After a fiber optic or premises cabling project is completed, there are almost always leftovers. Nobody can do an estimate that’s 100% accurate, and being careful to ensure you have enough components to finish the job is really important, especially in an era of supply chain uncertainties and long lead times.

Being a careful estimator

Careful estimators learn there are ways to be more accurate in their estimates of component needs. Most of what I know about estimating I learned from one of the founders of the Fiber Optic Association, Doug Elliott, who was an electrical estimator before he began working with fiber optics and teaching for the IBEW in Toronto.

Elliott knew the tricks of the trade that simplified estimating. He tied estimates of cable and conduit together, then added extra lengths of fiber necessary at each splicing and termination point. The number of fibers in a cable gave him the number of splices or connectors he needed. He had a big table of estimates for labor times, too.

The magic in Elliott’s estimates was in knowing how much additional material to buy. I remember he used to add 12%–15% to the length of cable he estimated to allow for variations in the route length and cable lost when attaching pulling eyes or preparing cables for splicing and termination. When it came to connectors, he would add extras depending on the type of connector and method of termination, because he knew not every connector would be terminated properly, especially in the era of field-polished connectors. He added a “fudge factor” to just about every component.

All that careful estimating and planning to ensure you didn’t underestimate meant that every job should end up with leftovers. What did you do with them?

What to do with leftovers

The first and most important use for leftovers is to create kits for restoration. If a backhoe operator digs up outside plant (OSP) cable or a bored hunter uses it for target practice, you will need some extra cable to splice it back together after cutting out the damaged parts.

Buying and selling

Your restoration will go much faster if some extra cable and a couple of splice cases are in a box in the warehouse with the documentation of the cable plant. If you try to purchase a similar cable at a distributor, you will find they usually don’t stock cable of every type, and delivery times are months or longer. Resorting to buying surplus cable off eBay might be your only option for quick delivery—but beware of counterfeit cables.

However, if you saved some of every component after the installation, you might have more than you need for restoration kits. That’s why there are so many fiber optic cables available on eBay. Finding quantities of cable is hard because most cables offered are project leftovers. Since you may never know how old the cable is, how carefully it was stored or sometimes even the manufacturer, most people advise against buying such cable and building it into their network. That means the cables offered are cheap, so trying to sell excess cable is rarely worth the effort.

Recycling

Recycling fiber optic cable is usually the next thing people consider. Used or excess copper cables are quite valuable since copper is very expensive and plastic cable components can be removed easily. But a fiber optic cable is mostly plastic with some messy strength members and a tiny amount of glass fiber, nothing worth recycling.

Some companies have machines to chop fiber optic cable into small bits, which is not easy considering the strength members used in the cable. It results in a material that can be used in filler for some molded plastic parts such as park benches or road paving materials. However, you won’t make any money recycling that cable; it will probably cost you to get it taken away.

Donating

I have a better recommendation for disposing of those leftovers—give it to a school or trainer teaching fiber optic techs. The FOA has about 140 schools in the United States and Canada (including about 35 JATCs) that are always looking for donations of components, especially OSP cable, that they can use in their teaching labs. We get calls all the time asking for help, and occasionally we get calls from people looking to give cables away, so we become the middleman. Find a school on the FOA website.

Header image: shutterstock / piscari