Burying cables...

[John Rumm]

I had some photos, so thought they would make a fairly dull wiki article!

(hack about as you see fit!)

[Andrew Mawson]

Pretty shallow trench that for going under a lawn. Even a normal garden fork would put it a risk. What happened to the 18" minimum depth for buried services? At the very least I'd have wanted to lay bricks or tiles over the cable to give it some physical protection.

Andrew

[Adrian Caspersz]

The use of Parallel angle grinders applied to the ground like wall chasers might be exciting?

I'd bury loose cables in MDPE pipe, same as the blue stuff used for mains water. It's pretty cheap (seem to remember paying something like £12 for 25m) and if ye do the ends correctly, water won't get in. Helps when extracting or adding others cables later.

[John Rumm]

That particular trench was about 16" deep when done (about a spade and a bit) - the photo is from the wrong angle really to show it particularly well. It seemed more than ample for the circumstance - especially give how hard and compacted the local clay gets, you are unlikely to get anything to that depth by accident)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Would it really offer any additional protection over SWA?

[Andrew Gabriel]

A similar option - do exactly as you suggest, but don't put the cables inside the MDPE - lay alongside. That way you can use the full MDPE for future cables without digging up again. (Do leave a draw cord in the MDPE though.)

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's probably tougher than SWA, but it doesn't have the external earth protection.

[Robin]

Are discontinuities in new, quality cable too rare to do that test

*before* making good the lawn?

[Adrian Caspersz]

No. SWA is protected enough, it's the other wandering sorts of loose cable.

[Roger Hayter]

At least anyone who digs it up later is not going to know it is an electrical cable. Some might consider that a disadvantage, though.

[Tim Lamb]

Might be OK if black and had yellow electrical supply tape in the trench.

>

[Adrian Caspersz]

I've got miles of the stuff in the shed. Does it have a bury by date? ;-)

[Andy Burns]

Given the application, they might not pay too much attention to making it UV stable, so keep it out of sunlight :-)

[PeterC]

Not sure about this, but is CTV etc. black and electrical pipe is red?

[Bob Minchin]

My CTV/phone composite cable is in green conduit and installed in a spade slot less than 100mm below garden/grass by Virgin media.

[spuorgelgoog]

All electrical ducts should be orange, with yellow highlights for danger

BS. 1710 : 1984 'Identification of pipelines'

Owain

[ARW]

Possibly not when it comes out of the factory. But the installation process may damage the cable depending on the quality of the apprentices:-)

Maybe not so much "discontinuities" as core to core or core to SWA damage.

Apprentice "I didn't know that that running over the cable with the van would damage it"

Me "Well it probably would not have damaged it if you had not dragged it half a mile down the road wrapped around the van's wheel"

[Roger Hayter]

Moderately old MDPE water pipes are black, too.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Adrian Caspersz escribió:

+1, but I've used 32mm white drain pipe to reduce possible confusion between services (blue pipes are for water). It's also pretty hard to get a spade through. The warning tape is still a must IMO.

+1

+1

[John Rumm]

With 10m or so, probably fairly rare I would have thought. If it were

50m though I would test it before as well!

Although I did give myself a fright on that one - when I did the insulation resistance test the first time I was getting 0.1 ohms, which seemed rather too low! Then I went to the far end where I cut it with bolt croppers, and un-squidged the end so the armour was not touching the cores, and the next test was much more satisfactory ;-)