Burying ethernet cable with armoured mains to shed

but at £3 a meter the plastic ducting is more expensive than the outdo or ethernet cable !

george

Lay a duct with a draw-string, but don't put the cables in it. The duct is for the cables you need in the future but don't know about today, not the ones you do know about today.

I used MDPE water pipe, single piece with no joins (and black rather than blue, but that doesn't matter much). Thread a polypropalyene rope through to work as a draw string. It has low friction with MDPE, but don't pull through at excessive speed nevertheless.

Ethernet is pretty immune to mains interference, but even so, I would space it as far from the mains cable as your trench width allows. And of course, you never install just one ethernet cable run anyhere, but particularly in places where the effort to install it is considerable and the cable cost is peanuts in comparison.

Put a plastic warning tape in the trench about half way in depth between the cables/duct and the ground level, to warn any future diggers.

What is the length of the run?

I used blue water pipe to protect what was actually a fibre cable. Ideally you need to ensure that water can't get into either end of the pipe. My blue pipe is connected to a copper pipe above ground.

snip

While I'd make provision for more if I did it again, I haven't found one run per room to be a problem - I just use a switch.

One point needs 4 feeds in one place (TV etc) - the switch seems far more elegant than 4 separate feeds. In fact, in my study there's a switch fed from a switch - seems to work :-)

It's more ungainly if points are needed around the room - which brings up the issue of where to put the various sockets.

Trench length a bit less than 30 meters.

Could I sleeve the grey green as another earth, or is there a rule against this?

George

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If you had 2 core then that would be brown and blue, then use the armour for earth... Three core always comes in 3 phase colours.

The normal suggestion is brown as live, grey oversleeved as neutral and black oversleeved as earth[1]. Yup you can parallel the earths - and in fact you might need to depending on where the power is going and what the head end earthing system is. See:

Note TLC will sell you the external grade CAT5 by the metre:

but 30m is one of those annoying lengths where it probably does not save any to buy it that way.

This might work out ok, but you would still need a duct:

anyhere,

Yuk... B-)

It'll work, but each switch adds a bit of latency, also remember the uplink is carrying all the uplink traffic from all the ports on that switch and any others further downstream.

Assuming door in one corner of a room, a rough guide is at the corners next to the door corner, along with power. Power also every

Also, twisted pair isn't just for ethernet. You can run voice, intercom, video, serial, USB, radio, freeview, satellite, ... down it.

Theo

It's pretty immaterial for many things though - for instance, I have a Smart TV, DVD/media player, satellite box and terrestrial box in a cabinet, all connected to a switch. Latency really doesn't matter and the four boxes are never all in use at once. Even if they were, they all are 100M ethernet, while the switch to central switch link is 1G.

Similarly, I have a computer desk in the living room, with its own switch. The switch feeds the PC, networked printer and the streaming media player in my hi-fi. The fastest item, the PC, normally has almost full-speed access to the 1G connection.

It doesn't matter how many you install or where you place them, they'll never be in the right place!

SteveW

That is PE sheathed, PE does not have a good life expectancy. I've been looking for black PVC sheathed for outdoor use.

NT

Limits bandwith uncecessarily.

Prezactly...

ESPECIALLY if you are married.

...as it should, but you may need the full bandwidth one day though.

Something that mice and other critters do not like to chew on I think! Brian

In message , Brian Gaff writes

Good point Brian.

You need to keep mice out of your ducts as they will try to make nests by chewing up your draw string.

Any drawstring should be 'woven' or 'braided' not traditional hawser laid. Otherwise if you've already some cable in the duct, pulling on the draw string 'twists' the new cable round the old one until they jam... You can/could get cheap 100mm ducts in 5m? lengths. Plug any access with scrunched up chicken wire to stop rodents entering and chewing through cables.

Hum, so why do they use PE (as in MDPE) for at least gas and water pipes? That TLC cable is LDPE jacket HDPE insulation. And is advertised as suitable "for clipping to external walls or laying in ducts". Dropwire No.10 (phone lines from poles) has an HDPE jacket.

PVC isn't bad but can be porous and not overly stable when exposed to UV. It can come in UV stable forms as used for window frames guttering and some waste water pipes.