New Locating Products Expand Jameson Markets
For over 30 years, Jameson has manufactured high-quality conduit rodders for installing wire and cable underground.
This product line has recently expanded to include Duct Hunter™ Traceable Rodders for mapping buried nonconductive utilities, such as those made from plastic, concrete or clay tile. A conductive wire inside the Duct Hunter’s rod core enables a signal to be transmitted and detected from above ground, resulting in safe, non-invasive locating.
When the Duct Hunter’s rod is pushed into an underground pipe, the signal radiates outward through the soil to the surface. A signal receiver is used like an antenna to detect the specific frequency applied to the Duct Hunter by a transmitter. The entire buried utility pipe can be traced and marked continuously from above ground by one man without digging.
A special need came up in the natural gas utility market and Jameson was enlisted to assist. Many newer underground gas lines are made of plastic. Tracing these lines would be a perfect application for a traceable rodder. However, it was difficult to insert the rod into a live gas line without causing a leak. In many cases, carefully digging up buried gas lines is the only way to accurately locate them. There was no safe, efficient and cost effective method to accomplish this and gas service was interrupted to a number of customers for extended periods of time until the locating dig was complete.
Jameson introduced a custom-designed mechanism that enables insertion of the traceable rod without causing a gas leak or prolonged interruption of service. The mechanism is referred to as a “Stuffing Box,” a generic term in the gas industry for any device that prevents gas by-passing another object inserted into a live line. The Stuffing Box is installed at the customer’s gas meter and the traceable rod is inserted through it into the buried line. The rod can be pushed into or pulled out of the gas line while maintaining “no blow by,” a condition in which no explosive levels of gas enter the surrounding atmosphere.
A safe, reliable trace can be performed from the meter to the main in as little as a half an hour with no digging and no gas leaks.
A similar Stuffing Box mechanism can be used to trace main service gas lines in lengths over 1,000 feet. This larger version is currently under development at Jameson.
