How a Utility Network Works, and What the Plans and Marker Plates Tell You

0:00[no speech] "It's hanging at this end." "Oh, well." "We are live." "See you soon, guys." "Just give it a few minutes for everyone to, to jump in." "Excuse me." [coughing]

0:35"On that previous session, guys, I couldn't see the attendees, so I'm guessing we might have some people that were on the morning session with us this afternoon." "Well, we're just waiting for everyone to join the room, guys, so, um, you can look at our pretty faces and my isolation haircut while we wait for everyone to, to get in the room." "I think if we do this again, we could probably do with a bigger gap between the two so people got a chance to go off and grab a cup of coffee." "Well, that's your fault for making the one this morning run too long." "Mine's empty."

1:00[no speech] "Guys, just as you're joining us, if, if you have done a session before, just, just stick in the comments which ones you've done with us, to give us an idea. Um, we've done the power, radio, the Genny, the, the one this morning. Just, just let, let us know. It's hard to keep track of who's been on what."

1:30[no speech] "Daniel's done all of them. Brilliant." "Yeah?" "So, Daniel's done all of them, so. Can you see the chat box, surely?" "I can now, yeah. I couldn't see it this morning." "So, we've, we've, we've got a few repeaters here, I think."

2:00[no speech] "Is that Nuno? Is this his fourth session?" "Cheers, Nuno. Couple." "First, first time for some of them, so. Well, I think, I think a lot of you have done it before, so we'll keep the intro..."

2:30"So, just while we're waiting for everyone to jump in, guys, I think we've got, um, um, I think we've got everyone kind of who's coming in, in the room now, so we've got quite a good turnout. So, thanks for joining us, guys. Um, for the, for the, for the very few that's, that's not been on one before, my name's Pete Atchison, and, um, I work with Sygma, which is up there behind me."

3:00"We're, um, um, a specialist training provider in utility detection, so we do a range of courses from, uh, one-day CAT and Genny courses, um, we do a five-day utility mapping course in association with The Survey School, and, and Steve, who's, who's with us today, um, is the, is the, uh, teacher for, for that course down at The Survey School. Um, Steve's my colleague, obviously. Um, so we do a whole range of courses all around utility detection, um, and we, we do some of the higher-level utility mapping qualifications as well. Um, so a lot of it is practical-based, so we're putting these webinars on, guys, just to share some of our knowledge with you."

3:30"Uh, very quickly, my personal background, um, this is like Steve's, really, but he's been in it longer. Um, all I've done is, is utility location. My working life, I started with Radiodetection, who make the kit, when I was, I think I was just turned 20, so 19, 20. And, and Steve was actually my boss, his first job there all them, all them years ago, and, and we're still working together. So, Steve's done it a lot longer than I have, and Steve's taught me everything that, that I know. Um, and I will let Steve introduce himself, as well as the, the..."

4:00"Just, your, your mic's not really, um, lovely, Pete. Aren't you, aren't you handier with the mic right now, are you?" "No, no." "That's clearer." "I'll just move it a bit closer, shall I? Yeah." "Yeah, that's better. Can you hear me okay?" "Yeah." "Yeah, uh, for you guys on the morning session, thanks for, um, putting up with me again. Um, for you guys that haven't, or not, um, met me before or been on one of my courses, I started in this business, um, in the 1970s."

4:30"My dad was, um, he was one of the first franchises, uh, or franchisees for Electrolocation, um, which was a utility surveying franchise. So, that's how I started out, as a utility surveyor straight out of school. Um, Electrolocation went on to become Radiodetection. It changed from a, a franchise surveying company into a manufacturing sales organization. I don't need to introduce you guys to Radiodetection, everybody knows that company. Um, and like, like Pete, it's all I've ever done. Straight out of school into surveying, into using the kit, um, training, helping develop. Lived in the States for four and a half years, worked all over Europe, so, um, um, sad admission, but this is all I've ever done. I'm also getting a bit too old to do anything else, so, um, this session, guys, is, if I put the screen share on there, if I'm doing it properly..."

5:00[no speech] "So, so what, once again, guys, this is again, a snippet, if you like, a section of the five-day, um, utility course that we run. And as I mentioned to some of you on the session this morning, I honestly believe this is one of the most important parts of it. Um, it, it's a section on how, um, how a utility network works, how it gets from the power station to, to your house. And, and interestingly, what I find, a lot of the surveyors we train are a bit put off by this section initially. They want to get stuck into using the kit. Um, but, but when they've been through it, they realize how valuable it is."

5:30"It's, it's so much easier to locate that network when you, when you understand how it should work, what connects to what, and high voltage, low voltage, all that kind of stuff. So, um, I hope you get quite a lot out of it. I'm going to have to leave halfway through. Um, my wife's got home with the kids, trying to home school them, and I've been in the office for a few days, and they're driving her absolutely mad, so I'm under instructions to get back and help sort out our little terrorists. So, I'm, I'm going to leave you in Steve's hands at some point halfway through this. Um, so, I..."

6:00"We'll pass you over to Steve, who will get, again, guys, sorry, I should have said, I keep, I keep forgetting that some guys are new here. The way the software works is there's a little bit of a delay, so you hear what we say about seven seconds to 10 seconds after we say it. We want to keep this session interactive, so we'll, we'll be asking you questions, and you're more than welcome to ask us questions and ask us to expand on things, but just bear in mind that, that delay. So, it does mean there's a few pauses in between if we do ask you a question, we kind of have to wait for that delay to, to, till we start seeing your answers. So, so just bear with us, we're making the best out of the software. But please do get involved, keep it interactive, stick some comments in there if you like, um, and I hope you enjoy the show. Over to you, Steve."

6:30"Yeah, thanks, Pete. Um, I started out in this business as a teenager, obviously working with the old man. He'd, um, he'd been doing it for a couple of years at this point, um, and the one thing that used to drive me mad was we used to walk..."

7:10show. Over to you, Steve. Yeah, thanks, Pete. Um,

7:15When I first started down this business as a teenager, obviously working with the old man, he'd he'd been doing it for a couple of years at this point. Um, and the one thing that used to drive me mad was we used to walk over the site. In hindsight and with the benefit of many, many years now experience, he was absolutely right. You kind of got to feel for your site. I appreciate that a lot of the surveyors nowadays don't have a lot of time. Um, one of the jokes we have on the surveyor course is how much time do you have to do this job? In our day, we we were fairly blessed with um having plenty of time to do the job, but

7:56walking over your site, getting an idea of how things are, and it's what we call locating without a locator. The five-day course that Pete keeps referring to, um, myself and Mike Langton devised this. It was originally a three-week course, which um kind of got condensed into five days, and we're now taking snippets out of it and putting on these webinar sessions. Um, and it's tough to try and, this is only my second one, the first one this morning, it's tough to try and explain stuff um without any kind of visual aids, and a lot of times we're actually going out onto site and explaining it, but

8:28I'll do my best. Um, chuck your thoughts, ideas up. On a other number of slides, I'm going to have to crack on. Um, I'll try and skip through quite a few of these um, but it is very useful to understand how your networks, and this is obviously based on the UK. We don't really have time to go into how the US and other countries connect. I don't know if we've got any um anybody from the US yet. If they are, they're either up very late or um up very early. But I notice some of you guys, I think, maybe in Australia up late, but uh anyway, let's try and crack on with this.

8:58If I can get it working again. So, this is predominantly obviously UK, and um if any of you guys are from Ireland, Southern Ireland, believe it or not, it is um it is somewhat different over there. Oops. So, we're going to cover in this section,

9:17as Pete said, how electricity comes from a power station, and the background there, you see probably the most iconic power station in the UK, how it gets from there to plug, how gas gets from the North Sea to powering your gas cooker boiler, how water comes from a reservoir to come to your tap, how it goes the other way from your drains back to the water treatment works, how comms works, cable TV, broadband,

9:44and then obviously other in this country, traffic signals, street furniture, all that kind of stuff. So, [cough] this is done in the way that mostly

9:58TSA guidelines on how to do a survey. You guys might disagree, and of course, um you've got your own ways of doing things. I'm not saying one's right or wrong. They always recommend you start with electrics first. To be honest, a lot of companies, and myself and my dad included, we always used to start with drainage first. And if that's the way you do it, that's great, totally up to you. The logic of starting with electricity first, apart from drainage, it's one of the easiest things to find in most cases. And it kind of ticks that box. You've done that. You know what you've found. And then anything else you might be tracing

10:31could be, once you've marked up the electric, jumping onto that instead. So, this is the logic behind it. Rightly or wrongly, this is the way it's been done. So, we're going to cover electric first. Do you need to know this? Probably not. Um,

10:49if you're working in a power station, it might be useful to just try and get a feel for how everything is. The other thing I would say with surveyors is that you're kind of a jack of all trades. One week, you're on a maybe chemical works, industrial site, brownfield, you could be anywhere. And you might be talking to an electrical engineer one week who thinks that you know exactly what he's talking about. You might be talking to a pipelines engineer the following week. So, this kind of gives you a bit of knowledge about everything. So, in simple terms, and this is the same worldwide,

11:22you need a source of water to generate steam. This is how power stations work. And you need a source of heat to heat that water to make the steam. So, fuel, coal, wood, oil, gas, nuclear. It's a very simple process when you think about it. It's heating up steam, the steam drives a turbine, the turbine drives a generator. In this country, most electricity is generated around about 30 to 35 kV voltage. That is then transformed up to 400 kV.

11:50In other countries, other voltages. Bigger countries, higher voltage. This is the first time I've looked at these. I don't know when Pete's coming and going. [cough] But one of the questions I always ask surveyors, just out of interest, why do the generators generate such high voltages?

12:10Why is it not 240 volts? I'll leave you pondering that question as we carry on. Hydro is pretty much the same. If you guys are working up in Scotland, and there's quite a lot of hydro, or anywhere where there is hydroelectric, you've got water flowing through

12:29a device called a penstock, which is basically just a tube, which is um turning the turbine, the turbine's turning the generator. Same principle.

12:41This is more where I guess we come into it. Um, yeah, Kieran, you're right. Trying to look at that screen there. Electrical distance, absolutely. Um, the reason it's such high voltage is because you get loss over distance. So, if a power station produced 240 volts, by the time it's traveled, some cases in this country, a couple of hundred miles, coming out of a plug socket, the voltage would be zero. So, you've got these high voltages, which are then transformed down to usable voltages.

