Mains cables and data cables

[Tricky Dicky]

I am finishing off the electrics in my mancave. This involves trunking round three walls with droppers of PVC conduit going either to individual sockets or to some dado trunking with a number of sockets. Owing to the room being insulated with Kingspan, I suspect my WiFi which does work OK in the main part of the garage will not work in the mancave with all the foil and foil tape acting like a Farraday cage. So I want to provide a wired network.

I know some trunking comes with separate sections for mains and data cables. Unfortunately I cannot use that trunking. Is there a requirement in the regs. for mains and data to be separated which I could easily do it is just running the cables together would provide a neater solution?

Richard

[Chris Green]

If I remember right the separation requirement is 50mm (or 2" in old money), either that or "mechanical separation".

[Andy Burns]

The y need to be separate if the data cabling isn't insulated to 230V rating, which most isn't, however ...

fit a backbox where you want the data and mains to separate off.

[Tim Lamb]

or

the data with the mains but inside insulated duct?

[Bob Eager]

I used flexible mains trunking for the data cables (phone, network, alarm).

[ARW]

What size trunking are you using?

Adam

[ARW]

It's a bit bulky with about a 110mm radius bend.

[Brian Gaff]

Regardless of safety concerns, data cables do pick up crud from mains cables and this can manifest as data drop out at either end or both. What about a wifi extender of some kind outside both buildings? Obviously wifi is not quite as fast as wired would be, but still pretty good. Brian

[Tricky Dicky]

I am using 50mmx50mm to match the rest of the garage. Frankly it is a bit overkill since there will not be as many cables as the rest of the garage. In view of what has been said I am considering using some mini-trunking inside the 50 x 50 and run the two network cables inside that to provide the separation.

Richard

[Tricky Dicky]

I am aware of that argument Brian but cannot see how a thin piece of plastic will have much effect on preventing cross-talk but acknowledge your point. Underneath our desks at the last house was a tangle of mixed mains, data and low voltage cables all sitting next to each other in cable trays and I never experienced any issues.

Richard

[ARW]

Mini trunking inside the trunking was going to be my suggestion depending on your trunking size. Two cat 5 inside

I appreciate that you are matching the rest of the garage or I would have suggested MK ZT4 (in case you were not aware of it's existence).

Although if you are using twin and earth for the power and not 6491X singles then I can't see what an extra bit of trunking provides that the double insulation of twin and earth would provide:-)

Enjoy your man cave.

Adam

[SteveW]

If you are happy enough with wireless connection in the rest of your house, a single, wired connection to your mancave and a Wireless Access Point would ensure signal in there.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That works.

When we did this in an office environment we used a two or three compartment trunking.

I am not sure that two compartment 50x50 exists tho

[The Natural Philosopher]

The reason for separation is to put at least two mains rated bits of insulation between the mains and stuff you might expect to touch without getting killed In general you don't put T & E in trunking, just red and black and bare copper single cores for live neutral and earth.

Data wires are approximately balanced to reduce interference, and run at high signal levels. Analogue audio wires are more an issue, and they are screened and balanced in a studio environment and NEVER run parallel close to mains.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I agree.

But the building inspectors and insurance companies like to see it anyway.

[John Rumm]

Much depends on what you mean by "data cables". In this day and age it is likely to be ethernet, which is twisted pair differential drive with transformer isolation at all termination points. You have to try quite hard to get mains bourn interference to disrupt that.

(and if interference really was a concern, its is very easy to stick a network switch with a SFP port at each end, fit a fibre transceiver at each end, and run fibre on your "noisy" run)

[John J]

Presumably the lengths of run are reasonably short. In which case threading the data cable inside some small bore PVC flexible conduit would be easier to run inside the large trunking than minitrunking?. Cat5 with it's twisted pair construction should be relatively immune to 50Hz effects.

[Bob Eager]

Exactly what I did. Some of the older cable is CAT4 and it seems fine at gigabit speeds (but no very long runs).

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. CAT 5 and Cat 5E seem to be 'guaranteed' to do what CAT 4 normally WILL do.

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[John Walliker]

There also the option of using shielded CAT5e cable or CAT6a which is always shielded.

John