Period underground electric/electronic cabling

[Penners]

Period property restoration is frequently all about blending the new with the old.

There, that's my excuse for this topic dealt with! :wink:

A friend who lives in France is restoring an old farmhouse and two smaller outbuildings, which he is turning into "guest rooms". He wants to lay on electricity, telephone and satellite TV supplies to both the smaller properties, fed from the main house. So he'll be running mains cables, coaxial cables and phone cables from the main house out to the two buildings, running underground. Internet connections from the small buildings will be made through his house router, using "Homeplug" powerline devices, and the satellite TV signals will be fed from a single large dish with a multi-head LNB.

That's the background - here's the question. He will be running these various cables underground, housed in flexible plastic trunking. Will it be OK to run all three cables - mains, coaxial and phone - in the same trunking? Or will there be interference problems from the mains cable to the other two services? If it's better the run separate lines of trunking, will it be OK to run the coax and the phone together in one, with the mains in a separate trunking?

The distance from the main house to each of the smaller buildings is about 80 - 100 metres.

All thoughts and advice gratefully received.

 

[Flyfisher]

80-100m is a long distance to run data and mains cables together and is certainly not recommended. I can't remember the specification standards for running data cables near mains cables but I'm pretty certain it's limited to a few metres and only if absolutely unavoidable. I would not run everything in the same conduit, especially over that distance.

I would also resist the temptation to use power line networking technology over that sort of distance in favour of running separate networking cable, especially if the network is to be shared and the best possible performance (data speed) is required. It would be interesting to try the power line approach (and I happily use it over smaller distances) but I'd still plan on a fixed data cable as a safety net in case the speeds achieved with power line is too slow.

Our mains power and telephone cables come into the house from and outbuilding. The underground section is about 15m. The mains cables are separated from the telephone cables by about 1m and the telephone cables run in conduit. I've also run network cables through the telephone conduit. I've had no problems with this arrangement.

In short, keep the mains cables separate from everything else, but it should be ok to run all the data/telephone and coaxial cables together.

(edited to correct ipad auto-corrections! :roll: )

 

[Penners]

Many thanks for those thoughts, FF.

When you talk about "networking" cable, I'm not entirely sure about how this should be specified. Please could you expand a bit on:-

* What is networking cable? Is there an internationally recognised code for such cable, that a French technician would recognise?

* How would such cabling be connected at each end to the router and to the computer? Do you simply have ethernet sockets in the wall at both ends?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Flyfisher]

For domestic use, 'networking' cable generally means 'category 5e unshielded twisted pair' cabling these days, or 'Cat 5e UTP'. I'd be surprised if a French technician didn't understand this as it's a global standard these days. This is essentially the same as 'ethernet' cable - the main difference is that the fixed wiring is solid core and the patch cables (to connect to routers and PCs) are multicore . . . . similar to mains cabling really and for the same reasons.

There is also a 'cat 6' specification (and probably higher by now) but the higher specifications also require higher-spec wall-plates and patch cables (= higher costs) and, frankly, if the main purpose is for internet sharing then cat5e is perfectly adequate at 100Mbps rated speed and much faster in practice.

As for connecting it all up, you're right that ethernet sockets for the fixed wiring are probably the simplest method. Standard ethernet patch cables are then used to connect between the wall sockets and the router/PC devices.

 

[Penners]

That completes the picture very satisfactorily, FF. Very many thanks, once again - I shall pass this recommendation on to my friend.