13:12So, on the left-hand side there, in yellow, you've got transmission. That's what we call, or used to call in this country, EHV. And on the right-hand side, in red, we've got distribution, um which is then HV, LV. The definition in this country nowadays is anything over 1,000 volts is deemed HV. So, if you're working on a site and it's 3.3, 6.6, there's some spurious voltages in Scotland, I think there's some 1.1, maybe 2.2 kV. The other thing I'm assuming, guys, that you understand that when I'm talking about K, we're talking about thousands. So, 33 kV is 33,000, 11 kV is 11,000.

13:53So, you've obviously got your transmission side and then distribution. So, you've got a power station generating in this country 400 kV, which is pretty common. It's then transformed down as it goes around the network. There's one voltage missing there, which is 275, but you can have 400 kV dropping down to 132, 33. Large industrial units, um big sites, factories are going to be taking in 33 kV and transforming it down. So, you guys might be working on the private side of that. So, it comes in through the um local electric company, or even National Grid in some cases, um and then internally, it's private supplies. This is where surveyors often have a lot of problems because on the private side, you may have

14:20...taking in 33 kV and transforming it down. So you guys might be working on the private side of that. So it comes in through the local electric company, or even National Grid in some cases, and then internally it's private supplies. This is where surveyors often have a lot of problems because on the private side you may have no records, no plans, nobody's got a clue where stuff is.

14:46In the streets, it's going to be predominantly 11 kV. So if you walk down the average street in the UK, there's going to be an 11 kV substation somewhere. Probably the worst place is going to be London. If any of you guys work in London, you have my utmost respect because it's probably the worst place you can ever think of working. Trying to find a substation is the hardest thing. You can have it on a plan and you're walking up and down the street trying to find a substation, and it's usually because it's underground.

15:15Other countries probably have very similar things, but walk down a fairly small English town or city, you can spot an 11 kV substation a mile away, but try that in a major city like London, that's not quite so easy. So in the UK, this is part of our survey course test, but on the transmission side we've got 400 down to 132 kV.

15:45On the distribution side, you might occasionally come across some 275 kV, but that goes all the way down to 3.3. And then one of the major high-voltage systems in the UK is on the rail network. Some of you guys probably do work on or near the track. It's probably the second worst environment to be working in in this country, working on any network rail infrastructure where there's 25 kV, and you guys will know why. If we get a chance, we'll talk about that later, but...

16:15And again, if you are working on those networks, it's a fairly simple system. You've got 25 kV overhead, the neutral is the track, so it's a single-phase supply coming into the switchgear as you can see in front of you, going up overhead. This is just, again, for information. And then once it gets transformed down in the in your average street, you've got a distribution network.

16:45So the bigger cable on the right-hand side there is the supply in from the transformer, using the old color coding of red, yellow, blue. We haven't got time to go through phasing on this, to be honest with you, but you've got three phases. So each one of those white things there is a fuse. So if you ever find yourself, and it's less likely nowadays, in the old days with me and the old fella, they used to just give us keys to substations and tell us not to kill ourselves, which, miraculously, we didn't.

17:15So each one of those white things is a fuse. So you'll have a number of businesses, houses, properties connected across a fuse. European countries very often have three-phase supplies coming in, but in this country, it's just single-phase. So you've got one cable and neutral, and in the older systems, earth. So as far as you're concerned, if you find yourself in a substation, you're keeping away from this stuff and looking down here at maybe getting a signal clamp around that kind of stuff to trace out.

17:45So in this country, the National Grid owns the transmission system. If you're looking at old networks, old marker posts, signs, records, you'll still come across CEGB, and that's the Central Electricity Generating Board, which is now National Grid. These figures are out of date because as we speak, down in this part of the world, they're updating the 400 kV network from...

18:15...Hinkley Point to Avonmouth. So that's going to increase the number of 400 kV and 275. But when you look at those figures, guys, those figures are fairly small compared to the LV network or the distribution network, which is massive by comparison. On our five-day course, we didn't used to do too much about transmission cables because there's very few of them around, and most of them are on pylons, and you can kind of work out where those are. You don't need to be a surveyor to work that one out, unless it's foggy.

18:45But once they start bunging it underground, you've got a major issue. Number one issue is cost. It's, depending on which figures you look at, up to 20 to 30 times more expensive. And if there's anybody from National Grid here, they can give me an exact, absolute figure, but you're looking at huge amounts of cost to sticking these things underground, and dissipation of heat, and obviously protecting it. Pete, you popped in just then. Did you want to make a comment, or were you just going? Pete: No, I think you've got it covered anyway. I was just going to say, is it worth covering the, I'm thinking of things like oil-filled cables and gas-filled cables and why they do that and why they prefer them to be to be overhead? That was that was what I was going to touch on, but I think you've...

19:10Ah, that's fine. Yeah, I'm kind of mindful of how it went this morning and how many slides I've got. Yeah, so if you're looking at drawings and you see oil-filled or gas-filled cable, and you're thinking, why on earth are they oil-filled? Coolant. These things get hot underground, and they've got to keep these things cool. Obviously, when they're on a pylon, on a tower, they're naturally air-cooled, so they're not insulated, they're bare wires. So climbing up a pylon and grabbing hold of one, if you've seen any of the videos, is not a very clever idea.

19:40So yeah, there's there's issue with keeping these things cooled. National Grid are starting to use, and a lot of other companies are starting to use, XLPE, where there's no coolant. The XLPE actually dissipates the heat. I said to you some minutes ago, we didn't used to do a lot on transmission cables because there aren't many around, and then a guy on the course a few years ago said to me, we're having a major issue tracing out some National Grid cables. And I suddenly thought, we need to kind of explain why they're such a pain to find.

20:10You'd think they'd be dead easy, 400 kV, 275 kV. There's a couple of factors. SVLs is one. An SVL is a sheath voltage limiter. Because of the such high voltages, you get massive amounts of induced power onto the onto the armor of a cable. I put a post up on LinkedIn and our Facebook utility page a while ago of fiber optic cable that was arcing. That arcing was caused by induced 60 Hz, it was in the States. So imagine when you've got the outside of a cable which is next to 400 kV single core, you're getting a huge amount of induced voltage.

20:40So what an SVL does is it basically blocks this from going to earth. So as far as we're concerned as locators, there isn't technically an earth path for our signal to travel down. From an electrical safety point of view, there is. If my memory serves me well, it's around about 3 to 3.5 kV. Above that, it dumps it to earth. So if there's ever an issue with earth problems, there is an earth, but when a locator's trying to put a signal onto it, there isn't. The other issue is, I'll show you a picture of a joint bay in a minute, but at the joint bays, the cables are all connected together. You can see from that, these links between the joints.

21:30with uh problems. There is an earth, but when a locator is um trying to put a signal onto it, there isn't. The other issue is, I'll show you a picture of a joint bay in a minute, but um at the joint bays, the cables are all connected together. You can see from that, these links between the joints. So, if you do manage to get a signal on one cable, and these cables are laid side-by-side, I'll show you a picture in a minute. You get a signal on one, it's going to transfer across to the other two. So, we've tried all sorts to get decent traces on these, and sometimes you can only really trace them using high frequency, which is not the preferred method, but sometimes the only option. Of course, you've got no access to them, so it's going to have to be induction.

22:16So, this came from National Grid. Gives you an idea. You might be um using your GPR to find these. According to National Grid, there will be 1 m minimum cover. Whether this is the case or not, um is anybody's guess. You've then got roughly um a width of about 1 to 1.4 m where the cables are going to be um installed. Then roughly between 3 and 1/2 and 5 m separation. So, if you look at that, that's the same kind of configuration as a pylon. It's just that it's buried in the ground rather than on a tower.

22:53So, 1, 2, 3, and the same down here. 1, 2, 3. Same again. So, this is exactly the same configuration as a pylon. I'm not saying you should take this as gospel, but it kind of gives you an idea of um the separation. So, if you are struggling with the um electromagnetic EM locators, your GPR may well be picking up um the excavation, the trenching, the troughing, the tiling, whichever way it's been buried, and you should get an idea of separation.

23:27That, looking at separation, I would guess is 275 kV, because I don't think there's enough separation between those to be 400 kV. You'll notice, guys, there's a fourth cable in there. I'm sure the experienced of you will have looked on plans um and seen um reference to P or pilot. So, with certainly transmission and even down to 11 kV in some cases, you'll see pilot cables. Pilot is like a comms cable. It's monitoring things like oil pressure, um switchgear, all kinds of stuff. So, in simple terms, it's like an alarm cable. So, wherever you see high voltage cables, you'll very often see pilot cables alongside it. Um I mean, that is just going to trace as a bank. You're going to struggle to get those individually, unless you guys know something I don't.

24:25And believe it or not, that is actually a joint bay. We'll show you some joints on some smaller cables, and if you've seen joints on LV, they can be very, very small. But a joint bay for transmission cables is that kind of size. And that's what it looks like in the ground. So, those are your joints. It's done under very clinical conditions. And you can see the cables connecting them all together. So, you manage to get a signal on this one by some means, you're going to get signals on that one and that one.

25:03It's an issue I've noticed with the 8000 receivers, if you guys have tried this before, um you can't turn them down low enough. Um I've been stood on top of those sorts of cables on power with the gain at zero, and it's off the scale. This is something the manufacturer needs to address. The vLoc3 Pro has addressed it to a certain degree. You can actually pick them up, albeit not very easily. But this is a problem that you're going to get with um especially if you're working in National Grid substations. A lot of the guys um who've been in this business a long time, they used to keep the old RD400s, the old um PXLs. They used to work pretty well in a National Grid substation. And Ben, you here, you're saying you've had the same issue. Yeah, I know it's a problem. Just keep badgering the manufacturer to um work on it, I guess. Um

26:01I don't know how clearly you can see that, guys, but that is a on-marker post, very valid. Voltage in this country used to be known as tension. So, you had high tension and low tension. So, I don't know how clearly you can see that, but that says high tension cable, pilot cable, CGB. These old marker posts are very, very valuable. If you're on industrial sites, you may well see these kind of concrete markers. And that's an old Yorkshire Electricity joint post, indicating where the uh high voltage cables were jointed. So, have a look around for obvious features.

