Fibre Broadband Cable - to be buried in Garden in conduit

[herbertpug]

After (over a) year of 3kb speed on my "8Mb Broadband" ADSL Virgin Media Beyond cable service, I decided we'd had enough and needed to go onto cable. There is a cable connection on the pavement outside our house (over a 10 foot wide layby). Virgin media advised that they will not dig the layby up or run the cable to the house unless I run a conduit for a fibre cable from the front of the house to the connection.
This is about 100 metres.
I am looking to buy 100m of twinwall conduit / piping / pipe with a drawcord through it and dig a trench to the junction pipe.

Can anyone advise:
1. How deep I need to go. 700mm seems a lot!
2. what diameter the "twinwall conduit" needs to be to allow pulling. The engineer just indicated with his fingers "about this big" but now I see there are differing sizes - I saw 63mm (internal) conduit which feels "right" - it seems they need a special diameter "puller" or they "blow" the fibre through with a plug.

50m of this pipe is around £60 and I guess it will take me 6-7 hours to dig a trench and fill it...

Any advice?
Thanks

 

[alumni]

Depth wise, well, there are official depths and then there is the depth Virgin use - half a spade under the surface.

I suppose in practical terms it all depends on who's land this will be going in, what it's used for, risk of damage etc.

Regards pulling a cable through, 63mm should suffice. Just make sure you have a decent draw wire the full length in there with no nasty joints/snags.

I'd also strongly recommend pulling a second draw wire through with the cable. That way, if the worst does happen, you can replace the cable much easier.

 

[bernardgreen]

If you know for certain there are no other pipes or cables or large stones along the route across your part of the route then consider using a mole machine on hire ( or borrowed if you are lucky ). You just need to dig one hole at one end of the route to get the mole at the right depth and let it dig the tunnel pulling the duct behind it. ( 60mm might be bit big for a easy to find mole ). Allow for some error in "aiming"

Or plough it in with a pipe laying plough. If you know a farmer he may have access to a pipe plough. 200 yards of water pipe installed across a field in less than 2 hours.

 

[rachelz]

when virgin put in our cable they only dug up the turf now 15 or so years later we are having an extension done and a digger drove over our cable and it broke so don't take the easy way out I am now waiting for and engineer as we speak after making 2 phone calls to get him here as the operator didn't seem to understand the the word severed we need a new cable!!! he has 20 mins to get here before he is late
so glad I did put a garden in there would have broken it then or a pole for any reason.
depth guidelines are there for a reason don't skip on them you will regret it in the long run.

 

[bernardgreen]

PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:28 pm

Old post.