Seller situation · Flood, sprinkler and roof leaks
Water damaged cable buyers in New York
Water and cable are a worse combination than the outside of a reel suggests. A drum can look dry, read dry at the ends, and still be carrying moisture deep in the strands a year later.
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Wet cable is triaged rather than priced as a category. What decides it: the source of the water, how long the cable stood in it, whether the cable was energised while wet, whether the ends were sealed, whether the jacket is intact, and whether the voltage class makes water a reliability problem rather than a handling one. Sealed, jacketed low-voltage cable can come through. Wet medium voltage usually cannot.
How water gets into a reel
Water does not need a hole to get into cable. It moves along the interstices between strands by capillary action, and it moves in the same way through the space between the insulation and the jacket. A reel standing in an inch of water wicks moisture upward and inward through the bottom wraps, and the wetted zone reaches well above the water line.
The exposed end is the other route, and the faster one. An open end acts as a wick: water enters the strand bundle and travels along the conductor, sometimes for a considerable distance. That is why a sealed end matters more than a dry-looking jacket, and why the first thing to check on a wet reel is whether anybody capped the cable when it was last cut.
The third route is through the jacket itself. Hydrolysis, sunlight on the outer wraps, freeze and thaw cycles, and mechanical damage from handling all open the barrier. Once the jacket has a split, water sits against the insulation and has nowhere to evaporate to, which is a far worse position than a wet jacket surface that can dry.
Stored cable and installed cable fail differently. Installed cable is usually wet at its terminations, where the end was never sealed and the water has a short path into the strand bundle. Stored cable is usually wet at the bottom of the reel, where it has been standing, and the damage runs upward through the layers rather than along the length. The two need different questions asked of them.
Why drying does not restore it
Drying removes surface water. It does not remove water held in the strand interstices, and it does not undo what the water has already done: corrosion products on copper, oxide and pitting on aluminum, rust from steel armour, and moisture trapped against the insulation under a jacket that is still in place.
On paper-insulated cable the position is worse. Mass-impregnated paper is hygroscopic, and water in the insulation is not a drying problem, it is the end of the cable's dielectric strength. A wet PILC end is a cut-back or a rejection, never a wait-and-see.
On medium voltage, water and electric field together produce water trees: bow-tie trees inside the insulation wall and vented trees growing inward from the insulation shield. They are invisible from outside and they progress slowly over years. A cable that has been wet and energised is suspect even where a test looks acceptable, because a passing insulation resistance reading tells you the trees are not yet long enough to fail, not that they are absent.
That is the part sellers find hardest to accept. A reel can be dried, tested and presented with a clean result, and a buyer will still discount it, because the test does not address the question being asked. What a seller can do is present the facts that are actually knowable: the water source, the duration, whether the ends were sealed, and whether the cable was energised. Those four answers move a price far more than any reading taken after the fact.
Triaging a wet lot
Six questions sort a wet lot faster than any instrument. They are answered from the site history and a visual inspection, and the answers decide whether the reel is cable, a testing question or recovery material.
| Question | Why it matters | The answer that keeps a lot |
|---|---|---|
| What was the water? | Clean supply water is a drying problem; flood water with silt or salt is a contamination problem | Sprinkler discharge or a clean supply leak |
| How long was it wet? | Wicking depth grows with time, and so does corrosion | Hours, with the reel moved and drained |
| Was it energised? | Field plus moisture is what creates water trees in MV insulation | De-energised and isolated before the water arrived |
| Were the ends sealed? | An open end wicks water along the conductor | Capped, taped or heat-shrunk before exposure |
| Is the jacket intact? | A split jacket holds water against the insulation | Sound jacket, damage limited to the outer wraps |
| What voltage class? | Above 5 kV, moisture becomes a reliability question rather than a handling one | 600 V or below, jacketed and sealed |
What a wet lot looks like on the dock
Water damage is rarely uniform. Reels standing in a puddle are worst at the bottom. Reels with water running over them from above are worst at the top, where the water entered the winding. Reels in the middle of a stack can be dry while the ones on the outside are soaked, which is why a stack should be broken down rather than assessed from the aisle.
The visible signs are worth reading. Copper turns green-black where it has been wet for a while; aluminum goes chalky white and pits; steel armour rusts and the rust stains the jacket from the inside. Water staining on the outside of a jacket is not proof that water reached the conductor, but staining at an exposed end usually is.
Handling matters as much as assessment. Keep wet reels separate from dry ones rather than restacking them together. Do not wrap a wet reel tightly in a tarp, which traps moisture and produces condensation on everything underneath. Move it indoors if there is space, get it off the floor on dunnage, cap the ends, and let air move around it while the decision is made.
Insurance changes the arithmetic and should be settled before the cable is sold. Where a loss has been claimed, the damaged material may belong to the insurer once the claim is paid, and selling it beforehand creates a problem that outlasts the sale. That is a question for the policyholder and the adjuster, and the answer normally arrives as a written release rather than a verbal assurance.