26:38Going down to who's what again. Back in my day when I first started, it was the boards, and you'll probably hear the old farts like me refer to the electric board, electric board. Um they were government organizations, not-for-profit, um owned by shareholders as they are nowadays. When they flogged them all off, they became um RECs, Regional Electricity Companies, so you might hear of people refer to the RECs. Then they became NOCs. The current name is a DNO, Distribution Network Operator. So, my part of the world, Western Power, who used to be um SWEB, South West Electricity Board, took over the whole of pretty much the Midlands, East Midlands, Wales, South Wales, so they combined. And if you're on site, guys, you're still going to come across all the old MEB, East Midlands Electricity Board. If you're in London, LEB. Um I was up in Birmingham the other day and came across an old Birmingham and Something Electric Company link box cover. And you may well find in London, you're going to find some old lids that might be some of the old London boroughs before the um boards were founded in the 1930s, if my memory serves me well. I don't know if we've got any electrical guys on here.

27:50But don't forget there's going to be some old stuff out there. It's still very valid. It's just a case of trying to work out what's what. That 500,000 km of underground cable is well out of date by now. Um it's probably closer to 750, 800,000, and 450,000 substations is probably, again, well out of date by now. These are some fairly common abbreviations that the electric industry use, and there's so many of them. Um whenever I do the 5-day course, I've got a whole load of booklets. I mean, you can get a lot of these online. There's some of them they don't make anymore, but if you get records from UKPN, you get a booklet with it, which is for whichever region it's in, and there's a whole bunch of abbreviations, terminology, symbology. These are just some of the common abbreviations you're going to come across. Cable type, uh conductor type, features like pot ends, link boxes, that kind of thing. It is very valid or useful to know what kind of cable you're looking at. So, triplex, you surveyors out there, you'll know this, it's a pain to try and trace accurately. And it's just

28:40Steve: uh conductor type, features like pot ends, link boxes, that kind of thing. It is very valid or useful to know what kind of cable you're looking at. So, Triplex, you surveyors out there, you'll know this, it's a pain to try and trace accurately.

29:00Pete: Ben's just asking, Steve, is that worldwide or or UK in regards to the abbreviations? Steve: Um, it's going to be UK or wherever the UK built a network, but you'll probably find, and this is true around the UK, that even the different regions, so SWEB, South West Electricity Board, which is my electric provider down in Bristol, there's different terminology and abbreviations between here and Bridgwater.

29:25If any of you guys have ever been to Bridgwater, I don't recommend it, but, um, my apologies if you're from Bridgwater. It's only about 20 miles down the road, but they use different terminology. So, same company, different terminology, different abbreviations, so, um, some are standard, um, Ben, but I wouldn't take them as gospel.

29:41Pete: And this is the the other, again, we've I think I was touching on this on the summer sessions, I did this today, but we're thinking of doing, um, actually a plan session, but one of the other issues in the UK, when Steve was showing you that, if you just go back a couple of slides, Steve, just to that that map, that one there. So, if you if you have a look at that, those are the different providers, and your plans will come from these.

30:03And to give you an example, if I get an Electricity North West plan, the LV on it is orange. If I get a Western Power plan, the LV on it is blue. If I get a SSE plan for Scotland, North of Scotland, the LV's green. Scottish Power is brown. It It It's a joke, really, but all all these different regions, it's a it's a nightmare trying to look at the plans, and especially for the guys that are out there excavating.

30:26Um, if they're working on near a border area, one day they could be in one region, the day after they're in a different region, and they've got completely different plans, completely different colors. And even UKPN alone, so UK Power Networks, you can be in Kent and get a UKPN plan, and the LV's green. You can be in Central London, get a UKPN plan, and if you're lucky, and it's new, the LV'll be blue. If you're unlucky, and it's old, it's black, which is the same color as the bloody curb line and and boundary line and stuff. So, you know, the the standard of plans in the UK are are terrible.

30:58And before I hand you back to Steve, just to finish off, Steve mentioned some books and stuff, and also, I should have said this on this morning's call, we've got a lot of old material, PDFs and stuff. I'm going to stick my email in the comments box, guys. If you want to drop us an email, if any of these books you you fancy reading or something, then then drop us an email, and I'll I'll pass it back to Steve.

31:14Steve: Just to qualify what Pete said, he's absolutely right, and we we get some online spats, and I I owe UKPN a phone call because, um, after one of my online spats, um, they did actually, um, ask me if I could go and have a meeting with them, which is, uh, I think it'd be very valid. In the southeastern part, they've got some excellent plans. That's the old Seeboard area, um, so some of their records are very, very good. It's like all regions, some are good, some are bad. Um, the one thing is survey, and this is something that I keep on harping on about in survey, you cannot do your job without a decent set of plans.

31:48I suppose I should qualify that. You can do your job, but I certainly wouldn't want to. The other thing to remember is also there's a lot of, up there it says, independent network operators. So, you've got the likes of GTC, SSE, and there's lots of them out there now. Um, they're putting a lot more detail on their plans, including services to properties, including gas service to properties. How accurate they are, mm, I'm not sure, but anyway.

32:16So, HV distribution, everything's done in threes, um, again, we're talking about color coding on plans, there's actually no real color coding for the stuff in the ground. I always show people the, um, the picture of the cables in blue before it actually pops up with what it is, because most people look at a bit of blue plastic in the ground and just assume it's a water pipe.

32:40There are blue plastic-covered HV cables in the ground in this country. There are also yellow, and the yellow ones, there aren't many of them around, but they do look remarkably like gas pipe. So, if you've come across an old Hessian-covered thing, it's anybody's guess what it is. Probably a cable, but it could be an old Hessian-wrapped pipe. If it's lead, same again. I've got samples of these when we do the five-day course, and we pass them around so people can have a look at them. On a cable in this country, they are embossed. If it's plastic and it's modern, as you can see down here, 6.6 kV, that's not very easy to spot down a trench covered in mud.

33:19But it does say on it what it is. If you find yourself in a substation, um, which is less and less likely nowadays, and I've worked in substations up to, um, 400 kV, pretty much everything, um, but we used to get access to substations because it was the quickest and easiest way of, um, tracing out. But each one of those is a circuit breaker, and that's just a switch. So, there's 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4, five, I can't count. Um, there's five breakers there. So, if you were tracing out, you need to get around the back of there, look for where the cable goes in the ground, and use a signal clamp.

33:57You don't need to know about a circuit breaker truck. If there was such a thing in this country, that is an average 11 kV distribution substation. And whilst we say don't take this as gospel, generally, when you look at a substation from the front on, your HV would usually be on the right, and the LV would usually be on the left.

34:20So, that would give you a clue. If that can, um, if your plans confirm that as well, then great. That maybe your only option for tracing out the HV. Once you've done the LV, induction on the right-hand side of sub might be your only option.

34:38That's the same, but an outdoor sub, and that's the same configuration. HV is part of a ring main circuit, so, two HVs, and then some LVs over here. I would use different colors by now, time. If any of you guys have got a good, um, or decent eyesight, and you've spotted it, there is a signal clamp around the LV cable. All manufacturers of, um, locating kit make extension rods for your signal clamp, which allow you to screw it onto the clamp.

35:13I was told to go to full screen view, but to save time, there's a, I think it's an 8 mil thread, might be 6 mil, that you can screw an extension rod in there, and this, I'm not recommending you do this, but it does allow you to, um, access things you might not be able to reach. You don't need to know too much about an LV panel. That's, um, something we cover on the five-day course.

35:44So, going back to, um, this same picture you saw earlier on. So, the transformer, 11 kV out here somewhere, may well be in the same building, and then that's your LV supply coming in from the transformer. And if you do find yourself in a sub, this will tell you where these cables are going. Again, I wouldn't take it as

35:50former 11kV out there somewhere, may well be in the same building, and then that's your LV supply coming in from the transformer, and if you do find yourself in a sub, this'll tell you where these cables are going. Again, I wouldn't take it as gospel, should be relatively accurate, but

36:15that'll give you a clue as to where things are supposed to be going if you find yourself in an LV distribution substation, which increasingly is probably very unlikely nowadays, unless you're working on behalf of the power companies. One thing that surprises me when we do survey courses is the number of people who don't know what link boxes are.

36:43Not always on the lid that says electricity supply, and very often it's just a concrete lid that looks very much like a comms box. And what I recommend nowadays, gents, is you don't lift that lid beyond that point, because underneath that bell housing is live contacts. I was doing a basic CAT and Genny course in Birmingham years ago, and a surveying company had been along, and we went out to site to do the practical bit, and there was a double link box, which you can always tell because there's two lids side by side. On the survey drawings, they had one cable in and one cable out. That would imply to me that they didn't have the original plans, and I said to the guy straight away, "You've got to be very, very careful here because that's a double link box. That means you've probably got four in, four out. Without plans, it's hard to tell."

37:25Which goes back to the, um, obvious necessity of having, always having plans. So, that's how a simple link box is, and the, the name link box is what it is. It links one bit of a network to another.

37:41In this country, it's all about keeping people on supply and meters going round. Um, so if they want to work on a bit of cable, and they want to keep people on supply, they pull fuses at one substation, put the links in, and that whole link, or that cable from that link box is now livened up, and they can work on the sub. So, it's actually linking substations and bits of network together. That's what they are.

38:06The other thing is, if you ever come on a link box, or come across a link box that's smoking, I would contact the electric company if I were you, and keep well away from them. They are notoriously unreliable, and they'll go bang, and it's pretty

38:20Just to jump in there, guys, I don't know if anybody was on the, um, "What happens when you hit a cable?" session with me yesterday. You might remember one of the last videos I showed you with the guy on the phone on the corner of the street and the explosion. That was a link box that, that had blown up. So, that's what I was referring to yesterday when I, when I mentioned a link box.

38:40Yeah, look in the comments, um, yeah, Steve, uh, yeah, it, it is through the fence technique. We don't recommend you do that, by the way. Nowadays, we've got to put all these disclaimers in. And Neil, you're absolutely spot on, yeah, they are very dangerous. Um, these pictures were taken with an old digital camera, one of the very first ones that ever came out in this country, and we were given unfettered access to substations. I did a lot of work in the power industry back in those days.

39:07Sorry. Mic off. Things were very different in those days, so this was taken with the old Kodak KDC40 digital camera. We did tons of substation work, not only on the tracing out, but on circuit breaker testing, phasing, all kinds of stuff.

