you're joining us midway through this series where we're turning this parking area here into a
workplace ev charging station and we've discovered a bit of a problem in fact it's quite a big
problem in the shape of this cable so we've run our mains distribution from our distribution board
through our underground ducting in 16 millimeter five core ev ultra steel wire armored cable but
what's the problem gary i don't think it's going to be an easy task to bend this cable bring it
up through the EV tower make off the armoured gland and connect it into our c-teK ev charger
however this cable here seems incredibly flexible that's because it is an incredibly flexible cable
because we've converted our steel wired armoured cable and connected it to this ho7 rnf heavy
duty rubberized cable so we can get it through easily through the post and into the terminals now
some say that electricians who are installing ev pods are using this cable for the whole electrical
installation now we used to see an hr7 rnf used extensively possibly in the entertainment industry
you see it a lot in some heavy duty industrial sites but we don't normally think about it as a
fixed installation cable so are we wasting our time running steel-wide armored cable should
we just be using this for the whole installation we'll be interested to get your thoughts on that
about how you would think about doing that in a decision remember we've already installed ducting
and everything else to complete this installation so we're going to show you now exactly how we
connected this cable to this cable including the cat5 cable and how we made that join so this is
a video of newness we've got lots of new things a the new cable we've got a new cable stripping tool so
this is the SACS cable armored cable stripping tool okay that looks remarkably like something
that comes out of a plumber's toolbox for cutting through say copper point yeah let's assume it
works on the arm of the cable it will work on pipe and plastic conduit as well so yeah it could be
right there gary but let's see how it gets on here first time ross has used this so we're twisting
slightly going around twisting slightly so it goes further and further in order to cut into the steel
wire armors that looks pretty good to me acid test will be when obviously the outer pvc is off
yeah so he's using a knife to do that he could have actually just ran down the cable uh by
turning the tool the other way uh and running down that but old habits die hard gary yeah so
one or two have broke off so that suggests that we've got it in nice and i said first time he's
used it so he's got to learn how many rotations and tightening ups you've got to do but that
looks pretty good to me they're breaking off nice and easily i'm sure people have noticed
not just the lack of moisturizer on ross's hands but the advent calendar there in the background
we're time stamping our videos there yeah we're just towards the back end of last year i'd suggest
that advent calendar is gone now yeah i would hope that under the christmas tree ross got something
to moisturize those hands so now we're using it as a knife aren't we yeah just to remove that
outer sheath uh just sort of see how it uh well it does just to uh expose the armor so pop that
off and we're gonna put this into a joint aren't we so what type of joint are we using yeah so
this is the whisker shark six eight uh we have looked at other variants of this a long time ago
before on the channel uh and we sort of thought it was lacking strain relief this version has strain
relief so we'll just see how that goes this is the largest one in the range so this can handle
between 10 and 25 millimeter five core armored cable um so i wear mid way in there so this is
a 16 millimeter so we'll see there's a new cable but we'll we'll tease that a little bit longer so
we're worried now aren't we and there's a separate video on this about exporting the earth when we've
got our pen protection in the form of the mate aren't we yeah we have yeah so we're just making
sure we can't do that we're just sealing off that armour with some adhesive-lined heat shrink and
we've got the middle Milwaukee heat gun out there again we're trying um so here's our joint so this
is obviously because it copes with different sizes we've got these insert pieces uh did take us a
little while to figure out because they're colored slightly differently in the instructions but we
did figure out you actually as common sense would suggest you remove the one that makes it smaller
first um and so what's ross doing now gary so he's marking up now how much of the bedding material
needs to be removed there is not a lot of room in that joint so you've got to be quite precise
but this is a tool i think i've seen before on the channel just under a different name so this is the
this is the week on cable stripper uh that we featured before and i think uh doncaster kales
were so impressed with that they did a victor kyam gary and went out and bought some but they've
renamed it now as the eevee ultra stripper with that in mind it's just a fantastic bit of kit i'm
