PILC cable buyer in Brooklyn

Wiped joints, lead and copper

A PILC run is not one homogeneous piece. It is cable lengths joined by hand-wiped lead sleeves, often inside a cast-iron or fiber joint housing, and the joints are where most of the lead sits. A run with several joints weighs more per foot of copper than a bare length, because the sheath and the wipes add metal that the conductor does not.

The copper is the main value. Conductors are stranded, often in the 1/0 to 1000 kcmil range for this class, and they are recovered as copper rather than reused once the paper insulation has been exposed. The lead sheath is a separate value and a separate handling question: it is soft, it dents, and a crushed length can trap moisture against the paper.

Condition changes the arithmetic in ways sellers underestimate. Cable that was cut out cleanly and coiled with the ends taped is straightforward. Cable that was dragged out of a duct in short sections, with the sheath torn and the paper open to the air, is worth less per pound because the copper has to be separated from contaminated insulation and the lead is mixed with debris.

Length is recorded honestly or not at all. A duct run may be three hundred feet long, but it comes out in sections, because the manholes are the only places a crew can work and each section ends where the cable was cut. Adding those sections together and calling the total the length of the run misleads everyone; record the sections as they are and let the buyer work with what is on the ground.

• Conductor size and stranding, from the printed legend on the sheath or the tag
• Voltage class, usually marked on the lead or the joint housing
• Number of joints and whether the housings came out with the cable
• Sheath condition: crushed, torn or kinked lengths lose value
• Whether the run was coiled and taped or dragged out in loose sections

Basements, vaults and the removal constraint

The binding constraint in Brooklyn is access, not price. Cable may sit in a sub-basement behind a boiler, in a vault under a sidewalk, or in a duct bank that has to be opened from the street. There are narrow lots, no alleys, front stoops, and streets where a trailer cannot stop without a permit and a plan.

Removal is the owner's work. The circuit has to be de-energised, proved dead and released, and the pulling is done by qualified personnel using the right rigging for a heavy, lead-sheathed cable. Lead is a handling hazard in its own right and the people cutting it need to be equipped for it; a buyer is not the crew that opens a vault.

Practically, that means the material usually leaves in stages. The contractor coils and palletises inside the building, the pallets come out through whatever door exists, and the load leaves on a smaller truck before transferring to a trailer. Saying so at the start is better than discovering it on the morning of collection with a trailer blocking a crosswalk.