we're here in skipton on yet another glorious sunny day where we've just started the process
of converting the area behind us into a parking area that's suitable to charge electric vehicles
we're going to be installing two by 22 kilowatt ac charges and installing them and connecting them to
the electrical installation in the building behind us we've just started the groundworks now when it
comes to ground works there's always the risk that you could strike an existing underground service
and the probably the one we're most worried about is the electrical service so in this video we're
going to look at the precautions you can take to avoid a nasty accident now we certainly know
this building has a substantial three-phase electrical supply because we can see the
intake behind us we can see the cable are vanishing down through the wall and underground
but what we don't know is does it turn left or does it go right and is it going to be directly in
the area where we're going to be installing our ev charger how can we find that out well the secret
is obviously on this drawing here that i obtained from the distribution network operator which in
this area is northern power grid getting hold of a safe dig plan is really easy just google
the northern power grid safe dig obviously other dnos have different methods of doing this
may not be as easy as this already got an account with safe dig to get the records simply log in
start a new application we'll call this something sensible like
efix ev charger installation but before doing that just accept some
terms and conditions i'm sure no responsibility held if there's an error in the plans that is
still down to you and we'll come up to that later um so again let's put in our project name
when will this work take place well we're already doing it so that's uh we'll put that down as as
today and we hope that will finish by the end of the week if all goes to plan
and we're working on behalf of the builder here so we're
and the on-site here we're going to be doing mechanical excavation and it is on uh private land
so it must remember the plans that come through on this will also identify the cables that belong
to the dno they wouldn't identify any private cables on street lighting cables necessarily so
again there's some more precautions so we're going to put in the postcode of the project
and then navigate to that on this map so there we are there's the approximate area so let's just
zoom in on the area we're going to be working it's amazing how granular you can go in this
so yeah just about yes that does look like that does look like the area we're working in
so then we're just going to accept that that's the right area
and then we're just going to draw the area that where the excavation is going to take place
got a little bit wider here just to see what else is uh in the area so
we're just going to draw a little a little rectangle around the area so really easy
and just extend there
background
that's it that's our area defined so then just type the sort of size of plan so that
looks a4 will probably be ideal for our purpose and the shape of that
portrait and then we get two scales so we'll go as close as possible one to 250 on the scale next
and then that's our uh just double check that's the project yep that looks right
just to confirm those details finish and that is our application done so that was a really
simple process a few minutes later i've got a notification in my email that my plans are ready
to download so log back in and then we can see our safe dig plan for the area we've just shown
and lo and behold it's showing the exact route of the cables so here's the front of the property
the road outside and we can see we've got two cables feeding into each unit and obviously
they're not connected so that looks like there's a clear channel through the middle we're going
to be digging here at the back looks like on the other side of the wall down there there is an 11
kv cable running down the road which certainly not going to be gone anywhere near that a few
things to remember about these plans they are obviously approximate so don't obviously don't uh
take this as absolute gospel we are still going to have to validate that that cable is in that area
they also don't tell you the depth of the cable as well which is again another important thing
to to note so we're going to have to make a quite a large hole at the back for our ev charge point
to go in there we're going to put an ev block in there so that's where we're going to be going deep
and what we've just discovered believe it or not is this plan doesn't show your water pipes
but it's all right because we've found them so we've got our plan and we know the approximate
area of the cables are located is now time to validate that with this cat scanner or that cable
avoidance tool so this tool here will scan the ground and is looking for the magnetic field or
metal associated with pipes and cables so what we do first is we scan the area all around the area
because obviously we may be able to identify some cables that aren't owned by the dno that could be
under there possibly some legacy installs but then obviously focusing on the area where we do
believe the cable is and obviously we have got some other clues as to that cable being there
because we know where our distribution and service head is and that's a case of just marking them out
so to avoid that area when it comes to using the digger and that's an area we'll be doing some hand
excavation you'll notice that we've sprayed up two cables out there one's the power service that is
marked on this plan but the cable avoidance tools also identified this telecom service that is also
in the area where we're going to be excavating so we've planned our dig carefully we've scanned
to prove the location of those cables before we dig now it's down to doing a bit of hand digging
in the area where we believe the cables are located and that's what we've done here as
we're putting in our cable duct so we're going to run our ducting in through the building here
so we've started there as we dug down there actually we found another cable it wasn't
the three phase one we're expecting to feed our building now we're looking for other clues aren't
we we found the marker that's put above the cable duct to indicate there's a cable supply there
we obviously had to go deeper than that so again careful hand digging we found what we believe was
a single fare supply into the building that was used before the three phase was installed here and
the builder wisely asked us to prove that that cable was dead and that's what we did before
we obviously removed that we've also found the marker for our three fare supply and interestingly
is further out from the building that is shown on this plan so that's why a reason always to
take a pinch of salt with these plans it's the approximate area not the exact area we can see the
cable marker above that cable we're not going to be going any deeper for our excavation um because
we've got our ev blocks located in and we've got a satisfactory depth that we're happy with for the
cable route that we're going to use so now we can crack on and install our cable ducting so we're
now at the stage we're about to finish our ground works on this project and put the cable ducting
in so we planned carefully where the cable routes were like the encounter were we scanned to prove
that they were in this area then we carefully hand dug to expose them so we knew how to avoid them
when we're running our cable done so we're going to crack on with the rest of this installation
it's part of a bigger series where we're going to turn this area into an ev charging area within
our car park check out that video series i'll leave a link in the description below so we've
nearly finished our groundwork installation here we're just waiting for the tarmac to be applied
our ev blocks are in the ground and our ductwork has now been hidden by the hardcore that's in here
but obviously before we put that hardcore down we've obviously thought about that
next person who may be coming along in the future and maybe doing some future
excavations and we've laid our warning tape in there so if they start removing this surface
they'll get an early warning that there is a cable duct in there and as ever we look forward
to getting your comments as well have you got any safe excavation tips that we haven't covered
in this video or any other advice you'd like to share with the community put your comments below
you