sure you'll leave a link to the video that we made on that that's a good tool for this application
yeah so we've done that we can see it's obviously got that inner plastic layer on as well that's
some armored cables have now so here's another first yeah so we've got our coloured core so
that's quite nice we've got even got our green and yellow protective conductor identified and
what's the conductor we're just folding out the way there yeah so here's the data cable
so this is indeed the ev ultra cable but it's now in a much bigger size and this is a special
rare version because this was made by doncaster so they could get the basic approval across the range
so it is now available in three phase with the inbuilt data cable as well for this kind of charge
installation we've got here and when you say rare it was because we've now upped it to 16 millimeter
squared for those conductors aren't we yeah that's it so it's uh yeah but this is a this is a first
time outing out of the doncaster factory okay and for me it's taking your time now there is an
additional yellow one there you might have spotted that is not a conductor is it gordon no it's just
a little bit of a little bit of bedding materials obviously keep the cable in the right shape and
form factor unless it was a fibre optic we've just cut off that could be a heartbreaking moment it
isn't so now we've got to make sure our connector is in the right form so it's a three at the top
two at the bottom and it's vitally important that we lay our conductors correctly but we're on the
first side so it's always the second side that's got to match this yeah there isn't really the room
to to route the cable to a different connector and cross them over and again so this connector block
comes with the the joint and it is handed so it has to go three at the top two at the bottom you
can't say flip it round if it was easier to have it the other way around because there's a couple
of like locating pegs at the bottom that will sit within that gel joint when we get it so ross is
going to go in with the old croppers in order to strip is his favorite technique in order to do so
you might have also noticed that there's allen keys uh heads on the uh the actual connector there
something quite telling it also is that unlike the ones say where the mains make joints they tend to
shear off don't know these don't do they no no no so it's just yeah it looks like conventional
terminals uh again the allen key comes with it you may prefer to use your own or you like a short
allen key yes i i love the uh yeah the tightness of a short allen keys it digs into your thumb as
you're trying to get it into a nice toy connection check out the jscc video we made where gary just
assembles a competitive product that comes with lots of allen bolts which he drops all over the
floor i do yeah so of course now we're going to obviously slowly wind them down go round go
round go round again because obviously we know those conductors tend to settle into
their terminals so we end up going around several times we've made our connections now um obviously
we're going to bring the other cable in a minute we're going to address um something on top of our
cat5 cable as well gordon what do you think well we'll come to that once we've done that
the next cable we're going to bring in the hr7 rnf which is a highly flexible uh cable
because we don't think we'd get this up to the charge point okay so highly flexible uh it's
class five conductor so this should be easier to work with yeah but of course we're going to be
stuck with the way the conductors rotate within that flexible cable aren't we yeah you gotta
match them up because again a lot is flexible there isn't much room to cross them over to
match the the order of the armored cable we've just terminated it's a high quality uh h07 it's
a neck sounds cable again remove that the the packing material in the middle so we are
exporting the cpc or protective conductor within the cable aren't we we're just not exporting that
steel we're armored one and then as i said earlier that's really explained in that mati
video yeah just yeah to see that we have actually seen people make a few people make mistakes on
that where they go through the mountain device and then accidentally re-export the uh the uh the cpc
connection uh through the armor then reconnect it in okay it's a lot easier to work with obviously
class five i take it we're gonna have a feral dropped on the end of these yeah i just think yeah
because it is that they are fine stranded just provides a i think a better connection some people
might have also noticed that that cat5 cable doesn't go much beyond the joint so it's going
to be floating around be interesting to see what we do with that towards the end yeah and that's
uh yeah there's a lot of copper in this cable i was thinking yeah do you have to buy a long
bit of cable to remove a lot just to give a long data cable i think it's better probably to make
a joint gary we'll see that okay so this one's in again we can see how short those conductors
