Hi. My name is Monte Harnden. I started line locating in 1974. Some of you may know me from Center Line Resource locator training. I am the founder and President of CLR. Center Line has been providing high quality locator training since 2006 to many major oil and gas companies as well as engineering firms, power companies, telecom companies, municipalities, and construction companies. Also, I was employed at Marathon Pipeline for 39+ years. In 2001 I became aggressively involved in 2-year project that produced their line locating and excavation handbook.
A few years back I started recognizing that tracer wire construction practices are sadly in need of revision. Most systems are poorly done and are leading to a high number of miss-locates. Considering the dangers associated with excavation, particularly around poly pipe, other non-conductive pipelines, and power and telecom systems, these poor tracer wire construction practices must come to an end. It took considerable time but Tyler (my son) and I designed Smart Trace Systems ™ to super-simplify wire locating. Without doubt it will greatly improve accuracy and visibility of tracers to active and passive sweeps.
Many problems related to accuracy on tracer wire and telecom wire locate systems are directly related to a poor understanding of locating principles. To minimize excavation damage, I would like to expose some of the issues. THE BASICS Electromagnetic locating equipment usually consists of two pieces – the transmitter, which sends AC electrical energy along …
