll either delay them or give you enough warning for you to respond.

You really cannot booby trap the lines as this might hurt repair workers. Perhaps looking at a way to mark the cable so if it turns up in a recycling shop, they can be charged with receiving stolen property.

Reminds me of a Detroit school I did some survey work at. The roof top air conditioning units looked like they had been hit by tornados. Thieves had climbed on top the building, cut open the units and cut out the copper condensers. The units worth thousands of dollars each were trashed for a few hundred dollars worth of copper. The school twice had its 3 ft wide anodized aluminum facial panels stolen. The third time the perpetrators were caught. Turned out to be a scrap metal company located two blocks away.

Unless the police go after the people buying the stolen property, it will be very hard to stop the theft. For some reason, a lot of people, who would never steal anything, have no qualms about buying something they know is stolen. In my mind there is no moral difference between the thief or the person who knowingly buys stolen property.

Unfortunately, in California, booby traps are illegal and if a thief is killed the booby trapper will be charged with manslaughter or murder. If the thief lives he can file a civil suit for damages -- AND WIN. How sick is that? This is even true if the booby trap is inside your own home.

Yeh..but you can shoot 'em? Right.

Unfortunately -- No In CA -- Not unless there is a direct and immediate threat to your safety or life. And you better be able to prove it without a doubt. It's almost like the law is on the criminal's side.

This is the kind of garbage that makes me happy to live in Canada. Back on the farm a "no trespassing or hunting" sign meant that "the guy on the other side of the fence has a gun".

My wife is from Switzerland where everyone goes in the military and then takes their equipment home with them. Crime rates are low...who in their right mind would try and steal or vandalize when every household is armed to the teeth and trained!?!?!?

Amen to that.

So you have the right to 'Bear' arms but not shoot 'em!

In UK the right to bear arms just means we can wear short sleeved shirts in the office!

Sure seems that way!

Ya can shoot 'em ya just better be right and be able to prove it.

My father remembers the requests from England in the early days of WWII for American sportsmen to send their weapons there to help arm the country against German invasion.

Those look much like varmint barriers on wires. But the rats would probably wind up recycling those, too.

We have the same problem here with underground cables. They come along in a 4*4, open the manhole cover and attach a rope and pull! they also break into the HT transformers, shut them down, and steal the bobbins! It's starting to be a big problem here! With copper being very expensive on the global market, people can't afford to replace their cables, and the whole economy is suffering. for example, a farm which is out of the way my have a few km of copper cable at sizes of 50mm² or 95mm² or bigger, these cables cost a fortune to replace and in one night they can be stripped! The farmer looses his produce, the sales of tomato's drop and people loose their farms!

Possible solution, On the end of each run put an alarm so that when power is cut you can all run to that section of line and kick seven bails of , well you get the idea!

Just don't make the manhole covers out of Aluminium. One small team managed to steal 10,000 of the new Aluminium alloy telecoms manhole covers. I mean, really, aluminium is not that expensive (as far as I am aware, no one was killed fortunately).

I'd say you need to detect the pole climbing activity... but however that is done...it musnt be obvious, else they'll bypass it.

Or maybe grease the poles.

Maybe remove the middle portion of each pole so that they can't climb! (sorry...silly joke!)

I hope you're not on your bosses computer, He will spit the dummy if he finds out!

Nah...I only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday !

(I'm not as daft as I look!)

Say! Greasing the poles is not a bad idea!

If this is the way you want to go, I'd suggest greasing the poles about six feet up so that he gets hgh enough before he finds out how slippery it is. 'Should scare those rats out of their skins!

I concur, greasing the pole is most likely the simplest and best option to start with.

Grease pole? Wouldn't that make it easier to set the pole on fire?

???????? They are probably soaked in flamable preservative anyhow..

But who was going to set them on fire?

Just be sure you have the concurrence of the public utility operator. They will have to contend with your measures whenever service work is required!

Have there been any reports of stealing the high lines as on cross country lines...........yet?

I think vibration sensors on the poles will assure you can detect the crooks.

Five hundred poles make it interesting to keep the price down.

Possibly just a loud battery powered alarm on each post will convince them to bother someone else.

