Tove Valley Communities Superfast Broadband Service

A day or two in the life of Tove Valley contractors and volunteers.

spelling mistakes are introduced to prove this is no AI generated drivel.
We lost service to 6 members at about 8am Sunday 4th January followed by 7 more early morning Monday followed by 4 more on Tuesday morning. These were all on the same cable from Wappenham to Astwell, Helmdon and Falcutt.
At first we thought it might be the cold weather interfering with installations in the field, particularly where there are joints in the cable. However, using our test equipment which can tell us accurately where there is a break, we determined that the problem was along a length of cable away from these joints.

	This is the display from the instrument that tests the integrity of the cable and tells us where there are anomalies and faults. Taking readings in both directions towards the fault gives us an accurate position.
	Fortunately, Grahame was available with his digger and so we dug up the cable over a length to ensure we had covered the fault.
	The damage to the cable was along a length where it had been exposed by animals' burrows. As there was no evidence of residents, were are inclined to assume that the damage was caused quite some time ago and degraded over the period. The cold weather was probably a catalyst in the eventual demise of the fibre-optics.
	Unearthing a good 3m of cable at each end of the damage, we splice in a new piece of cable, making the joints in weather-proof boxes like this one. This is particularly difficult in cold weather due to the brittleness of the glass-fibres.

We have Tim and Grahame to thank for getting this repair done in very cold weather! Here is Tim's comments on the job:

The first lot went off at 0750 on Sunday morning and was from the back of the astwell castle cottages but the mill was still going..
Measured with ODTR 2.6km from the cottages towards Wappenham but we had no known junction at that distance, measured 431m from the boiler room also with no known manhole so we were not sure where the fault was, next on Monday measured from Manor Farm back as that had also gone off 24 hours later and got a spot at the back of Robert Tomkinson farm.
After some more checking from boiler room we decided there had to be a cable fault at some point in a straight section so we decided to bridge the estimated area by an extra 20m in each direction to be safe and dig down to locate cable in two spots and bridge over the top to repair and tidy up when the weather improves.
When Graham got to the site with his digger yesterday early afternoon he spotted old hole in the hedge from Rabbits or some other creatures so we decided this would be a good place to start, as he dug we came across old tunnels and the cable and pretty quickly found several parts of the cable that had been chewed one part had exposed the loose tube centre and exposed the fibre so quite surprised any of it was still working.
I put a load of fibre in the kitchen last night to warm up and prepped and fixed a box on each end so less to do in the cold, spliced 5 in the first box then moved on to the second and was a bit surprised when all did not come back up.
Eric popped into the boiler room and put a red light on the fibre and I found a bad splice in the first box so once that was fixed they were all back.
Only spliced 5 fibres in each box so need to decide if we wait to populate the rest or bury as is