USE-2 cable: buried service laterals and remote runs

A single conductor doing two jobs

USE-2 is an underground service entrance cable: a single insulated conductor, copper or aluminium, rated 90°C in wet locations, marked for direct burial and sunlight resistance. It is not a cable assembly, so a service made from it is two or three separate conductors laid in the same trench, spaced apart, and brought up into a meter base or a disconnect.

The rating that surprises people is sunlight. A buried conductor spends most of its life in the dark, but the last six feet climb a pole or a wall into the meter, and that section is exposed. USE-2 is printed sunlight resistant for exactly that reason. Reels that carry the marking but sat uncovered in a yard for three years are a different question from reels that carry it and were stored under cover.

Moisture is the working condition, not the accident

Wet location is normal for this cable, so the insulation is built for it. The vulnerability is at the ends. A cut USE-2 conductor left open takes water between the strands, and on aluminium that water travels under the insulation by capillary action and starts oxide at the point where the conductor leaves the jacket.

Anyone storing this cable for resale seals the ends, and anyone reviewing a lot checks whether that was done. A reel with taped or heat-shrink-capped ends reads as cared for. A reel with open, whitened ends reads as a length that may have to be cut back a few feet before it is usable, which on a short piece can be most of it.

Tank farms, wellheads and the Findlay pattern

Refining and pipeline operations around Findlay run a lot of small buried services to places that are not buildings: valve sites, sumps, remote lighting, monitoring points at the edge of a tank farm. Those runs are short, they are made up on site from a reel on the truck, and the reel goes back to the shop with a remainder on it.

The same pattern holds on farms and at water and wastewater sites across the northwest counties, where a service is extended to a new pump house or a second meter. It is the reason USE-2 turns up in twos and threes rather than by the pallet, and why so much of it is short lengths that need to be measured rather than read off a tag.

What a USE-2 lot needs to say

Because the cable is single conductor, a lot of it is unidentifiable from shape alone. Size, metal and the print do all the work, and a photograph of the conductor end next to a tape measure is worth taking every time.

• Size and metal, with a scale in the photograph of the end
• Type print, including USE-2, RHW-2 or both
• Length of each piece and how it is coiled
• Whether the ends are sealed, taped or open
• Storage: under cover, outdoors, or in a wet floor location