Gordon

What about making the first 2 metres of cable too thick to cut: a piece of split drain pipe filled with concrete would do it. Just the drainpipe (or some cheaper plumbing plastic pipe) would slow them down if it was secured well enough to the post/start of the cable.

Or, much simpler: tin cans tied to the middle of each cable. They should make a noise when they fall, and will make the thieves easy to follow unless they take the time to cut them off.

Off the cuff, I can think of several ways to booby trap the pole. Then watch for the flash and call the medics.

I totally agree...

A easier system would be a vehicle ID System.

A sticker on the bumper or windshield would be scanned and no alarm.

Sticker on residents cars.

No Sticker, Alarm goes off.

Scanner on a timer so it is only on during the hours thiefs are most likely to strike.

You would have the scanner at the entrances to the development.

The system would be like the ones they use for Parking Lots, Toll Booths, etcetera.

Lots of ways to get creative here:

• MEMS accelerometers on the poles could detect climbing but the expensive part would be the radios necessary to collect the info. I suppose it could be solar powered (to charge a small battery) and then just have a loud peizo alarm that would draw attention.
• if the neighborhood is relatively secluded a laser trip across the entry point (when they drive in, assuming they drive) could be attached to a radio module on the same frequency as your handheld radios....on a timer this could alert anyone of someone entering at odd times. It might be annoying to get scared out of bed just to see the pizza delivery guy go by.
• Big dogs tied to the power poles. ;)
• thumbtacks all over the pole...tough to see in the dark and ooooh so pointy.
  

Why not encourage bee,s or wasps to nest half way up the pole, its eco friendly and will prove effective. The theifs can be identified when checking in to hospital for treatment. Natural cures are the best and the bees or wasps can polinate flowers when they arent busy preventing theft.

Oooh! Bees! That's a good idea... I love the idea of a vandal being stuck to a pole while the little devils start to swarm...

Another natural remedy.

POISION IVY.

Grow it all over your poles. And only hire people immune to it for service.

The perfect solution...an accelerometer on the pole to detect a climber and then an alarm IN the bees nest to shoo them all out at the point-of-no-return on the pole where some poor sucker can only jump and pray!

Quite a long time ago I made a proximity switch,
- which I think is all you need.
(circuits etc available from local electronics)

A band of metal (wire or strap) wrapped around and some
way up the poles will trigger an alarm, eg. at top of the pole
when someone is within a few inches of the metal.

Make the alarm loud enough to "wake the dead" and,
if it doesn't wake the neighbourhood, it will certainly make
the culprits jump. (clear off)

A few of these can be interspersed with many identical, but
dummy alarms, to keep the costs down.
They also are not harmful to anyone. (only sleepers!)

Hope this helps.

jt.

Obviously your local public utility does not have metered usage remote logging or they would be able to rapidly detect loss of contact and take care of the theft problems themselves. On the other hand the loss of cable is a major inconvenience to the home owners, and a major expense for the public utility.

I assume they cut off only the few spans they are intent on taking at the moment, cut them loose and run to a truck or trucks that are used to haul the loot. Then repeat till they have all they can haul.

I don't know how public reaction would be in your country but folks here get upset when such antics cost all concerned. Write letters to the editor. Call the TV stations. Raise a stink! Get the entire area "up in arms." Insist law enforcement get on the job! It must be going on in many places and it is a disgrace your national government authorities should be involved in to. Write, Call, Complain, Insist on action. The more the grass roots get stirred up the sooner something effective will be accomplished.

Make sure they can't recognize you. Wear ski mask and put their heads in a bag when you catch them. Take them to a quit place and with a bar of Ivory soap in sock and carefully and thoughtfully explain to each and every one the error in their ways. If there is any doubt give them another lesson. Letting one watch and telling the others he ratted them out works really well to. It's not PC but they won't be back to your neighborhood. gc

Encourage every other resident or so to obtain a dog from the animal shelter, train it to bark only at strangers.

Thieves and those up to mischief are reluctant to be anywhere around a bunch of noisy barking dogs.

Problem solved, stops the copper cable theft but also other forms of thievery.

Yeh..but they'll just come and steal the dogs...

"Yeh..but they'll just come and steal the dogs..."

OK. Snarling Wild Cats!