OT: Direct Bury LAN cable

I'm having to dig my parking lot up between the sales barn and the house this weekend to replace the telephone line. BIG JOB. Hope I miss the all the gas lines, power lines, and security cables Got to be done right away as the ground is starting to stay frozen.

While the trench is open I'd like to throw in a direct bury Lan computer cable. And forget about a wireless network. What should I use? The run will be 250 feet FWIW.

Karl Townsend

Reply to
Karl Townsend
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How about a piece of 1 inch or better conduit or PVC pipe. Then you can pull what ever you want through and replace it as needed (cables don't last forever. Not even fiber)

-- Joe

-- Joseph M. Krzeszewski Mechanical Engineering and stuff snipped-for-privacy@wpi.edu Jack of All Trades, Master of None... Yet

Reply to
jski

Agreed. Schedule 80 pvc pipe + cheap CAT5 will undoubtedly be cheaper than direct burial CAT5.

BTW, 10BaseT ethernet only uses 2 pairs. You could use the other 2 for phone lines and only lay 1 cable.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

You can get direct burial Cat5 from a lot of places. I have two runs of about 250'. One to the boat shed and the other to the shop. I got mine from MidSouth Wire & Cable. About $300 for 1,000'.

How much do you need? I have a fair amount left.

Karl Townsend wrote:

Reply to
Glenn Ashmore

To avoid having to ever dig up the lot again why not bury a PVC conduit. Its dirt cheap, and any future runs of what have you can easily be pulled through if you let a length of pull cord in the conduit when you bury it. I leaned a long time ago if it gets buried, bury it in a conduit, as digging and me do not get along so there is no need to do it more than is absolutely necessary. My take on burying wires and pipes.

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Reply to
Roy

Even better/cheaper/quicker is 1" black polyethylene well pipe. No elbows or joints and a slick surface make fishing and pulling very easy. A barb to NPT adapter at the end of the poly mates to a PVC LB conduit body for the entrance thru the buiding wall and keeps water out of the pipe.

I fished mine, which runs between the house and shop, with a vacuum cleaner and length of mason's twine. Just recently I pulled out the original coax and replaced it with Cat5 wire without disturbing the phone wires.

Ned Simmons

Reply to
Ned Simmons

Whatever you do, bury more lines than you need. It's the labor in the end that is the bear. If you run conduit of any kind, fish several lines while you are at it. With today's networking, you're very apt to use all of the pairs of any 4 pair wire you run. Think of Cat5/Cat6 wire as premium phone line. If you run 12-16 pairs (4 pair per line), then you should be set for phone, intercom, computer or whatever comes up. The point is, don't buy network wire and phone wire - run all network and use it appropriately. Also, pairs can and do fail - but it usually takes years. Definitely bury it all below the frost line.

--George

Reply to
George

Just a thought, but 1" is small if you ever find yourself redoing work or pulling more lines you can run out of space fast. Even for a small job, you might want to lay 2". That way you have room for phone, network, security ... and a number of other surprises down the road. I don't recommend burying power and data side by side within the same conduit due to interference.

--George

Reply to
George

George wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

If you are going to run power too, run separate conduit for each, and space them a good 6" apart in the ditch.

Reply to
Anthony

What Ned said then double it!!! 1" poly pipe costs about $20 per hundred.

Anyth> >

Reply to
Roy

Two inch black polyethylene water line is what we used to bury along the runways on airports for runway lighting cables. Use the lightest pipe available, otherwise you will never get it to uncoil this time of year, lay it out in the sun all day and unroll it in mid afternoon, then put it in the trench the next day. Use a shop-vac to draw a poly twine attached to a sponge through the tube, then pull your cables. If you ever need to replace cable just pull the new through by pulling out the old. I have seen this used in mid winter by unrolling the tube in a heated hangar then pulling it out and dropping it in the trench before it gets cold, not fun, but doable. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

Not really. The crosstalk at that distance might kill the network.

Seperate CAT5 or CAT6 for the network and CAT3 for the voice.