39:25Um, yeah, you probably don't get that much access. The only place I've found that seems to be fairly relaxed are big industrial sites, places like, um, big chemical works. Um, Martin, if he's on, I don't know if he's on today, but I, I did a, um, bit of mentoring with Martin Marshall from Sygma when he was working for a surveying company on, um, I think it was Warwick Uni, and he said to me, "Right, we're off to do the three-phase today." I said, "How the hell are you going to do that then, Martin?" He said, "Well, we'll just go in the substation." And we did. Um, the obvious disclaimer to that is, um, you shouldn't be in these places unless you are authorized and trained, and you know what you're doing.

40:07If you come across a substation like that, which I did in Wiltshire, that's dead handy. Um, signal clamp round the cables, dead easy to work out. And you'd generally consider, and you'll be able to see on the side, that the, the red will be 11kV. Don't be, um, surprised if you come across some black 11kVs and some, um, black 33s as well.

40:32And there's the old dreaded triplex. Polymeric HV, American. That's, um, first time I ever saw that was in my back garden in Houston in the 1980s. Um, they were putting some new cable in, 13.8kV to my transformer, the transformer in my back garden, but awful stuff to trace.

40:54We've tried all sorts over the years to get a decent trace on that stuff. The obvious problem when you put a clamp round there is you're introducing it to three different cables, and if you put it round one, you get cancellation effect, which, um, we actually never got round to covering on this morning's session, but, and in power, you're going to get the most hideous, um, distortion. Pete may have covered this on a previous session, but we call it the Mickey Mouse ears effect. You get a magnetic field that looks like Mickey Mouse's ears.

41:21So, that means you get a trace over there, and that was also on this morning's session, but I didn't get round to running the video. Don't be surprised if that happens. An omnidirectional field, what you very often find with triplex is you turn the, um, receiver round as if you were trying to find a sonde, and it gives you the right position. It's impossible to measure, uh, model in two dimensions. We tried to do it, and it just looks like a mess. But think about a ball-shaped field rather than a, a cylindrical field, for those of you that are into your theory of things.

41:52And the other problem with triplex is that the guys when they install it, they're supposed to cable tie it. So, here, the cores are splayed out, here they're close together, splayed out. So, as you walk down the, the pavement, especially on power, you're going to get different signals every meter or so.

42:21Yeah, you put in there, Neil, "Nice to see the depth." Yeah, look where the marker tape is, though, and it's on foam concrete. Everything about that picture is wrong. Put concrete over cables, and that marker tape should be up here somewhere. But anyway, Pete will cover more of that on his other CAT and Genny type courses.

42:43The obvious thing to say about this, you get a bit of CAS or SAS, smooth aluminium sheath or corrugated aluminium sheath. So, if you've got a signal coming from this direction, you've got one signal there coming off the outside of that cable, because that's what your signal clamp puts it into, or your induction. It goes through the joint, you've now got three signals this side. So, don't be surprised when you get different signals as you're walking down the route of things, because there's actually three separate cables there. They are cable tied at this point, but you're still going to get a weird signal beyond that joint.

43:00induction. It goes through the joint. You've now got three signals this side, so don't be surprised when you get different signals as you're walking down the route of things. Because there's actually three separate cables there. They are cable tied at this point, but you're still going to get a weird signal beyond that joint.

43:22This is one we've used. I actually took that picture in Cirencester there. Um, same again, you got a breached joint here, old HASIN cable. So, going to triplex, triplex in and out.

43:37Um, all I can say is if you're trying to trace those, good luck. Without access to those cables, and even if you did have access to those cables, you're going to get signal on this one and signal on that one. They're very close together, massive amounts of distortion. Um, if this one disappears off round the corner, great. But if it parallels the other one, you've got two signals in very close proximity, all kinds of weird results.

44:05The only thing to do there is try tracing from different positions. You'll see lots of old clay pot joints in the ground, which of course, if you've not been in this business a long time, you think is maybe drainage, especially some of the old straight joints because they just look like a bit of clay pipe. That is an old-fashioned but fairly common T-joint, service joint, believe it or not.

44:37Um, so you got your mains LV coming through. Question in, Steve. Jez is just asking, will the stats plan show if it's triplex or not?

44:47Yes. If they are the genuine original plans from the electric company, yes. One of my pet hates is, sorry if you're in this business, but overlay plans, where somebody's taken all that information and transposed it onto one drawing. The reason it's my pet hate is because you lose all the original information. If you've got the original information, great. It will say on an electric plan 3CX,

45:10and that's a copper screen triplex, 3AX, that's aluminium screen triplex. It might say three times one, it might say um, it might even say triplex or triplex. I don't know what the, it's a bit like lines and lynx, I've never quite worked out which one it is, but anyway.

45:30I think it also um, depends on the area. Um, going back to what I said before, Jez, the regions are different. For example, UKPN on some of their plans will actually give you cross-sectional supplementary sheets which indicate that better. Um, but I think it's region by region, isn't it, Steve? I'm sure I've seen a few electric drawings where it doesn't show if it's triplex or not, depending on the area. Um, it's not always on there, I think, um, depending on which region it's in.

46:00Um, I'm, I'm pretty sure um, on the modern Scottish Power ones, it doesn't show it. Could be wrong. But I guess what I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't expect it to always be there. I don't think it will always be on, depending on the region, is, is my view on that. Yeah, I think you're right to say don't guarantee it, but I would say most of them I've seen, it's on there. I wouldn't vouch for its accuracy. That's the other problem, um, which is another pet hate of mine and Pete's, if you've ever seen some of our LinkedIn rants. But anyway.

46:30Yeah, Steve, you're right. Three times XLPE is very common as a, um, indicator that it's triplex. I'm just very mindful of time, guys, and um, how many slides to get through. This is very, very uncommon in most, um, street situations. This was, um, Neil's son was doing a, a survey in, um, Cardiff. And, uh, we lifted what we thought was, he asked me to go help him just, um, it was a nice sunny day, I decided to go give him a hand. And we lifted what we thought was a drainage cover and there, there were the LV cables.

47:05So, um, that's a, an old-fashioned cast iron LV joint, but signal clamp, signal clamp extension rod. I mean, you don't have to buy the manufacturer's one, you can make up your own. Um, my newer guy that used to work for one of the highways companies made up one, he proudly showed me a bit of three-meter copper, um, pipe that he used, which I wouldn't recommend, but a nice bit of long bit of plastic with a, um, male bolt epoxied in the end is dead handy. And most of the manufacturers make the signal clamps with

47:30um, extra-long cables up to about 15 meters, I think, is the longest you can get. Or you can just make up an adapter in some cases. Uh, not for the RD stuff, by the way, because that plug's too much of a pain, but for the Vivax ones, it's fairly simple. Uh, couple of breached joints here, um, on an LV network with a service connection, if you can just about make it out, going off to the street light column.

48:02So, if you were applying a signal here, that would trace back here. You can imagine what that's going to trace like. You're wondering where the hell it's going as it weaves its way round. Of course, with the smaller cables, it does loop round all over the place. With the bigger cable, you can't bend it round quite so easily, but that's not going to be shown like that on a service, sorry, on a stat plan, if it's even shown at all. That's the other problem, is whether those are shown on plans or not. A thorough mixture there of old and new. Very old-fashioned leaded T-joint. Obviously, the name, name T is because they look a bit like a letter T.

48:40Uh, resin joint. That's a PME breached joint. So, service coming off to a street light or column somewhere, and then a PME earth in the ground. I always ask the guys on the survey course, what's that? Is it HV or LV? Mindful of time,

49:00um, [no speech] Yeah, I like your idea, Jez, using a, a thick turn of a broom handle. Yeah, I've done that as well. Or gaffer tape. Um, because the CD clamp, for whatever reason, they decided not to put, um, a thread on it, so I've had to do exactly the same thing with that. Um, mindful of time, gents, I'm going to tell you, if you don't know, that that's both. That's both HV and LV.

49:36So, coming up the pole, you're wondering what's that, what relevance is that to underground surveying? Well, coming up the pole is triplex. So, that will be disappearing off down underground. It's coming up and then it's going to the transformer and then you've got LV overhead. This doesn't probably show very well, but in this country, generally, on an overhead pole, LV is strung vertically

50:00and HV is horizontal. I wouldn't take that as gospel, but generally, that's the case. The other thing to look out for in this case, you've got three phases and four wires. That kind of gives it away as well. Yeah, you're right, Steve. And Neil, yeah, yeah. Just before you carry on, Steve, I'll just throw a question they can think about while you're moving on. Why is there four wires on an LV

50:10And four wires. That kind of gives it away as well. Yeah, you're right, Steve. And Neil, yeah, yeah. Just before you carry on, Steve, I'll just throw a question in they can think about while you're moving on. Why is there four wires on an LV and three on an HV? I'll leave that one with you guys. What's the difference? Um, as Steve moves on. Yeah, and just to qualify that, you might only have two on the HV as well. If it's a spur off down to a farm, it could just be two cores. Anyway.

50:46So, on the left-hand side, horizontal HV. If my memory serves me correctly, if you were stood with your back to the substation looking at this, this is totally irrelevant, but if you stood to substation with your back to substation, the nearest to the right was red phase, yellow, blue. I could be wrong if there's any electrical engineers out there that still remember the old phasing. On the right-hand side, again, you can see the four cores.

51:21The other thing, when you're looking at these poles and somebody's saying is that HV or is that LV, yeah, that's very obviously HV, it's horizontally strung. That used to be a red cable. If you've ever had a red car and it's been left out all summer and you've not polished it, it goes pink and then eventually bleaches white. So, that was once a red cable, 11 kV.

51:42On this side, there's two things that again immediately give it away besides the configuration of the overhead: street lighting and BT. You cannot have BT or street furniture on an HV pole in this country, it's illegal. You can have LV and HV on the same pole, but you can't have other services like BT. So, there's BT on it. And again, from a surveyor's point of view, if you want to know what the relevance is, if you look closely, there's a whole load of cables disappearing underground.

52:12And like I had the problem yesterday with leaded cables, if you end up with anything like that, and I haven't seen a star joint like that in years. This was in Sheffield with YEB, Yorkshire Electricity, or YB as it was in those days. Just imagine you're trying to trace that from one direction, and your signal disappears off in all kinds of different directions, and it's touching all these other cables. Let's hope that most of those have been replaced with modern plastic cabling.

