Power / Data / Alarm / RF to summer house

[stevelup]

Hi

We've just bought a new house which has a summer house at the bottom of the garden about 25 metres from the main house building. The previous occupants kindly installed a power supply to this building using 2.5 T&E buried in two inches of soil and clipped to the fence posts... I won't even tell you what was done at the consumer unit end!

Needless to say, I intend on immediately ripping this out and installing SWA in the correct manner - however, I also need to run some cat5, alarm cable and a satellite feed down there.

Can someone suggest what the best kind of ducting to use for this job would be? Also, if the said ducting is providing full mechanical protection of the cable, would that mean that I could run the power cable through the duct and avoid the need for a separate SWA cable?

Many thanks,

Steve

[Tournifreak]

If it were me, I'd run the SWA and a separate run of blue MDPE pipe. I would probably use 25mm (but 32mm is also available). Run the cat5, alarm and sat cable down there. MPDE is very cheap, readily available, and designed for burying in the ground. It will usually withstand a spade hitting it but you need to decide how likely this is and how deep you bury it! Use pipe marker tape above the pipe to help avoid any accidents though.

Jon.

[stevelup]

Cheers,

That seems like a sensible plan!

Steve

[David Hansen]

On 31 Aug 2006 03:54:30 -0700 someone who may be "stevelup" wrote this:-

That is allowable if a) the cables are in separate compartments or b) the extra low voltage cables are insulated to low voltage (mains) standards.

Even if done by allowable methods you would get mains hum induced on the extra low voltage circuits due to the close proximity. Separate the runs even slightly and the problem is much less.

I would add a telephone cable. Hard wiring a telephone point provides further options for very little cost.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Power needs to be in a separate duct from signal cable - or in a special type designed for both which keeps them apart.

[Ian White]

In general, yes - but if the power cable is SWA, it would surely be hard to argue that power and signal conductors were not sufficiently separated for safety purposes (hum and noise pickup being a separate issue).

[Jerry]

this job

cable?

separate

Yes, but how would someone know in the future that the SWA is low voltage and not multi core extra low voltage (data / coms etc.) like the other cables?...

[Ian White]

Fair point about marking the cable; but remember what "SWA" stands for. Earthed steel wire armouring gives far more protection and segregation than the token plastic rib inside a divided conduit.

[Jerry]

segregation

Segregation of low and extra low voltage services is the issue here, not protection of the cable, a divided conduit gives far more segregation than just relying on insulation and (possibly in the future) missing cable markings.

[stevelup]

Hi

Thanks for all the input. I'm definitely going to run the power and data separately - I do like the idea of using HDPE water pipe as cheap trunking.

Cheers,

Steve