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[Weaver]

I'm wondering what would be the least-hassle method of getting several long gigabit network cables out of the house to various outbuildings. It's the getting cables out of the house bit that I'm thinking about. Does anyone have experience of the practicalities of this?

The house walls are mostly three to six-foot thick stone (!), but there are a couple of physical options:

(1) there is a lean-to pantry at the back of the house which does offer much less of a physical barrier. This has the cat door in it currently, single blockwork plus an exit route where washing machine pipework goes out.

(2) less promising, we also have a wooden porch at the front of the house too that might be a route out, although getting into the porch in the first place would be a hassle, as this means getting through a block wall to being with and space for a route is likely to be very tight.

(3)There are possible routes out over the top of the original walls at the roof line under the edge of the tiles - fairly non-existent eaves. The house was originally single storey, and would have been thatched. The phone lines come into the house into an upstairs office roughly in this general area, more precisely, penetrating a very large dormer under some cladding, at a point above the old original roofline, just by the side of one large window.

I imagine that I would run blue polyethylene water-pipe out and put several cables inside that. Distance 50m or so, very roughly, would have to allow for various ups and downs, but should certainly be less than 100m. Don't know whether to run CAT7 copper or fibre.

The first application would be a distribution system to various WAPs, but I am thinking about possibly moving some small servers out of the house, so in that case very high bandwidth is essential because these servers would then be basically in completely the wrong place.

I have done line-of-sight 5GHz 802.11n before, which worked fine, but it was slow (probably much less than 150 Mbps). This time I would like to conserve 5 GHz spectrum space and not waste it on point-to-point type wireless distribution links.

[burakkucat]

Just a few comments . . .

• I understand that there is some form of thermic lance that burn through solid stone but it is a specialist task. (I.e. expensive.)
• Use MDPE Blue Pipe, 25mm dia. and install a fibre-optic bundle through it.

[Ronski]

Use a decent SDS drill with a 25mm x 1000mm drill bit, mine drills through solid concrete no problem.

[burakkucat]

Use a decent SDS drill with a 25mm x 1000mm drill bit, mine drills through solid concrete no problem.

I think you missed a vital phrase, Ron --

The house walls are mostly three to six-foot thick stone (!),

 

[Ronski]

When I last checked 3 foot was less than 1 meter 

The house walls are mostly three to six-foot thick stone (!)

I took that to mean some are three foot thick and some are six foot thick, but alas here's more options.

1500mm x 24mm
2000 x 25mm, I found one on a German site and it was 1500 Euro I think 

Personally I'd look at going out through the eaves, but without seeing the property it's very hard to advise.

Or there's always this sort of option, my brother-in-laws son does diamond drilling, but we are the opposite end of the country to Weaver.

[Weaver]

I also need to be careful about keeping the minimum radius of curvature above some respectable lower limits. Any advice regarding this if I need to put junctions in the pipe?

What are the limits on curvature for fibre optics btw?

[burakkucat]

Keep the junctions to relatively straight sections of the ducting -- or to those sections that have a smooth, shallow, curve. All junctions should be straight . . . By that I mean don't think about using right-angle elbow connectors!

As for the limits on the curvature of the actual fibres, I believe Beattie Bellman works to a minimum curvature equivalent to an arc, not greater than 60 degrees, on the circumference of a 10 p coin. (If that makes any sense.)

[Weaver]

> not greater than 60 degrees, on the circumference of a 10 p coin. (If that makes any sense.)

It does, many thanks. That's not tooo bad. Cat 7 S/SFTP is likely to be more of a pain then as it's so easy to ruin it.

[Weaver]

Burakkucat was kind enough to send me some relevant Openreach guide docs, for which many thanks.

I am now getting poly pipe segments put in through walls to the outside to ready these buildings for network cable, and this is being done as part of upgrades. Will be able to bolt more poly pipe on to a segment coming out of the wall. We have a very weather-proof fairly new wooden barn, which is being done up currently. This could house small servers upstairs in order to de-clutter the office, and the barn could use a WAP. The pipe segments will make things ready for the next steps and can just be plugged for the moment.

Running cable down through our main house itself though is going to be a real pain, and I wish I had done the right thing ten years ago in this respect when we were rebuilding the ruin that the house was to begin with. Thought about leaving pipes and string in place inside the house, and then somehow didn't actually get the right thing done.

[burakkucat]

Burakkucat was kind enough to send me some relevant Openreach guide docs, for which many thanks.

I'm pleased to know it reached you . . . Hence I now know that I did remember the correct incantation for the e-mail message!