Telecoms underground ducting

[Dunc]

(Not really sure which section this should be in)

 

I need to lay about 40m of underground ducting to carry a broadband cable from site boundary to the house. This will pass under the driveway.

I understand that telecoms duct should be grey. Is that correct?

 

I cannot find any flexible/twinwall type duct in grey; only 6m lengths of rigid duct. Rigid duct seems likely to be hard to lay over the long distance.

 

Am I missing something?

Could I just use black twinwall?

Thanks.

[FarmerN]

 

On our new build we contacted Openreach or might have been BT, and they provided Grey Ducting 50 mm , an external manhole and cable etc FOC I think.

We did all the work and dug it in back to pole. Left a rope in when we pulled cable through in case Fiber came past.

This is all about 3-4 years ago. My memory may not be correct or things may have change

 

[Nickfromwales]

40 minutes ago, Dunc said:

(Not really sure which section this should be in)

 

I need to lay about 40m of underground ducting to carry a broadband cable from site boundary to the house. This will pass under the driveway.

I understand that telecoms duct should be grey. Is that correct?

 

I cannot find any flexible/twinwall type duct in grey; only 6m lengths of rigid duct. Rigid duct seems likely to be hard to lay over the long distance.

 

Am I missing something?

Could I just use black twinwall?

Thanks.

Ask OR and they’ll provide the correct stuff for you. No charge in every instance I know of, you just install it from house > boundary and they take it from there. 
 

Check the small print regarding where and how you terminate it at the house, as one client has just been told that the Fibre hockey stick and terminal box must be on the outside of the building to prevent issues; eg if a natural

gas line leaks and pushes that down the duct and into your home. 
 

On one I did in Gravenhill Bicester, serviced by GTC, they were happy to come into the house but they wanted their rigid plastic duct used, all joints photographed and solvent welded (glued like bathroom waste pipe) and then they used a rigid rubber cap to seal the end of the duct to prevent anything getting out of it.

 

Unless the water and electricity companies asked the same, I doubt there’s much value in OR insisting that their duct lives outdoors, just that it is installed correctly using the rigid stuff, and is capped / terminated to create a hermetic seal.
 

They can install that when they’re on site, a-la GTC, so a bit of nonsense imho. Do check though so you don’t get caught out, but if it’s defo got to be an external terminal box, then I’d not want that in sight, so a suitable location needs to be thought through, and then you’d need a duct or a conduit from that point to the router. 

[Dunc]

Ah, this is not OpenReach. It is a local area network broadband provider (coz we only haz copper BT cables in these backwards parts). But point taken - ask the service provider what they require.

[Nickfromwales]

2 minutes ago, Dunc said:

Ah, this is not OpenReach. It is a local area network broadband provider (coz we only haz copper BT cables in these backwards parts). But point taken - ask the service provider what they require.

Small print is the stuff very few read   It’s about changes in what was ok, but isn’t any more etc. 

 

Measure twice, cut once.