52:40So, a very standard electrical distribution layout in a street. You've got your substation, HVs in the configuration I was saying, HV's on right, LV's on left as you're looking straight at the substation door. You've then got an LV cable going down the street with service joints, T-joints, feeding properties, feeding street lights. Link box over here. Service connections to properties. You can tell how old this plan is because it references white phase. If you look on the drawing and you've got letters at each property, it's the phasing. So, blue phase, white phase, red phase. Down in Bristol, we had some where it was red, green, blue. So, you've got green. Nowadays, it's now grey, brown, grey, or whatever colors are.

53:34And eventually, it gets to your property through a consumer cut-out if you're tracing out in the streets. So, modern properties, little white box on the side. Somebody put a joke on one of the Facebook or LinkedIn posts saying that's 2-meter separation. Get it? Electricity meter, gas meter. I know, I know. I'm not a very good surveyor, of course, so. Anyway.

54:01There's one very obvious difference between those two. On the right-hand side, a very old three-phase cable coming into a property with just single-phase coming off of it. So, in the good old days, there was big old chunky cable, big solid earths. On the left-hand side, you talk to the gas lads or the utility lads and they talk about bootlaces because the cable is a tiny bit of cable. You can chop through with a shovel. The one on the right, you'd have to really try to chop through that. But anyway.

54:32Street lighting. We cover this on the CAT and Genny course, but for those of you that have not done that, I'm sure most of the surveyors know this, but there's two configurations in this country and sometimes a mixture of both. Top configuration, loop-in, loop-out, so it goes from column to column. Bottom configuration, tee'd off. You may well find in certain town centers, it's tee'd off and then maybe a couple of road signs, bollards, columns are fed column to column.

55:03On this Electricity Northwest plan, it shows you the street lighting, SL. And the top one here, red, yellow, blue, three-phase supply into that column for whatever reason. Red phase, this one. But that shows you that it's fed directly off the mains. So, that's a good access point for us to be able to trace out the LV main.

55:29Same again here. Red phase, directly off the mains. This is very common in this country. Most residential streets, South Wales for whatever reason tends to be slightly different, but generally, you'd expect to find most towns, city centers, residential streets, street lighting is fed directly off the mains. But it's a great way of accessing the LV network.

55:53This is South, this is South Wales. So, that tiny little purplish magenta, whatever color you want to call that, blob there on that Western Power plan is a feeder pillar. Inside that feeder pillar, that's your incomer, and then you've got three cables going out. These are obviously not shown on the Western Power plan because they don't own them. I don't recommend you do what I did and open up the cabinets. I have been trained to do that, and I do have the documentation somewhere, but God knows where. But it does allow you quick access to the cables. Having said that, if you lift that cover next to it, you'll see all the cables in there anyway, apart from the LV incomer.

56:41So, this street's got a right old mixture of old and new. So, on this side, um, LV main. From this cabinet here, the cables actually come out of here, go across the road, and feed down this pavement and feed all the street lighting down there. On this side, the street light column is fed straight off the LV main. So, it's a bit of an old mixture of old and new.

57:06I do a lot of work on cable fault detection in retail parks and business parks. Those are a law unto themselves. Um, you'll find any old configuration of whatever somebody decided to do at whatever moment in time. So, in this situation, we've got loop-in, loop-out, jointed. All I can say is you can find yourself on those other places, and again, good luck because, um, it's whatever somebody decided to do. There seems to be a logic to it, but I wouldn't, um, guarantee it. Again, if you've been trained and you've got the, um...

57:20In this situation, we've got loop-in, loop-out, jointed. All I can say is if you find yourself on those sort of places, again, good luck because it's whatever somebody decided to do. There seems to be a logic to it, but I wouldn't guarantee it.

57:37Again, if you've been trained and you've got the authorization to do so, popping off the street light covers is a very quick and easy way of finding out how many cables you're looking for and how it's configured. One cable on both of those, either the last cable on the run or fed directly off the mains.

57:56Cheers, Jess. Um, Steve, can I just jump in for a quick second? I've got to dash now, so I just wanted to say bye as well. I've got to go home and do my bit with the kids. So, I just wanted to say before I went, guys, there's quite a few more sessions coming up. There's three tomorrow on the CAT and Genny side of it. Steve's got another one next week on the, I don't know if you saw the email, but we've got Mike Langton from MALA doing some GPR stuff next Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But anyway, the point is if you've not got the mailing list or the links, just email me and I'll get it over to you guys. So, I might see some of you tomorrow on some of the sessions, but I'll leave you in Steve's capable hands, guys. You've got my email. It's there again if you want to get any updates on the future sessions. Thanks for joining us, and I will see you later. See you later, Steve.

58:50Thanks, Craig. I'm not sure where he gets capable hands from, but anyway. Thanks for you guys who are staying. I'm going to have to crack on with this because these webinars are only a two-hour session, and if you guys really want to stay for two hours, you're welcome to, but if you want to depart, but I'm kind of struggling to time that, which I tend to find I do on the survey course, so. Yeah, you guys who need to sheer off, that's great. Thanks for your time, and I hope some of it's been useful. Certainly dip into Mike's GPR session because they're very useful.

59:22So, again, this is a combination of where it's feeding from an LV main and then feeding out from the column to other columns or bollards, road signs, street lighting. One thing to say with columns, gents, this is consistent. Wherever the metal access plate is, the cable comes out directly below. There's a hole in the column. If you've ever seen one of these things out of the ground, that's where the cables come out. So, if you do have the authorization and access to do so and you pop the covers out, you can see how many cables there are. You know exactly where those cables are coming out of the column. So, in this situation here, I would be putting my transmitter there, using the magnet onto the back of the column, and then that gives me the ability to walk around the whole front of the column and work out where the cables are going. What you don't want to be doing is putting your box next to the column and run your earth across it because you're just going to end up picking up your earth leads and your connection leads.

60:12If you're on a big retail park, look out for the feeder pillars cabinets because that's where they're all going to be, all the lighting is going to be fed from. These sort of things, illuminated signs, bollards, street lighting in the background. It's just time-consuming, basically. That's the problem.

60:33Yeah, G39 training. You're right, Neil. That's what you need to get to be able to go into these. I mean, that gives you access to all those cables. Or you could just use your old tried and trusted technique, find a column. The thing with these, you're not going to have any plans for these. You might be very lucky and find that somebody's done a schematic, but these are not going to be on utility plans, so.

61:00Working in busy town city centers, have a look on the top and see if there's a photocell. Because if there is, reasonable chance that that's going to be solar-powered, obviously. If this is a card machine, then it's going to have some sort of comms link to it. But this gives it away. That's an earth rod. So, that parking meter in a London street is mains-powered, just like the street lights.

61:25Same with bus shelters. You've got a bus shelter, mains cable running down the pavement, feed off to the shelter. Probably the worst is a BT phone box. I've no idea what people use BT phone boxes for nowadays. If you're caught short on a night out, I think in Worcester they use them for cash machines, in some places they use them for libraries, but there is a mains supply which is fed directly off the LV.

61:54So, that's normally how it's configured. Mains LV cable down the pavement, feed off to bus shelter, feed off into a building, feed off to a phone box. Clipping onto the phone box won't trace that cable, I'm afraid. There are techniques which we cover in survey course, but I haven't got time to cover today. There are ways of doing it. I also wouldn't recommend doing what I did and dismantle a BT phone box. But in desperation, that's what I had to do. So, on the right-hand side, there's the LV supply, and there's the BT cable.

62:27If it's a modern BT Openreach, Virgin Media cabinet, most of these, the modern ones anyway, are mains-powered. You can tell because there's usually a danger death sign on, and you can hear them humming away. So, in the case of these, you can probably connect on and get a signal. What did you say, Steve? Okay.

62:53CATVs, in the good old days, they were just filled, but nowadays they are connected up to a network. This is dead easy for tracing these out. With bollards like that, you've got a metal base around the bollard. Clip your lead onto that, transmitter here, earth pin on the floor. Well, we covered that on the morning session. That will trace that out. Same with the CATV. It's probably fed from this feeder pillar over here.

63:17You've got all kinds of other mains-powered street furniture, advertising boards nowadays. This is Piccadilly Circus with all these funny little fountains and these uplighters. You can either get wet or just wait till the fountain's not on and then just clip onto that. These are obviously going to be fed somehow between each other off to a feeder pillar or from a column somewhere, presumably feeder pillar. I'm whizzing through, gents, because of time. Comms, probably the simplest thing in this country is cable TV.

63:51We have a debate on the survey course as to how much detail you go into as to whether you trace every single one. I mean, it's doable. It's just massively time-consuming. So, you start out with a central office, cable office, where you've got a whole load of satellite dishes, and then you've got a bunch of manholes, cabinets, ultimately ending up through a swept tee into the property. What I recommend is that you look at the Virgin plans, work out which is the last house on the run, get a signal on that one, trace that out, because everything else is going to go back to the nearest cabinet. It won't be configured in any other way. So, that's your quickest way of doing it. Find the last property and trace it that way. You could put a clamp on every single one of those. I don't know why you'd want to, but you could, and that'd take you best part of a day.

64:45So, in the street, you're going to have the cabinet, manholes, swept tee.

64:46So, in the street, you're going to have the cabinet, manholes, sweat tee, connection to property. Obviously, it's going to be ducted, most commonly in green duct. Generally, if you're looking at ducting in a footpath...

65:01...the connections to properties will be in the nearest duct to the boundary line, and the fiber is going to be nearest to the road. A sweat tee is called a sweat tee because it's not actually a T-shape. It's like a almost a Y-shape, if you like. And that is going to go to the nearest cabinet.

65:22So, if that's the last house on the run, and you can get a signal on that, you don't need to trace all the rest. You just look at the next sweat tee and just draw that in. I'm not saying that's how you should do it. That's just the quickest way of tracing everything out.

65:44So, BT obviously is our major comms provider besides Virgin Media, and there's lots of more popping up nowadays. These are, again, common abbreviations you'll find in the comms industry. There's tons and tons of them, but these are the most common ones. It tells you how many ducts are in the ground. Electric companies often use that as well, two-way, three-way, four-way.

66:04DPs are things to look out for, because the DP gives you access to be able to trace the BT. And the DP could be anything from a plastic box to a little metal, almost looks like a little oval shape, metal box. And that looks a bit phallic, but you know what I mean. And there'd be maybe a BT reference number on it. And you can, if it's metal, clip onto it and get a signal on the BT cables.

