Our service tech's only go from the tap out, like yours. The system I'm in is designed with 400 home nodes, about 15 amps per node, no LE's. We have a night shift that does the sweep, they then turn any problems over to the day shift to do the major repairs. In a system as large as your talking about it might be hard to get on top of a maintenance program, but it will pay off in fewer trouble calls for both service and mainenance. I had the advantage of comming into a new system, so all we had to do was maintain it. A system that has been retro'ed would have existing problems that haven't shown up yet, unless you're doing a regular sweep program. It sounds like you've got a daunting task in front of you, I wish you much luck. If there is anything that I can help with you know where to find me.
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> OK.... Do your service techs troubleshoot/repair outages and mainline issues? Ours dont go beyond the tap, so we handle EVERY problem regarding the plant. For us to sweep every node twice a year, we'd have to complete one node every two days...EACH! I'd love to see how it could be done.
> Just yesterday I reswept and redocumented 4 amps, repaired 1 radial, and logged three leaks (in 3 hours) before getting called off to work an HSD outage. This node has 48 actives!
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> > We're running at 1 tech. per 200 miles of plant. Reactive maintenance is going to be a big problem for you in a few years, when the system starts to degrade. You need to set up a sweep program to find trouble spots and fix them before the sub see's it. We currently have every node scheduled to be swept twice a year. That way the levels stay where they should and we find return problems sooner. A leakage drive out also helps a lot in finding potential problems, Comsonics makes a leakage detector called the GEOSNIFFER that uses the Coast Guard's positioning beacons to triangulate leaks to a one block area and then prints it onto a city map for the tech. to use. I don't know how the PUC is where you are, but they will probably come down hard when you start having to many phone outages.
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> > > Just curious...my system is fully two way, with Digital TV, phone and internet. 3200 miles, 220,000 homes passed, 1000 nodes... and 25 technicians working 24/7 coverage. Can anyone give me your systems' ratios of miles-hp-nodes per tech? We are currently doing no preventative, all reactive maintenance... and are wondering how the other systems are faring.
Re: MSO System techs? Got a question for ya..
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