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Reply to
Phil Mitchell

snip

Ouch! That can mean 4' to 6' deep in the northland. Soft poly lines do just fine buried deep enough to be safe from truck driving overhead, say 18" to 24" deep. If you are running under a grassy area, 12" would be enough.

Reply to
Roy

What I'ld use is inch and a half schedule forty.

Reply to
John Keeney

Bullshit. I've done it many times and it's never been a problem.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Call the utilities ASAP to locate all the underground utility lines /before/ you start digging, or the DigAlert "One Call" service if you have one in your state. If you explain you're working against the weather, they may be able to shave their 72-hour waiting period down.

If you hit the utility lines or pipes without calling for a lookup first, you are liable for all repair bills and damages (which can hit five figures in a heartbeat, and 7 figures isn't unheard of) - but if they tell you there is nothing there and you find it there the hard way, you don't pay for the repairs. Or they say it's down six feet and you hit it at two. Good incentive to call them first.

The Electrician (and ex-Telephone Cable Splicer and ex-Central Office Equipment Installer) says: Conduits. Several conduits.

Two to five parallel runs of 1" to 2" grey PVC Schedule 40 conduit with large radius (18" or 24") sweep bends at the ends or where needed. The stuff is cheap in bulk. Space the pipes a few inches apart in the trench, or just glue them together, toss them all in, and backfill with a layer of sand if you are in a hurry. Buried at least

18" down, 36" down if crossing under roadways, and below the frost line if you can go deeper.

You can get "direct burial" CAT-5 and multiple pair telephone wires, what that gets you is wire filled with a gel filling compound instead of air. The gel will keep water from getting into the core and migrating to a low spot, then destroying the cable in a few years. (The stuff is nasty to work with, but that's why they invented nitrile disposable gloves. I went through a ton of them.)

I would suggest two CAT-5 4-pair cables (one for a spare) in one conduit and 12-pair, 25-pair or 50-pair filled "Alpeth" telephone cable (simple polyethylene sheath and corrugated aluminum shield) in another, take your current phone line count and double it - that's the minimum. (Always allow for growth.) Bond the shield. Get lightning arrestors for both ends.

But you still want the cables to be run in a conduit, just to save the hassle of digging it up again later. I worked for a local telco for years, and direct burial cable is far more trouble than it's worth.

If you can get some "WARNING: Communications Cable Buried Below" caution tape, bury it halfway down in the trench - backfill halfway, lay tape, backfill the rest. This will avoid "Backhoe Fade" problems, if the backhoe operator is paying attention to what he's doing he'll see the tape pieces in the dirt... The special warning tape has a foil layer, so it is trackable with cable pathing equipment, the utility people will have these expensive toys.

Multiple conduits means you can have a separate pipe for each service (both the telco and the cable TV people each want their own separate pipe), one for the data network, and a spare conduit for the stuff you didn't think about like fiber optics. Plus, if one conduit gets broken or blocked, the other ones may still be usable.

Below the frost line means you /may/ be able to repull it in the winter, even if some water got into the conduit. But get the pipe in the ground now before it freezes, you can figure out what to do with it later. Cap the ends, so you don't have an ice plug to deal with.

-->--

Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

Thanks for all the advice, everybody.

FWIW, I buried my first phone and LAN line in a conduit ten years ago. It must have pinched somewhere because no way will those wires pull now.

I'll spend the weekend burying Poly water pipe access the driveway and parking lot, then pull in wires next week. This line will collapse when the semis drive over it but provide protection. Me thinks I'll stay above the frost line - that's seven to eight feet deep here.

Karl Townsend

Reply to
Karl Townsend

I'd bury a plastic conduit. How do you know what you will want there in 5 years? Maybe fiber optic? Who knows? With conduit, you are covered for anything that will fit through. I have conduit running everywhere (2 actually; power and signal) while I am building. No sense digging twice and as you say every time you dig you risk hitting previously buried lines. Drop some PEX tubing into the same trench; you might want water, air or some other fluid some day.

-- --Pete "Peter W. Meek"

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Reply to
Peter W. Meek

D*@n! I hope this wire hasn't gotten to used to my South Georgia weather. Goose bumps in the insulation might pinch off the conductors. :-)

Reply to
Glenn Ashmore

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