66:36You're going to have questions as to, can you find fiber optics? Well, the simple answer is no, because fiber optics is glass. But the cable itself, it depends on what it is. The furthest I've ever traced anything was in the States on fiber optics, and we traced a signal 66 miles. You may well try and trace fiber optics in this country and not get any signal at all because there isn't anything metallic in it. So, it depends on what it is, but it's blown fiber.

67:05So, the bottom picture there is BT blown fiber. As the name implies, the fiber strands are blown through it. If you look closely, you might just be able to see it's like a foil barrier around it. You can, in theory, get a signal onto that. You're absolutely right, Neil, don't take the cover off a DP.

67:30What he's saying is don't take the covers off distribution points, DPs. Similarly, there's a debate on lifting BT lids. Some companies put it on their plans saying, "We do not lift BT lids." And the reason for that, it's illegal. You guys may or may not know this, but lifting a BT lid is deemed an offense, and you can, in theory, get done for it. We've asked BT numerous times for a definitive answer, and they've never given us one. So, some areas you might get away with it, some areas you might not.

68:08Going back to the fiber, it depends on the type of fiber cable. BT blown fiber you might trace. The latest thing, and there's lots of companies out there, but I've seen some Gigaclear stuff, which is quite common around our part of the world. The fiber drops to the property, this is not supposed to be rude, it's not as big as my finger. It's plastic tube, 7 mil. How on earth you're supposed to find that is beyond me. You're not going to pick that up with GPR. You can't put anything down it. We are just storing up tons and tons of problems for surveying companies, people digging in their own garden in the future. But anyway.

68:49If the cable is a fairly major trunk-type cable, it will have some sort of metal in it, either through the center for a strength member or maybe around the outside for an armoring. So, obviously, if it's that type of cable, you've got a chance of being able to trace it.

69:05And if any of you guys work down the West Country, you're going to know about these because there's some major, major comms links between us and the US and parts of Europe coming off the Cornish and Devon beaches. The two big ones are Sennen and Bude Beach, which are the main transatlantic links to the US. Those cables then run up, I think, the A30, or the A38, I can't remember, or both. And they are our major US links. Those are easily traceable.

69:44Then you've got twisted pair. As the name implies, it's a pair of wires twisted. So, that's what could predominantly currently flies up your landline, if you've still got one. BT drops to a property, you can trace it, but you're going to have to use high frequency. We haven't got time to cover on this course, but, or this webinar, but Pete covers it, and I'm covering it on other bits. But in the States, if we've got anybody from the States here, comms cables in this country aren't earthed in the property, but they are in the US. And you've got like a ribbon cable coming into your property, which is your coax and your twisted pair.

70:27I am whizzing through these, guys, because I am very mindful of the time. So, my apologies for shunting through some of this stuff. You might be glad of it, but anyway. Traffic signals, in most major city centers, it's relatively simple to work out where they are because you've normally got the plastic lid boxes, they're not always plastic lid, but a box which sometimes says traffic signals, sometimes doesn't. We always have a debate on the surveyor course, do you mark up the induction loops? If you've never seen these things, it's what tells the traffic light to change. A lot of systems are changing now anyway, where you've got the sensors on the camera, sorry, the sensors on the light picking up traffic movement. But in the good old days, you had an induction loop very just underneath the surface. You can pick it up with a locator or GPR. It's just a case of whether you do all those or not, because technically it's an underground service utility, but have you got time to actually trace all those out? I don't know. We've covered gas, so I'm not going to cover it again.

71:25In the good old days, the CCTV cameras, when they first went in, they used to share ducts with the comms companies, but now you may well find that everything's all separate. If you want to trace those out, in places like supermarket car parks, I've traced loads of those. Clipping onto the metalwork will normally trace them out. You may well have to use high frequency to actually get a signal. In ease of tracing, high-pressure pipelines are dead simple. Um...

71:40Um, in places like, um, supermarket car parks, I've traced loads of those. Clipping onto the metalwork will normally trace them out. You may well have to use high frequency to get a signal.

71:55In ease of tracing, high-pressure pipelines are dead simple. Um, it's a case of getting a signal onto that high-pressure pipeline somehow. You'll have very good records for these, and you'll have, um, indications where there's going to be CP posts. What do they carry? Well, we haven't got any interesting pipelines in this country, but in Denmark, Germany, and now Belgium, there are beer pipelines.

72:23For one very obvious reason, they drink lots of beer. And that's the quickest way of getting beer from a brewery, um, into a city center. So, yeah, I'm going to skip over that one. So, of the high-pressure pipelines in this country, you've got, um, the Line search website, which gives you, not all of them, but a fair old number of them, telling you where the pipelines are, who owns them, what they are.

72:48All of these pipelines are welded steel, which makes them dead easy to trace. Um, there's currently about 14,000 kilometers of these pipelines in the ground of, um, ones that are in the, uh, Line search network. And there's a network interconnected between, um, Scotland and Ireland and Northern Ireland.

73:11And Mike and I did, um, did this course originally, we debated how much information to give you guys on, um, on pipelines, and this is going to be a very, very short section on CP. Um, yeah, Lee, I'm, I'm with you on that one, striking that, um, a beer pipeline, um, or certainly tapping into it, but anyway. So, every pipeline, HP or high-pressure transmission-type pipelines,

73:41um, welded steel construction, so they are continuously electrically metal, or electrically connected. They are coated with something, coal tar wrap, um, nowadays maybe epoxy wrap. The good thing is that this coating, um, stops the signal from leaking to earth. That means the second longest thing I've ever traced is a pipeline. Um, I've done pipeline traces of 15, 20 miles.

74:08The pipe itself is cathodically protected. This is the bit that Mike and I debated on how much information to give to you guys. Um, again, to try and help you, um, talk sensibly to maybe pipeline engineers when they're talking about CP. Very, very briefly, you've got two types of CP, um, sacrificial or galvanic anode system. How do you find using CP mode? Oh, yeah, Lee, um, the CPS mode on the receivers is not a con, it's just not very good.

74:41Um, if you guys have tried CPS mode on a receiver, basically, it's, in this country, just picking up 100 Hz. Um, so it's picking up the unrectified AC. It's basically, for want of a better term, power mode, um, but just a harmonic, which is great if you're in the middle of nowhere, but if you're in a city center, it's useless because you'll only pick up power cables instead.

75:09Um, the problem, trouble is that a lot of the manufacturers sell it as a way of finding high-pressure pipelines. And, as I said, rural, yeah, no problem at all. But rural, you'll find it with a box-standard CAT on power or radio. What you get with the CPS mode is, um, it acts like an active frequency in that you get the option of switching between peak and null, you get your direction indicator, um, depth and things like that. I certainly wouldn't rely on it, but if you're in the middle of nowhere, it'll probably be fine. Um,

75:41Going back to the two different types, um, you're going to have a CP post somewhere on the network. Um, so it's either going to be impressed current or sacrificial anode. In simple terms, it's stopping the pipe from rotting. So, if you get a point where a farmer's put a fence post through the, um, in the ground and, and taken some of the coating off, it's protecting the pipe from corrosion by, um, reversing the flow of electrons along the pipe. So, that's what you want to look out for.

76:10CP posts, I'm sure you've seen plenty of those in your working lives. There may be a terminal on the side. If not, the terminals will be underneath here. And these things normally just pop off, and then you'll see the wires inside. And that's, if you, if you can see, it says pipe on that one. On the other side, it may well say anode or sleeve. If there's no labeling on it, you just clip onto it. If it don't work, you go to the next one, see if that works.

76:40Yeah, Lee saying that they're only using CPS. Mm, risky. I've done lots of training with the, um, transmission guys, and they didn't realize that it was going to just pick up power in most places. It's okay, again, in rural areas, but I would, I wouldn't use it, personally. I'd just clip on, much more reliable. Use CD as well, nice low frequency, current direction.

77:06So, gas from beach to house. So, it comes in from the North Sea, we're in our time, guys. Comes into a gas terminal. The first thing they do in the gas terminal is dry it, because it's fairly wet. Um, they inject an odor into it. I'm guessing you guys know this, but natural gas has no odor, so what you're smelling is a chemical. I can't remember what it is, but I'm sure there's a gas engineer out there will tell us. Um, then they pump it up to very high pressure, which liquefies it.

77:32In the same way that we need high voltage to get electricity to travel around the country, we need high pressure to get gas to do the same. And in a very similar, um, scenario to electric, you've then got pressure reduction stations and governors, which is reducing and regulating pressure. And ultimately, it ends up feeding the house.

77:55You would be amazed at the number of people who think that's detectable. That's an identifier. It is not a copper strip. You can't put a signal into it. Polyethylene is porous, gents. So, where pipe is used in areas of contamination, high water table, they use a pipe with a membrane around it, and that membrane stops the ingress of water and/or contaminants. And that's what the brown strip is. It's the, um, membrane pipe. It's not for tracing. So, if you've got anybody out there on site that says, "Oh, you can find that stuff because it's got a copper strip in it," you can't.

78:36Thanks, Ben, for the, um, information, telling us what, um, chemical is in the pipe, mercaptan, if I can see that correctly. Again, some fairly common abbreviations that you'll find in the gas industry. I know there's hundreds of others of them, but that's, um, also color coding. So, on most plans, this is the one thing that the gas industry did do when it was Transco, it standardized. So, on a gas drawing, red's low pressure, blue with, um, single dots is medium. We need to change that.

78:50viations that you'll find in the gas industry. I know there's hundreds and hundreds of them, but that's, um, also color coding. So, on most plans, this is the one thing that the gas industry did do when it was transcoded, standardized. So, on a gas drawing, red's low pressure, blue with, um, single dots is medium. We need to change that because it's got dashes and dots in it. Green's intermediate, and yellow or purple is high pressure. From a surveyor's point of view, you need to look out and see if it's the metal or plastics as to how you're going to find it. Gas is one of the hardest things to locate with a locator because there's very, very few indications. Um,

79:32What every gas company will tell you is the same. Where the gas goes into property, if you can see that, and you know where the the gas main is, that will take the shortest route from there to there. On modern GTC, SSE gas, and the other independent gas providers, they are putting gas service indications on their plans. Whether they're accurate, I don't know.

