More on Buried Cable.
Thanks to the Honest Answers so far.
To Further Answer your questions, as well as my idea:
1) This was a Direct Bury, Except where it comes out of the ground, where they used a 2" conduit at the ends to better protect it. Not Sure how long these are,
going into the ground.
2)It was installed by a Professional Electrical Contractor and a good layer of sand was laid down first, followed with the cable and than a Foot more sand on top. I Extremely Doubt any rocks have damaged the cable.
3)There are no trees close to this cable, and this is in a Very Dry part of the Country. This is a Mountain Area with Very hard, Stable base under this cable.
4) I have a "Sencore", LC102 capacitor Inductor Analyzer. And according to the manual, if these shorts were not intermittant, I could determine the location of these shorts with an Inductance test. Unfortunately you need a 25 foot piece of cable to get a reference Inductance Value. And the town sent back all the Extra cable. Damm.
In my inital tests, I used an Ohm Meter, but was coming up with Varying Readings because of probable Contact Resistance at the point of the short. So I than introduced a 1 Amp, Constant Current Source. Measuring the voltage at the entry point and calculating the resistance verses the resistance of the wire, divided by two Because its a Round Trip, I determined one short to be 7 feet from the end. Repeated tests that day concured this. However a month later, that short No Longer Existed! I believe this must Temperature Related, causing Small Amounts of Contraction and Expansion.
In all Probability I would think all these shorts are at the same point, But I need to Confirm it before digging this up.
My New Plan is to use a 150 volts or 300 volt @ 100 mA Current Limited supply.
In hopes of Arcing and Fusing these bad spots. Maybe also a Cap to Give a High Current Burst of power but Hopefully, not enough to damage the other wires.
Does This sound Reasonable?
Thanks.....Gary