are how they're laying it's vitally important that the preparation before it drops into the whisker
gel joint yeah i see ross has swapped to his own allen keys for this stage yeah the other one broke
yeah so we're tightening those down you can see a little sort of stench in there that's actually
going to sit within so that will sit in now this is that bit where you've put some more heat shrink
on the cat5 so that's what i call engineering judgment it's obviously in the cable we had the
cat5 and then another layer of insulation between the conductors itself so i'm just putting that
back to a two layers of insulation uh and then just heat shrunk that on yeah it makes sense
you're now laying by the side of terminals alive aren't you yeah so i just thought that's yeah so
this is engineering judgment obviously this is this is our installation we're making all the
decisions on this but yeah let me know what you think there below so again now we're taking that
data cable back out with the flexible cable isn't available in an ev ultra version so i'm just i've
put some additional mechanical protection over the data cable and then we're just heat shrinking that
together with some adhesive lined heat shrink um but obviously the waterproofing on this isn't done
by the gland it's done by the gel inside the the box itself yeah so you can see now those two pegs
top and bottom they'll sit and locate themselves into position and obviously then we fold it shut
if you get it right it's always that classic case that the gel actually comes out of the
joint doesn't you find that ectoplasma i think you'd call it don't you yeah and we've uh we've
made this and we've been finding it ever since uh it's on it's on the vice on the bench i found
some by the door the other day and you know you seem to be peeling some off the advent calendar
as you polish off the rest of the chocolates yeah so this will also help hold the joint
together obviously it's it's it's holding the cabling position but it's actually pulling the
joint down as well you've got those clips on the side that you'll need to fasten in order that we
can make sure we've got a waterproof joint just remind me the ip rating of the joint so this is 68
so yeah so you would use in the kind of applications where you use a traditional
resin poured joint and but we are doing this in the workshop and then we're going to
run the cable after we've made the joint which might be a little bit strange for some people
but it was a freezing cold day and there's not a lot of room where we're putting this so now we've
got that very short piece of cat5 from the eevee ultra i noticed there's another bit on the end
there now what's happening now yes i've been i've raided the cpc uh catalogue so that's not circuit
protective conductor the electrical distributor and i found these end-to-end ip68 rated cat5
uh joining joints okay so all we need to do then is make off both ends into an rj45 connector and
then we'll be able to pass it through the joint is that right yeah so it's an end-to-end joint
put the plug on the cable obviously first stage as ever on these things is to forget to put the
the the the gland on the back uh yeah so then it plugs in so yeah there it incomes the rest of the
gland yeah that you forgot first time okay and then that's ready obviously you wouldn't leave it
in the ground unprotected because obviously water can get in that other end so we're showing one
end being made off there's no point showing the other end but just repeat the same process this
time with an introduced piece of cat5 cat6 cable that we've got yeah yeah and then we're going to
run that up our ev tower into the ev charger yeah see why we made it now into the workshop because
obviously there's not a huge amount of room in there but we wanted to experiment with this
um gel joint didn't we there we go so that's in position so we're ready to run
the flexible cable now up to our 22 kilowatt uh ev charger now that connection uh was easy inside of
that whisker gel joint but do you think it's going to replace those more traditional poured ways of
doing the joint yeah i think there's certainly a new way of tackling that problem especially
with the types of cable we're using remember gary you've got to do it inside the workshop
but we'd be interested in your comments what do you think of the whisker shark 6-8 gel joint
and also what do you think about the option to use h07 rnf flexible cables as part of a
fixed installation would that be another viable alternative that you'd consider the rest of the
videos in this series check them out in the next part we'll be connecting up our c-tec charger and
running through all of the commissioning processes as well but also check out the videos we've made
about the ev block that's buried underneath us here and also the ev tower that gives you some
great mounting options for ev charges we will look forward to those comments gary especially
looks forward to debating the benefits of rubber cables and gel joints in the comments