Bottled water may be in a container, but it’s not exactly contained. Make sure you drink it before its tenth birthday because any time after that, it might be gone, according to UtilX CEO and president, Tom Van Horn. This process is called diffusion over time, which also occurs with underground cables. UtilX can’t salvage your bottled water, but it can save businesses a lot of money with its patent for underground cable repair.

“Imagine a stoplight going out in Times Square in Manhattan—it’s absolutely critical it gets replaced,” said Van Horn. “You can’t easily dig up the road to get to the cables underground. And you’re lucky if anyone knows exactly where the errant cable is.”

This global leader in cable life-extension technologies headquartered in Kent, Wash., has found a niche for innovation. In 1991, UtilX, then known as FlowMole, purchased exclusive rights to a fluid called CableCure, which was developed by chemical researchers at Dow Corning.

Van Horn, who has been the company’s CEO for three years, has seen vast growth within the company and its estimated 220 employees worldwide. Some of its customers include the US Army and Verizon. Little did UtilX know that when they bought this patent nearly 16 years ago, it would still be the only company in the world performing this cost-effective cable maintenance procedure.

Down to business
There are some cables underground that are more than 100 years old, Van Horn said. Trying to figure out how to squeeze in a new cable to replace one that failed is extraordinarily difficult and expensive. A company needs to bring in the proper equipment, deviate traffic, and do some rigorous digging, trenching, and searching. All of this needs to be done quickly because a city like Manhattan won’t be able to survive too long with road blocks and lane closures.

“Some customers’ cable replacement can cost over $100 a foot (several hundred a foot in some instances) in urban areas,” Van Horn said, noting the whole process of underground cable repairs can be extremely costly for any business.

If a customer wants to cut costs by 30% to even 90%, they can get alternative maintenance offered by UtilX. With over a dozen locations in the US and Europe, it is the only company performing the innovative process of injecting a patented fluid—an industrial silicone material—into a damaged cable.

“We devised a process with a simple apparatus that pumps material through the electrical cable’s conductor strands,” explained Van Horn. Cables fail for a variety of reasons, mostly from water damage. The silicone material diffuses into the insulation, repairing damage caused by water infiltration.

This process is less costly because instead of requiring all the heavy equipment and trying to schedule the complicated drilling or trenching operations, UtilX sends out two to three workers, a small truck, a bunch of fluid, and a few pumps. This crew, in a matter of minutes to a few hours, is able to rejuvenate a cable. UtilX can charge the customer just a fraction of what it can cost to replace all of the damaged cable.

Test run
UtilX has been successful in convincing new customers to try its alternative maintenance. Using a direct sales approach, UtilX will do a trial demonstrating the technology on the customer’s system, showing them how it will be more cost effective than drilling or trenching. After a successful trial, and according to Van Horn, almost all trials are, UtilX will be signed on to start working on the company’s system.

UtilX also tells their customers if the injection fails within 20 years for any reason, the company will reimburse them. “We’re confident enough to be able to do this because we have statistical data that show the failure rate is extremely low,” said Van Horn. “Our customers love this insurance policy, but not many claims are made because the cables generally don’t fail. Our historical statistics show less than 1% of the cables have failed. And some cables fail not because of our process, but because of something as simple as lightning that would damage any cable.”

No one really knows how long the silicone fluid injection will last since it’s a method UtilX has been perfecting since the early ’90s, but Van Horn said there are cables injected many years ago that are still up and running. “The cables we injected 17 years ago are in constant operation today. At the time they were injected, it was thought they were going to fail imminently. Customers feel we added at least 17 years to the life of those cables,” he said.

UtilX has performed accelerated aging experiments simulating the conditions of a cable affected by the environment. Based on those results, the company believes it adds at least 20 years to the life of cables. “It’s fair to say, based on some of the results of our research, that we may be protecting these cables much longer than 20 years.”

For now, UtilX is in a league of its own. “We’re the only company in the world offering this kind of service, which is not to say over time we might see some competition,” Van Horn said. “We have no direct competition as of right now. But any successful business over time tends to attract competition.”