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Burying cat5

ni4ni

ni4ni

Golden Member
EDIT: I posted this in networking but have not received a response. I will be logging off in a few and hope to do this tomorrow morning so I needed the information. I hope I am not violating rules by double posting.

I recently purchased the house next door to where I live. (My family still lives there.) I want to run cat5 cable to my house and outer building from my parent's house. They have no problem with this, as I will be paying half of the internet and we own both properties.

Is this legal? What is the easist way to do this? I was thinking of buying pvc conduit and putting regular cat5 in it.

What do you think?
 
Originally posted by: NickelTitanium
legal. I would recommend the cat5 be placed inside a conduit.
Click to expand...

Once I put the cable in conduit, should I seal the edges of the conduit to prevent bugs or water from entering?

What about lightning? Will that be an issue?
 
Originally posted by: ni4ni
Originally posted by: NickelTitanium
legal. I would recommend the cat5 be placed inside a conduit.
Click to expand...

Once I put the cable in conduit, should I seal the edges of the conduit to prevent bugs or water from entering?

What about lightning? Will that be an issue?
Click to expand...

They do it all the time with coaxial conduit installations, with caulk.
 
Originally posted by: ni4ni
Originally posted by: NickelTitanium
legal. I would recommend the cat5 be placed inside a conduit.
Click to expand...

Once I put the cable in conduit, should I seal the edges of the conduit to prevent bugs or water from entering?

What about lightning? Will that be an issue?
Click to expand...

I posted something similar to what you are asking over a year ago. I was told all kinds of crazy things to discourage me from running a cable from one metal building to another. I was even told I needed some special $100 fittings to go through the shell of the building for the conduit to prevent the building from inducing interference....yadda yadda yadda.

Because of the sage advice from all the experts I decided to not mess with running cable and stick with a wireless solution the was pretty bad. Even with line of sight from window to window the wireless simply did not work most of the time.

A few months ago my buddy got tired of going into the house from his shop to check E-Bay. We took a chance. Grabbed some plastic conduit from Home Depot and fittings. Strung the cable from the house to the shop with over 100' of cable in plastic conduit with all joints glued and the part of it buried in the ground.

His internet has been working PERFECTLY for months now which is the first time it ever has in the shop.....even in thunderstorms. I am not saying what we did was correct but it sure was cheap and has worked great for us.
 
Originally posted by: Ronstang
Originally posted by: ni4ni
Originally posted by: NickelTitanium
legal. I would recommend the cat5 be placed inside a conduit.
Click to expand...

Once I put the cable in conduit, should I seal the edges of the conduit to prevent bugs or water from entering?

What about lightning? Will that be an issue?
Click to expand...

I posted something similar to what you are asking over a year ago. I was told all kinds of crazy things to discourage me from running a cable from one metal building to another. I was even told I needed some special $100 fittings to go through the shell of the building for the conduit to prevent the building from inducing interference....yadda yadda yadda.

Because of the sage advice from all the experts I decided to not mess with running cable and stick with a wireless solution the was pretty bad. Even with line of sight from window to window the wireless simply did not work most of the time.

A few months ago my buddy got tired of going into the house from his shop to check E-Bay. We took a chance. Grabbed some plastic conduit from Home Depot and fittings. Strung the cable from the house to the shop with over 100' of cable in plastic conduit with all joints glued and the part of it buried in the ground.

His internet has been working PERFECTLY for months now which is the first time it ever has in the shop.....even in thunderstorms. I am not saying what we did was correct but it sure was cheap and has worked great for us.
Click to expand...

I don't see the big deal, phone cable is burried in conduit all the time.

Just make sure you don't run the cable into the houses where the mains come in, some people like to avoid drilling more holes and fish the cable through the electrical cable conduit by drilling a hole through the access plate. This may cause interference. Drill a separate hole. You could probably get away with a 1/4" hole if you put the ends on after you run it. Seal the holes with epoxy.
 
Use a MOV spike arrestor at each point where it enters the buildings on both sides. Follow the manufacturer's directions on installation and you should be ok.

Unprotected runs will pick up damaging spikes with close lightning strikes.

Do not bury unprotected cable - use 3/4" PVC (the gray UV resistant stuff). I'm not aware of direct burial CAT5 cable (like UF power cable) but if they have it available it will save you the hassle of running conduit. Flexible PVC (like a hose - similar to liquidtite without the metal layer) is quite easy to work with and is compatible with standard pvc cement for TLB fittings to get through the walls, etc.
 
You could just get underground rated cable and not bother with conduit.

Might save you some money depending how what prices you can get for the cable.

FWIW when I pulled cable a few years ago to help out at a place I was working, we'd a lot of times run conduit with underground rated cable in that. Water and bugs pretty much always will get into the conduit given enough time no matter what you do.
 
While purists probably have a list of complaints with the concept it really isn't a big deal to run a data cable between two houses... Depending on how familiar you are with the various buried sprinkler pipe/CATV/gas line/phone/electrical between the two homes you should be able to hand-trench with a flat shovel and just drop the PVC a foot or so into the ground. I'd suggest running twine or pull string through the pipe so you can use it to pull the actual cable through more easily when the time comes.

Use a gradual 45" like this: (http://www.homeandbeyond.com/prod-0077681.html) at each to bring the cable to a vertical entry point, then use a coupler like this (http://www.homeandbeyond.com/prod-0089044.html) and the appropriate length of conduit to bring the pipe to the level at which you want to enter the house. Drill a hole in the side of each house slightly larger than the diameter of the conduit you are using and use an access fitting like this (http://www.homeandbeyond.com/prod-0075695.html) plus a short stub of conduit to enter the house. Just use PVC cement to lock everything together once you've got it fitted properly and use plenty of caulk to seal any gaps around the entry point in the house to prevent water leakage. Once you have a cable coming into each house I'd advise terminating to a CAT5e or 6 jack in a wall plate or surface mount box - then use patch cables within each house to make the run to your equipment.

If I were running a cable like this between two houses I'd probably opt to go with shielded CAT5e or 6 cable and then tie the ground on ONE END to the nearest appropriate earth ground (cold water pipe, etc..). Should be plenty of protection from lightning strikes and any other strange EMI you might pick up on the way.
 
Originally posted by: lokiju
You could just get underground rated cable and not bother with conduit.

Might save you some money depending how what prices you can get for the cable.

FWIW when I pulled cable a few years ago to help out at a place I was working, we'd a lot of times run conduit with underground rated cable in that. Water and bugs pretty much always will get into the conduit given enough time no matter what you do.
Click to expand...


Exactly! But in either case, you'll probably be fine. I'm jumping on the conduit+cable+sealed bandwagon.

My previous supervisor had a similar situation - but he ran cat5 out of a hole drilled in his house, buried it, and ran it into the neighbor's house just fine. No conduit. At most you might have to replace the cable every few years this way, but I can see the conduit preventing that replacement. Give it a shot, let us know how it goes....:thumbsup:
 
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