79:59Gas and water are the same. You got a top connection coming off the pipe for obvious reasons because that's where it's cleanest. Um, I had a guy come on a survey course once. Um, he was a, um, service tracer for one of the highways companies. And I always ask the guys what their main reason for coming on the survey course was, and he said, "I need to know how to find gas services because my bosses, um, implying I'm not finding gas services." I said to him, "At the end of this course, you'll find out, or you'll be able to explain to him why you can't find gas services, but

80:29a gas main down at 700 down with a 25 mil bit of pipe coming off of it, and it's been mole'd in, you're not going to find that with anything other than a nice big 3CX machine, I'm afraid, unless you can bung something down it. If any of you guys, um, are very good with dowsing rods, you might be able to find it that way round, but gas is probably one of the worst things, second to water, plastic water, meter down, mole'd in service, nothing's going to find that unless you got an RD500, you might pick it up with that."

81:03Uh, that was a picture I took on a CAT and Genny course. I asked the bunch of guys what it was. One of the guys said it was a recycling bin upside down. When I pointed out it's got a lock on it, and it's on a concrete base, he changed his mind. Anytime you're out on site, guys, you see one of those, you know you got medium pressure gas. So, a lot of rural sites, um, you might be in a rural village, town, the, um, all the gas coming in is going to be IP. It's going to be IP up to the boundary, and then it's going to be like a having a little mini transformer on the edge of your boundary, and then that will reduce the pressure. And although that's all metal,

81:41everything below that's going to be plastic. So, even though you can pop those covers off, um, the point to make when you're doing anything to do with gas, petrol stations, chemical plants, none of this kit is intrinsically safe. So, yeah, you're right, Neil, it is the gas governor. Um, so, if you start connecting things on there, there is a chance of a spark, and if there is, um, pocket of gas there, you might end up blowing yourself up. So, another disclaimer, obviously don't go messing around with stuff unless you've been authorized and it's safe to do so. And clipping onto that is a waste of time anyway.

82:20Look out for the old marker boards. Sorry, posts. Um, that's an old Eastern Gas Board, EGB. I would ask you guys if you know what it is, but it says the top left-hand side there, it's an old siphon marker post. All the old stuff was imperial, so that's, um, a measurement to the old siphon, which is 19 feet away. Just so you can again talk sensibly to the guys you might be working with in the gas industry. If we've got some guys on from the gas industry, you'll know these anyway. That's a very old siphon. As the name implies, it allows you to siphon water out. You'd think that, um, the pressure inside a gas pipe would keep the water out, but firstly, the gas is fairly damp in the first place. Secondly, you've got water ingress. So,

83:05you get quite a lot of water ingressing to gas pipes, so that allows them to siphon it out. In the good old days, we used to use those siphon connections because they were metal down to the pipe, and we could actually trace out using that, but of course, that's pretty much gone nowadays. And if anybody ever digs that up and says, "What the hell is that?" That would have been a siphon connection there. So, the water gathers and then sits down in the sump. There would have been a pipe up to a siphon connection where you could siphon it out. And we used to clip onto those to actually trace out the pipe. It might give you a clue as to roughly where the main is if you still come across siphons, but who knows.

83:47Water, guys, I'm not going to explain the water cycle to you guys. Um, pipes and materials are similar to gas. The good thing about water is there's tons of surface features. Water is, has the one exception. There is, um, various brands who make PE pipe with a metal barrier. The one on the left-hand side is Protecta-Line. I think there's a new company out there. The obvious thing to say, if it's got the metal barrier, it's theoretically detectable, but in reality,

84:20hmm, you might, you might not. Um, in East Anglia, oh sorry, Anglian Water, so East Anglia, use a lot of AC mains, asbestos cement. So, if you got AC, non-metallic, um, you have two options: GPR, probably three if you want to use dowsing. Um, that's probably a whole another webinar webinar somewhere, but anyway, um, RD500. I ain't got time to cover the RD500 on this, but I traced tons and tons of non-metallic pipes using RD500.

84:55Um, common abbreviations on the left-hand side there and a fairly standard type, um, distribution network. But the good thing about that is, as you can see, you got stopcocks, sluice valves, washouts, hydrants, tons of surface features. So, locating without a locator on water tends to be a lot simpler because you can look at where things are and work out what's where it should be. So, stopcock going to the property, you know the water main has to be that side. Doesn't guarantee where, but you know it's got to be that side somewhere. We used to say that in the good old days, and this was generally considered true, that a main, sorry, a fire hydrant was in line with the main. I wouldn't take that as gospel nowadays, but

85:43and this is why. So, main's going that way, hydrant box is going to be that way round. So, that completely messes up that theory. But it used to be that that would give you an idea of the direction of the main. This will obviously, um, say obviously, it should be shown on a drawing as a bypass. And the guys that work in the water industry, if anybody's on here that did or does, you'll know

86:00But it used to be that that would give you an idea of the direction of the main. This will obviously, um, obviously, it should be shown on the drawing as a bypass. And the guys that work in the water, and see if anybody's on here that did or does, you'll know about bypasses and pressure reduction valves and... Everything metal should theoretically trace out.

86:28Um, you've got bolted flanges there, um, anyway, obviously, where you've got plastic, you've got no chance, but if it's metal, you've got a chance of tracing it out, and it should be shown on the drawing. This, you got virtually no chance of finding. This is not a very good picture, I apologize for this. If you look down on this, um... These are very common in modern builds.

86:53Each one of these is a service. You'll see in a second, I think this picture is going to show it. That's a service connection going off to a prop- both properties. There you go, that's the one. So, you got your main. Sometimes it comes in like that, sometimes it comes in this way. And then it feeds out. I did, um, some tracing on one of those on a site in Nottingham and failed absolutely dismally. Even with the RD500, the GPR was no good.

87:21Um... The 500 is worth a try, but it's very, very difficult to pick those up. This tells us straight away where things are. Again, I wouldn't use it as gospel, but you got an indicator. We cover this on the survey course. I'm guessing you guys know what the numbers mean.

87:51Top number is, guys... I'm just waiting for the comments to refresh. I don't know what sort of delay is on this. One of the people with me before, he was, um, reading the messages while I was rambling. The letters indicate what the feature is. So, obviously, H for hydrant, SV sluice valve. Stopcock, whatever you want to call it. The technical term is sluice valve, but a lot of people call them stopcocks.

88:24Top number is... size of pipe, and we got a real mixture. There we go. Yeah, Dean, you've come up with top is pipe size, correct. Bottom number... As you can see there, a mixture. Yeah, absolutely, Dean. Size and distance. Yeah, Matt, you're saying. Ben, I'm from Australia, so no idea.

88:53So, in this country, your top number is always your size of pipe, and the bottom number is how far away is it. A lot of people think it's depth. It's got nothing to do with depth. It's distance. It gives you a clue as to where the feature is or was. So, you don't very often see a mix. So, if it's old, it's imperial. So, we got 3 inches, 5 feet away. And then top one, that wouldn't be 100 inches, because that'd be a very big pipe if it was. So, it's millimeters and meters. You do occasionally see a mixture of imperial and metric, but...

89:25So, straight away here, I can tell what's... what pipe's where... and size. So... 8 inch, 4 feet away. 4 inch, 3 feet away. So, the hydrant's off the 8 inch. So, with that locator, you can say, "Right, okay, we know where those pipes are." Let's assume the council aren't going to move those posts, of course.

89:50Um... Old pipes have depth. Old plates have depth. Yeah, you might find occasionally there are some with depth on. There could be the odd one or two. Predominantly, they aren't, but yeah, I'm not saying never. I've been in this business long enough to never say never. I'm guessing you guys know what a washout is, WO. Our Australian colleagues may not. A washout and a hydrant are the same thing.

90:14The only differentiation really in this country is the fire brigade maintain the hydrants, the water company maintain the washouts, but they are technically the same thing. And if a fire, um, sorry, the fire brigade can't find a hydrant, they'll use a washout. It's exactly the same thing. Um... AV, air valve. Just like gas pipes get water in, water pipes get air in, so...

90:42if you ever walk past an automated air valve when it's gone off, it makes you jump, especially after a few pints on a stumble home from the pub. Um, because it doesn't half make a fair old clunk and a strange noise. But anyway... These give you lots and lots of surface indications as to where things are, and obviously, stopcocks at properties. So, you can kind of work out quite easily where the water network is by the surface features.

91:12I wouldn't say it's gospel and guaranteed, but... Drainage, guys, um... So... Very often, surveying companies do this first, and we used to, for the obvious reason that we might be a two-man team on site, and I'm guessing you guys, unless you've got the proper lifters, you need two people to do a lift.

91:36Um, so we might do the drainage first, and then the other man will go off and do something else, play golf and leave me to finish off. So, we'd do the drainage first. Again, you got some fairly common abbreviations, which I'm guessing are probably similar around the world, but I wouldn't take that as gospel. In this country, they do tend generally to use standardized colors on drawings, unless it's a company which has got a combined water and sewage system, in which case, the colors could well be different, but...

92:09red would normally be a combined sewer, blue would be surface water, and fairly logically, turd color brown would be foul. So, on that drawing there, it's showing us, um... schematic generally, size of pipe, flow direction, materials.

92:33In the US, to this day, and having lived there for years, and I don't know if anybody is on here from the US, you can explain why, but predominantly, all drainage from properties, cast iron. It's only when it gets to the main, it becomes non-metallic. To this day, I don't know why, and this is why you got 512 Hz and 640 Hz sondes.

92:56If you put a 33k or an 8k sonde into a cast iron pipe, the signal disappears. If you put a low-frequency sonde in, you can pick it up. There are other techniques for finding sondes in metal pipes, which we can't cover today because we don't have time, and it's another course, but on another webinar, anyway. But I don't know what it's like in Australia, whether it's cast iron to the, um, the main sewer or standard type, ceramic clay type pipe, or, um, fibrous type pipe. But generally,...

93:10I don't know what it's like in Australia, whether it's cast iron to the main sewer or standard type ceramic clay type pipe or fibres type pipe. But generally, it's quite simple with drainage. You've got surface features, you've got what we call a soil stack or drain vent as it says on there, which is what allows air to come into your drainage system as you're letting drainage go down into the main sewer, and it's gravity fed. Fairly simple.

93:48On a modern house building in this country, you will have separate service water and foul because that is the regulation. It may well then go into a combined sewer out in the street. But that's what is required. So you might have a couple of different manholes with surface water and foul sewer.

