Don’t Miss Out on the Advantages of Home Leakage Testing
If you don’t have home leakage pressure testing as a part of your standard installation/service process you’ve probably got 20% more repeat calls than you’d have if you added this test. In trials, the monitored repeat rate for installation and service calls which included the home leakage pressure test as part of the verification process – had 20% fewer repeats.
Not only that, but there was an average 7-minute reduction in time per job. Not all jobs require troubleshooting, but when they do this tool speeds up ingress troubleshooting tasks that could have taken a couple hours by pinpointing the exact location of the shielding failure. This time savings could add up to an extra job per day completed. Additionally, these time reductions and the increase in craftsmanship quality makes subscribers happier and reduces churn.
Installation and service technicians perform “pressure tests” on home networks to accentuate any breaches in RF shielding integrity that can enable ambient RF in the home to get into the closed network causing ingress. The OneExpert CATV or DSP family of field meters can be fitted with an antenna and a software option enabling the meter to measure signals leaking out of the home network during a pressure test.
Test setup is as easy as connecting a hand-held Seeker HL (Home Leakage) transmitter to the drop at the tap or to the ground block to inject test signals at low and high frequency ranges throughout the subscriber premises. The tech then walks throughout the house and when a signal is detected the meter emits a tone varying in pitch with the received field strength. Performing this test is very effective in locating home network trouble spots, so they can be eliminated while the tech is there for installation or service. This saves the tech time in troubleshooting as it eliminates a time-consuming trial and error method of segmenting the network for ingress. The tech can find and fix loose connections, bad connectors or components, or replace a cable, instead of rewiring whole runs of coax or the entire home.
Pressure tests pinpoint the exact location of the issue vs segmenting and manually inspecting all components – redoing all connectors etc.
Seeker Home Leakage Test Kit includes transmitter, case, and antenna for meter. For more information about the Home Leakage Test Kit, see https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/products/home-leakage-test-kit, or contact your VIAVI Solutions representative.
