****ing slabbers borked my cable

[Jethro]

Had some workmen lay down a row of slabs alongside the house yesterday. Mysteriously, after they left we found the TV and broadband didn't work. However the phone does (it's Virgin, formerly Telewest).

Looking at the slabs, the cable, which runs under the lawn, and upto the side of the house seems OK. I took the cover off the wall box, and the cables seem secured correctly.

Virgin notified and engineer due tomorrow.

My first thought was a shovel mishap, but it seems the phone and TV/BB cables run together, so if that were the case, I would have expected all 3 to be out ?

Just wondered if anyone had any ideas/experience.

I know technically the workmen are liable, but believe me, this is complicated :-(

[Andy Dingley]

Squashed it, didn't cut it; very common damage. TV & broadband need a cable that works at unearthly frequencies, not just audio.

[Jethro]

never thought of that. If Virgin try and charge, I will point out that it was hardly well buried or protected (no sheath or conduit). Running alongside it is a (currently unused) BT cable which is in a pretty substantial plastic conduit ....

[tony sayer]

Umm .. depends on the Virgin area and the installers. Some are quite good some are really cowboys. Problem is that with the cable used that if the outer sheath gets a small nick in it then water will get in an eventually corrode the cable leading to odd faults over time.

Get them to re do it and bury it deeper or put it in SID (String In Duct) which they might or should have around...

[The Natural Philosopher]

scaffolding pipe makes a good conduit..

[Jethro]

I'm curious as to what will be involved. The cable clearly runs under the front lawn (about 3m from pavement to house). From comments here, it sounds like a replacement will be needed ? Or would they just run a new cable in ? Is there a tool/machine that will cut a line for it ? Presumably a big cutting disc could go through soil down to 6" - after all it's a 5-10mm wire, not a gas pipe ....

[Andy Dingley]

Mole plough - there are small "garden models" for doing this, although I don't know if that's what Virgin use.

[Adrian C]

It's perhaps a good thing that in difference to their nationwide advertising virgin are actually not supplying fibre optic straight to the doorway premises of their customers. Tricky to splice those things!

[Jethro]

Unfortuntely I have to go into work tomorrow ... I'd be fascinated to see how they do it ...

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 03:30:25 -0700 (PDT) someone who may be Jethro wrote this:-

At a nearby tenement an "installer" put in satellite/television/radio and ran the cables to each flat, clipped to the outside walls.

Obviously not an expert as one of those curious circular FM aerials was installed , rather than a rather more useful dipole .

I wondered how long the cables would last where they were in reach beside the path. I was surprised they lasted several months before being ripped out of the clips. They should have been covered by something robust.

[dennis]

They will use a spade. Push it in 5 inches, open out groove, drop cable in 1 inch below surface. Pretend its OK and leave.

[<me9]

They've changed our cable back to the box over the other side of the main road a couple of times. Across the garden they've just put it in green hosepipe and buried it in a slit made with a spade.

I re-laid that bit when I block paved the drive, now under the drive (about a foot, about 10 inches deeper than they left it.

[Terry Casey]

The 'drop' cable is flooded RG6, the flooding compound being a rather viscous goo.

In the event of the sheath getting nicked, the goo flows into the cut and prevents water ingress

[tony sayer]

I'd umm .. be there while their doing it, to prevent further damage:!...

[tony sayer]

Beg to differ Terry if thats what they use for their "sidecar" cable and I'm 99% certain that it is, it does anything but. We had donated some of that for a charity based project some years ago for a simple CCTV system. Cable was accidentally nicked a couple of times water got in past that sticky goo and cable corroded on the outer screen...

>

[tony sayer]

In article , David Hansen scribeth thus

They should have been installed at the standard regulation "Two Drunks High" level;)..

[The Natural Philosopher]

..twas on the Monday Morning that the gas man came to call..

[Peter Watson]

Don't get your hopes up :) It'll be a first line tech that turns up tomorrow and, depending on how good he is, he may diagnose the problem as a damaged cable. He'll then order a 're-pull' as it's another team that does that...

Prepare to wait and wait :)

Of course, things might go smoothly and all will be fixed with the one visit...

[djc]

and wait. Took them over six months to repair my cable after the road was dug up for a new gas main. When the first line tech arrived there was a frayed cable arcross the trench. A week later when the re-pull team arrived, there was an 18 inch air gap, but they couldn't put the cable in as the gas people were in the way. Another week, another team and 18" of compacted earth in place of the air gap. So then they need permission from council to dig up road. It might have all been settled in a month if the process was co-ordinated but it isn't. Call centres in foreign parts don't understand the concept of buried cables, when you get through to the right person they understand but the computer system looses the special notes so someone turns up to pull a cable through a duct that is no longer there. and so it goes round and round.

[Jethro]

UPDATE :

engineer came and fixed it in 5 mins. Turned out the pull on the cable dislodged it from inside the connector. I checked the connector was on, but didn't go further. So happy bunny here ... no charge at all.