When looking for properties of a conductor, or trying to match a conductor with one in the Poles ‘n’ Wires database, you need to be able to interpret the description you have for the cable.
An example is the conductor labelled 19/.128 AAC. If you can’t find the properties for a cable with .128 in the name what can you do?
The number before the forward slash is the number of strands. The number after the slash is the size of each strand. Strand size could be:
- gauge (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_wire_gauge)
- diameter in inches eg .128
- diameter in mm eg 3.75
Once you identify the size you can move from that to find a compatible cable. Each type of size designation will have typical values that do not fit the other size types. For example “14” will be a gauge and never a size in mm or inches. New conductors are usually sized in mm.
Convert a size in inches to mm by multiplying by 25.4. For example .128 x 25.4 = 3.25. So the 19/.128 cable is equivalent to 19/3.25. Looking in a utility’s cable data you might find two cables with the size 19/3.25 but one is AAC and the other is AAAC. You know you are looking for AAC so you find that 19/3.25 AAC is also called Neptune, which you are able to find in the Poles ‘n’ Wires database.
A table like this one from Fulton Industries may help too. https://polesnwires.com/downloads/FultonCableSizes.pdf