94:09You surveyors out there, you may well have your own company guidelines on what you need to note of a sewer, and you may well do proper sewer type surveys. Generally, what we tend to look for in a manhole is which way is the flow going, invert levels, size of pipe, material construction, that kind of thing. Believe it or not, even though it looks like that flexi trace is going in the flow direction, I have actually seen builders put those the wrong way around.

94:44When they don't know which way the thing is supposed to be going, so I wouldn't say it's common, but you might think that that's flowing that way when in reality it's flowing that way. The only way you're going to find out is when somebody flushes the toilet and you see a bit of bog paper floating past, or just pour some water down and see which way it goes. Like I say, you may well do manhole surveys and record a lot more information than that, but that's just basic stuff.

95:11And you may well, to save time, use sounding rather than sticking stuff down it to trace out the connectivity between manholes. So, a fairly simple separate foul and surface water system. This is one very good reason for, on a hot sunny day, not going for a swim in a river downstream of a fairly major city. And anybody that swims in the Thames wants their head examining because the whole drainage system in London is currently a combined system.

95:48That means that when it rains, and the gullies start taking the surface water away, at some stage there's got to be a way of getting rid of that excess water because otherwise it would overwhelm the surface or the wastewater treatment plant. So they do that by way of CSOs. So a CSO, combined sewer overflow, there are all kinds of different CSOs.

96:08So basically, you've got surface water and foul sewage in the same pipe, and you want to get rid of the surface water, and it does it by way of overflowing. Top picture there, a very nice Victorian-type London brick-built sewer. That thing will probably last a thousand years and still look as good as that. So the one at the top there on the right-hand side is foul,

96:34and basically, that eventually just overflows when it gets too full, and that bottom one goes out into the Thames. The idea is that the solids are less likely to slop over. You might find on some sewer systems screens like the picture down below, which is trying to block some of the more undesirable things that you find in drains. But that's how a CSO system works.

97:01Obviously, not every drainage system has the luxury of gravity, so you might be in areas where they've got to pump it. So in this country, we call them pumping or rising mains. In the US, they tend to call them force mains. But it's pressurized drainage. Again, from a surveyor's point of view, not easy to trace. We used to have very small sondes that were pretty much considered sacrificial.

97:28If you stick a load of bog paper around it and flush it down a bog, the only difficult bit of that was knowing when the pumps were going to kick in, and if it went off like a rocket, trying to find the sodding thing again, but... You can find just about anything on the internet relating to anything you could ever dream about, except pumping mains. I did eventually find this picture.

97:49So, drainage is coming in from this side into a nice big holding tank, wet well. When it gets to a certain level, the pump kicks in, which is either a centrifugal pump or, in some cases, compressed. It's then pumped out the other side. That's how you get you-know-what to flow uphill. And I'm sure you're all impressed by that little graphic showing a rising main or pumping main or force main.

98:17Gravity flow in, wet well fills up, pump pumps it out. So you might well be in a building with these funny-looking things, that's compressors. That's what's pumping the sewage. And of course, going back to materials and tracing out, a lot of non-metallic stuff.

98:39So you may well find some AC stuff, PVC. Yorkshire Water used quite a few PVC pipes until they realized they fractured. Polyethylene, cast iron, you'd probably still find some cast iron, ductile. I traced a couple of cast iron rising mains in South Wales fairly recently with the big vLoc kit, which did about 1.5 kilometers,

99:07which surprised me as well. And I've actually, by whizzing through, managed to speed up a bit, guys. This is my second one, the first one this morning, so I wasn't quite sure of timing. I was getting kind of nervous as to running over because we've only got a two-hour period on this.

99:37If there's anything you think we should have covered that we haven't covered, or you want to go over again, by all means put them up in the comments. This was leading on to the second part of what we do on the survey course, which we weren't planning on covering here. But if there's anything you want me to go through particularly, stick them in the comments. If there's stuff we haven't covered you think we should have covered, again, please comment away, and if there's stuff that you want me to do in more detail, I'll see what I can do.

100:08We've got 16 minutes remaining. Thanks, Ben, that's nice to know. I'm guessing a lot of you surveyors already know all this stuff. It's always handy to have a bit of a reminder or refresher sometimes. And some of it might not be relevant to your country. Most countries that I've worked in, most, the one place I've not worked is Oz. Would like to at some stage. Certainly, Europe's very similar to the UK. I've worked in most of Europe.

100:20It's always handy to have a bit of a reminder refresher sometimes. Um, and some of it might not be relevant to your country. Most countries I've worked in, most, the one place I've not worked is Oz. Um, would like to at some stage. Certainly Europe's very similar to the UK. I've worked in most of Europe. Um, the US, not dissimilar. The main difference in the US is, um, CP to the property.

100:49And when I was out there in the '80s, it's probably changed now, but of course a lot of steel pipes, so it was dead easy to find. Thanks to the guys. Um, I'll just hang around here a little bit longer, ramble if you guys, um, got anything at all you want to ask, by all means do. Come down anytime.

101:23Thanks, Ben. I'm getting a little bit older to do it. I can help your guys do it. One thing I found, um, surveying is a young man's job. Talking about it is my age, because it does your back in, especially bending over putting paint on the ground, but thanks for the comments, guys. I hope you found it useful. Um, enjoy the rest of your day, or in, in Oz's case, evening. Um,

101:52I'll leave this open just a little bit longer, in case you guys have got any thoughts or comments, and then I'm going to go and get a lunch because I didn't have time between the two, and I'm desperate for coffee. [no speech]

102:05Like I said earlier on, Pete and a couple of some other stuff, um, we may well put up a, um, basic electrical theory because that's really useful understanding how any bit of location equipment works. Mike's course is on GPR, brilliant, they're always good. Um, the downside of obviously this is we can't go out and show the practical side of it, but if you can combine some of the stuff that you've already been trained on allied with any little snippets you might have picked up on, got ideas, um, especially when Mike starts doing his GPR stuff as well, because, um,

102:41you and I know that GPR is not a magic wand. Great accessory to what we use. Um, if you guys have got any ideas for the magic wand, I'm looking for a very good retirement plan, so, um, I'll happily go into business with you. Until then, we're back to working out how dowsing works, if any of you guys have got any good ideas, let me know. Thanks for the comments, guys. Cheers, Jordan. Cheers, Lee. Cheers, Christian. Matthew.

103:15Ian. Catch Mike's webinar later on. Um, even Pete's stuff on CAT and Gennys, still very useful because it's, um, really back to basic stuff. Stay safe out there, stay in lockdown. I don't know about you guys, but it's nice and sunny here today, so, um, one thing totally unconnected, um,

103:50and I get nothing from this, but my, for you golfers out there, my OptiShot 2 golf simulator turned up yesterday, and me and, uh, my old mate Crompo played 19 holes of some US course yesterday. Great fun. Um, you set it up through computer, aiming projector at a blank, in this case, blanket we've put up against, um, a wall in his garage and whack balls at it. And, uh,

104:18nice way of, um, passing a couple of hours, getting a bit of exercise, maintain our, um, distance, of course. Thanks, guys, for the comments. Um, have a good evening or afternoon.

104:37Steve, Steve Davies, you need a beer today as well. You may well be right. The old comment was it was always the, um, the Irish were the best dowsers. Um, apparently a lot of the, um, Southern US oil fields were found by Irish dowsers. Don't ask me why the Irish were so good at dowsing, I don't know. Um, Ian, I got it from, um, Amazon. Um, got to keep my daughter in a job because that's who she works for, well, she works for AWS, but, um, um,

105:11if you just Google golf simulator, it's, um, like I say, I'm not advertising any particular manufacturer, but the one I got because I read all the reviews, it's called OptiShot 2, and it's brilliant fun. Um, you just basically, it's got a load of sensors before and after the, um, the ball, and it, you calibrate your club holding it at different angles as you swing it, and it, it works out the different angles of your club, so it measures your club toe, angle, face, speed, all that kind of stuff. Um, you can whack a real ball if you want, um,

105:47they send it out with practice balls. In fact, you can whack no ball at all because it's actually just measuring, so you could actually have a duff shot and it still thinks you've had a pretty good one, which is great for me because most of my shots are duff. Um, but yeah, it's great, OptiShot 2. Good little device, got off Amazon. Um, and we just use this laptop and one of my normal projectors I use for training, and we just aim it at a, a sheet in the garage and just whack balls into the garage. We've lost three so far. I'll have to go and find them in a minute. But, we've got a back nine to do tonight.

106:19The only downside, it's not very good in direct sunlight, you can't really see anything. But if you've got a nice big house, um, it recommends eight and a half foot ceilings, whatever that is in metric, yeah, and up to about three meters. So if you've got an old house, you can probably play inside. Yeah, Steve, I agree with you, I think Guinness might have, might be the answer. Um, I think that's us done, guys.

106:59And I think we're just about, yeah, we've a few minutes left before it closes off.

107:05Yeah, Ian, find one, Ian, I can, I can really recommend it, it's great fun. Um, it'll certainly, um, I mean, you can practice putting on it, you can just, um, you can practice driving, you've got a driving range and just practice driving, you can, um,

107:21turn off ball tracking, so when you get play, there isn't a putting green as such, but you can play a par three hole, turn off ball tracking part, and then if you turn off ball tracking, it comes back to where you started, and you just, you see your grouping. What I would recommend is if you're going to do it and get one, and you do the putting, use a proper ball, because, um, the, uh, the little practice balls, it doesn't slow your head speed down, so you end up knocking the ball 20 feet past the pin, so we found...

107:30I think it can back to where you started and you just, you see your grouping. What I would recommend is if you're going to do it and get one, and you do the putting, use a proper ball. Because, um, the, uh, the little practice balls, it doesn't slow your head speed down, so you end up knocking the ball 20 feet past the pin. So, we found that putting with a proper ball is a lot more accurate. Other than that, guys, I'm going to, um, sign off now. Thanks again for your attention. I hope you found it worthwhile.

108:00If you manage to get hold of, uh, one of the simulators, it is great fun. Um, I should be on commission, but I'm not, but it is great fun. And, uh, I'm going to go play another nine holes in a minute, when the sun goes down a bit, and we can actually see what we're doing. Might catch you again, guys, on a later webinar when we, uh, do something else. Thanks very much, guys. I'm signing out. Cheers.