Running Cat5e between buildings

[bvdave]

Hello, I am planning to run cat5e from my house to my workshop out back, I estimate the distance is about 60 feet or so.

I have 1000ft of cat5e direct burial cable, and a few old gardenhoses I wont be using anymore, so I was planning on running a few cables through the hoses while sealing them together and then sealing the ends with caulking to keep them dry and empty of debris and to help better protect the cables.

My question is regarding lightning strikes, ive spent some time on Google reading about running this outdoors and often times lightning strikes comes up. and not really wanting to fry my computers I wanted to see if anyone could help me clarify for my specific situation.

the run is not very long, as mentioned about 60 feet, I was planning on digging 12 inches deep, Now the workshop has a pretty tall roof, estimating about 40 feet high at the peak. its a metal roof and it has a lightning rod at the peak with a wire that runs down and discharges on the opposite side of where I want the Cat5 to enter the building (building is 40 feet wide so its discharging about 40 feet away)

with the tall building with a lightning rod on one side, and the house which is also pretty tall on the other, I would never expect lightning to bypass the lightning rod, both buildings, and the very tall trees around them (many easily 60-100+ feet tall), to hit a chunk of ground in the middle (as far as what little I know about lightning goes anyways) however I assume most strikes will hit the lightning rod and discharge into the ground. will that ground discharge 40+ feet away be any danger to the cables? and will the rubber garden hose help protect them from any potential harm? or do I need to invest in some expensive surge protectors and put off my project?


Thanks for any feedback!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Personally I would look at putting in proper conduit and running fibre with converter boxes at both ends. One issue with running copper arrises with potential ground differences between the buildings. That can become problematic. If you do it, make sure you use a single ground reference for all equipment, so when you run your sub panel run a ground from the house. I'm not sure if you still have to put in a ground rod at each building but as long as they're all connected you should be ok. Lightning protection can be a complicated thing though so I wont pretend to be an expert at it but figured I'd give that advice, someone might have better idea to make it work with copper.

For securing against moisture the hose idea should work in principal but honestly while you're digging I would just put in a couple proper conduit runs so they're there if you need them later.

 

[bvdave]

well im on a budget and I already have the cat5e so fiber is out, just dont have the money for it. as for the conduit, its cable rated for direct burial so I figured the hose is already a step up from that and should be more then sufficient would it not be? I wont be running anything else out here that I can think of for a very long time so its not like I would need to put more stuff through at a later date (by proper conduit I assume you mean pvc?)

as for a single ground reference, what exactly do you mean by that? ground the wire at one end? (if so how would I even do that since its wrapped in a jacket, so even if I ran a wire from that into the ground it wouldnt really connect to any surge going through the cable no?

 

[kevnich2]

The only true way to avoid frying your electronics, is to NOT use buried cat5 cable and to use fiber. Even with a surge protection device, there's no guarantee it's not going to go thru that and fry your equipment. You say you don't have the money for fiber, you may want to look at the long term benefits of waiting then until you can afford the fiber and install that.

I never install cat5 outside a building anymore. Fiber is cheap enough now, there's simply no advantage.

 

[rchunter]

At my place i've run cat5e in pvc 70+ feet out to my shop. Been living here 15 years.. It's been working good but if I had to do it over again I would have definitely gone fiber simply for lightning protection. I plan on moving soon so i'm not going to worry about it now but my next place I plan on using all cat 6 cables and fiber between buildings.

 

[NetWareHead]

Another vote for fiber for two reasons:

-Fiber does not conduct so no lightening protection needed.
-For same reason, so dont need to worry about differences in ground potential between buildings.

 

[Elixer]

Well, you could get something like this http://www.l-com.com/surge-protector-cat5e-data-line-lightning-surge-protectors or http://www.l-com.com/surge-protecto...base-t-cat5-lightning-protector-shielded-rj45 they are not cheap though and use pvc pipes, not a hose.
I have seen them in use, and yeah, they can save your equipment (depending on the strike), but, these days fiber is better, but, you said that isn't an option for you.
The other way to handle this is WiFi.

 

[PliotronX]

I'm sure it's possible to run the copper and I apologize I don't have experience in making sure it's good but fiber is pretty reasonable: 2xTp-Link TL-SG3210 ($230 for both), 200ft MM ($80-100), 2xGBIC adapters ($70-80 for both). If you live in a potentially stormy area, I'd lean towards this way but if you try the copper, a progress log w/pics would be sweeeeet.

 

[azazel1024]

Much cheaper is just a pair of media converters. TP-Link, Trendnet, etc. make them that take a GBIC module. The converters can be found for $40-50 each and maybe $15 for used GBIC/SFP modules to go in them. 75-100 feet of fiber is maybe $80.

Then you are 100% protected against strikes on the between building links.