Underground Cable Layout

Apparently, since you can't find any, they must not exist. So, here's your chance to establish the baseline for such a drawing.

I like, " boxes (representing the buildings or plant units) and joined them by straight and curvy lines" myself.

Sorta depends on why you need the drawing, doesn't it?

On the farm, we use photographs taken from planes and mark them with EXACT locations of Fiber Optic lines, natural gas mains, Phone lines, drainage tile grids, etc. in our fields. One mistake with a deep earth sub soiler could cause millions of dollars of damage in less than a second. The hand drawn maps leave contours and other landmarks out that the pictures catch every time. Also, with a picture, there is no room for a mistake in scale either.

And if you don't know exactly where the underground cables run, then you need to get the services of someone who performs underground facilities locating in your area. They will have appropriate equipment which works by detecting an RF signal injected on the metallic cable, conduit, or pipe they are tracing. They usually mark it out on the ground surface using little flags or spray marking paint.

From there you can take measurements and transfer to a scaled drawing of your facility property, to get a permanent record. In the future, when any new cables or other underground facilities are added, just edit your drawing.

I have been doing underground cable projects for the last 25 years. there are no perticular layout for the u/g cables.

you can develop a legend showing different line styles for the different voltages or different cables for different services

the drawing on which you are marking the cables should be geographically real and to the scale.

indicate the route of cable with actual measurements from the nearest permanant structures.

you can also indicate the depth of burial if available.

I would like to add the following tips for developing a proper Cable Layout Drawing:

1.Make a complete list of cables to be laid in atabular form clearly defining the source & destination equipment/device,route,type,size,estimated length etc.

2.Each cable should be allocated with a unique tag No.

3.Make aEquipment Lay out Drg. Drawn to scale showing the location of each eqpt./Switchgear panel boards.

4.Mark the Cable route between the source and destination eqpt./device .Identify the cables which can be laid partly together ina common trench.

5.Mark the cable tag Nos. of each cable at the origin & destination points as well as at regular itervals along the route.

S PRADHAN

Thanks for the suggestion people. But it is very surprising to know that no Standard U/G Cable diagram exists. I thought there would. Very surprising indeed!

Actaully we required the drawings because digging and cable laying is carried out quite frequently in our residential area as new buildings/ porta cabins are being added. To provide them with electrical power, new cables need to be layed. So to avoid any damage to previous cables, we needed the drawing.

I made my drawing in excel (we dont have AUTCAD) roughly to scale and instead of drawing each cable I sort of represented the marked route through which the cables have been most likely to be layed from the switchgear room to the indivisual buildings. Most of this has been done by assumptions; by searching damaged cable markers, looking for hints of backfilling and observing the position of main breaker panels on the walls of the individual buildings.

Overall it wasnt much techyy, but it works nonetheless. Next time i'll keep in mind the valuables sugesstion poured out. Thanx.