We buy storm and flood-exposed cable

A flooded electrical room drains in a day. The cable in it stays wet for months. Water enters at the cut ends, travels between the strands, and sits against the insulation long after the slab has dried out, the dehumidifiers have gone and the building is back in use.

We buy storm and flood-affected cable around Greater Austin, and we treat it as two separate questions: what the jacket survived, and what the conductor absorbed. Some lots are reusable after a cut back. Many are recovery, and we say which before a pickup is booked.

Water migration inside stranded conductor

Stranded conductor is a bundle of small channels. Once water enters an open end it wicks along the length, and the distance depends on strand size, stranding type and how long the end sat submerged. A compact or compressed strand carries it further than the outside of the reel suggests.

The test is destructive and quick: cut a foot off the end and look. Dark wet strands, a damp filler tape or water in the interstices means the reel is recovery. Do it on one sample from each group rather than on every drum in the lot.

Freeze damage, ice load and crushed drums

A hard freeze hurts cable two ways. Water already inside the conductor expands and can split insulation from within, and ice loading on an overhead span stretches conductor past its elastic limit. Neither shows on a tag or in a photograph taken from the ground.

Crushed drums are the third case. A reel that came off a truck, took a fallen limb across the flange or was pushed by a loader has deformed wraps. If the deformation reaches the conductor the reel is recovery. If it stops in the outer layer it can be cut back and respooled.

Recording exposure before the lot moves

Write down what happened in plain terms: depth of water, hours submerged, whether the ends were sealed, whether the reel sat in silt. Silt is worse than clean water because it holds moisture against the jacket. Date the note and photograph where the reel sat.

End sealing matters more than anything else on a flooded site. A drum with taped or heat-shrink caps and no cuts may be intact. A drum with open ends lying in a puddle is not. Photograph the ends as closely as the tags.

The flood-prone ground here is well known: Onion Creek through southeast Travis County, the low crossings on US-183 and FM 973, Shoal Creek through central Austin, and the bottom land along the Colorado River below the dams. Freeze events reach further, into unheated warehouses from Georgetown to San Marcos.

Freeze events leave a different trail: burst lines, water inside walls and cable that sat wet for a week before anyone shut it down. We review both across Travis, Hays, Williamson and Bastrop counties, working to whatever access the restoration schedule allows and to whatever the adjuster has already photographed.