- Photograph the water line on the reel before it is moved
- Note the date the water arrived and the date it drained
- Check the bottom wraps separately from the top
- Keep the reel tag with the reel, even if it has to be dried flat and reattached
- Do not attempt to re-reel wet cable; the handling does more damage than the water
Specification
What a buyer needs to know about this cable
Every row below changes what a lot is worth. If the reel tag is gone, the jacket print and a cut end usually answer most of it.
Missing detail is not a problem — say what is missing and the review works from photographs.
| Water source | Clean supply water, flood water with silt, salt water, or fire-fighting water |
|---|---|
| Duration | Hours, days or a season, and whether the reel stood in standing water |
| Electrical state | Whether the cable was energised, de-energised or never connected while wet |
| Ends | Sealed, taped, capped, or open to the strand bundle |
| Jacket | Intact, split, cracked, sun-damaged or mechanically damaged |
| Voltage class | Low voltage, or medium voltage where water becomes a dielectric problem |
| Visible signs | Water staining at the ends, green-black copper, white oxide on aluminum, rust from armour |
| Identification | Whether the tag survived, and whether the print is still readable |
Constructions
Wet lots we review
The source of the water and the state of the ends separate these far more than the visible dampness does.
Sprinkler discharge
Clean water, usually short duration, often over stored reels rather than installed cable. The most recoverable kind of water damage when the ends were sealed.
Flood-submerged stock
Reels that stood in flood water, with silt in the windings and contamination on the jacket. Triaged reel by reel, and often by layer within a stack.
Roof leak over a stack
Water entering from above for a season. The top reels take the damage and the ones beneath may be untouched, which only a breakdown of the stack reveals.
Wet medium-voltage feeder
The hardest category. Shielded cable that has been wet, and possibly energised, carries a question no visual inspection can answer.
Silt and debris from a strip-out
Demolition cable that has lain in water on a floor. Recovery material in most cases, and worth separating from clean coils before it is weighed.
Wet portable cord
Cord and cord reels that took water through the ends. Small value individually, and worth checking rather than writing off with the rest of the pile.
New York
Water damage in the New York market
New York produces water-damaged cable in three regular ways. River corridors and low-lying districts flood, and basements, vaults and ground-floor stores take water with them. Sprinkler systems discharge over storage, sometimes from a fault and sometimes from a fire in an adjacent space. And older industrial buildings leak, season after season, onto whatever is stacked under the roof.
The material often sits wet for longer than anyone intends, because the priority after a flood is the building rather than the stores. By the time the cable is looked at, the ends have been open for weeks and the bottom of the stack has been in contact with a damp floor throughout. That delay, more than the water itself, is what turns a recoverable lot into a recovery lot.
What helps a New York lot move
- What the water was, and whether it carried silt or salt
- How long the cable was wet before it was moved
- Whether the cable was energised at the time
- Whether the ends were sealed before the water arrived
- Which layers of a stack were affected, and which were not
Seller questions
Questions sellers ask
Can wet cable be dried out and sold as cable?
Surface drying changes very little. Water held in the strand interstices and against the insulation does not leave because the outside is dry, and the corrosion it causes continues. A lot can be sold after drying, but it is priced on what it was exposed to and how it was sealed, not on the fact that it now feels dry.
If only the outside of the reel is wet, is the cable fine?
It depends on the ends and the duration. Water on the outer wraps of a sealed reel that was moved and drained quickly is usually a surface problem. Water that reached an open end, or that stood around the bottom of the reel for weeks, is a different question, and the bottom wraps are where to look first.
What about cable that was energised while wet?
It moves into a testing question rather than an inspection one. On medium voltage, moisture plus electric field is what produces water trees, and those progress invisibly. A cable that was wet and energised is treated as suspect regardless of how it looks, and the price reflects the risk that a buyer is carrying.
Does water damage copper differently from aluminum?
Both suffer, in different ways. Copper corrodes slowly and shows green-black products that are easy to see. Aluminum oxidises quickly, pits, and can lose strand section at the point of contact with water. On either metal, the damage that matters most is inside the strand bundle where it cannot be inspected without cutting the cable open.
Do you buy cable from a flooded basement?
Sometimes. Clean water, sealed ends, an intact jacket and a short exposure can leave a lot worth reviewing. Water that carried sewage, fuel oil or heavy silt is declined, because the handling problem comes before the cable problem. Photographs of the water line, the ends and the jacket, plus the date of the flood, are what the review starts from.
Keep reading
Related pages
- Partial reel buyersReels that were opened before the water arrived
- Mixed pallet cable buyersWhere wet cable usually ends up at the bottom
- Medium-voltage cable buyersWhere moisture becomes a dielectric question
- Warehouse overstock buyersStock that survived the leak above it
- Demolition cable buyersCable that lay in water on a floor
- Tray cable buyersJacketed cable where the ends decide
Next step
Send the lot details
Include the storage city, how it is stored and what can reach it. If you have photographs of reel tags or jacket print, send them with the enquiry.
Send the lot
One desk reviews every lot that arrives.
Prefer to talk? 614-715-3047 · saleselectricalbuyers@gmail.com