Tips for networking buildings together with direct burial cable

External wiring to the building is called outside plant cabling. Outside plant cabling can support a wide variety of communications services such as telephone, data transfer, live video, security, building automation control systems and any other low voltage circuitry.

Keep in mind that you must install OSP cable in compliance with National Electric Codes (NEC), National Electric Safety Code (NESC), utility franchise regulations and local building codes.

Before you start laying your cable down OSP cable installation should be based on a 10 year outlook plan. You may consider that the building owner may sell portions of the property so it may be necessary to obtain property easements. Keep an eye out if the cable run is going to cross railroad tracks or other utility company right of way or a natural occurrence such as a pond or stream.


Your OSP cable run will need to be secure. You'll need to provide an alternate route in case of disaster recovery, location of local exchange carrier facilities and the physical terrain of the campus. Extra pathways should be planned for maintenance purposes. It's typically a good idea to check in with your local exchange carrier regarding their facilities within, or adjacent, to the building.

Three pathways are used in outside plant construction. Aerial, underground conduit and direct burial and they can be used in any combination. Today we're going over direct burial installation.

A direct burial cable system is similar to a buried coduit system and has many of the same advantages but, the disadvantage is the capacity cannot be increased. Your cable also doesn't have as much mecanical protection as a buried conduit system.

Things to consider are type of soil and subsurface conditions, the possibility of joint trench use, and the back-filling method. The minimum depth of the trench should be 24 inches unless the local code requirement differs. If a possibility exist of your OSP cable being dug up by accident you may want to bury it deeper for added protection. Continuous planks should be used and placed 1ft below grade level for visual warning. (Trenching in action below).

For direct burial fiber optic cable you need to put down a copper conductor along with your fiber so that your cable can be located by a cable locating instrument in case you need to identify where your underground cable is in the future.

When back filling your OSP cable examine and use clean backfill material. The soil should not have any sharp objects or large rocks that could damage your cable during your backfill. After your backfill is complete your now ready to terminate your cable.

Special thanks to Electrical Construction and Maintenance.

Questions comment below. Thanks!

"By Mercy Salinas"

Tips for Grounding Telephone Wire and Data Cable

We're going to talk about grounding but remember to select the proper protection for your equipment. Once selected the next step is making sure everything is grounded correctly.

Tip 1: Bonding - Bond or electrically connect together at a single point all of the grounds used for protectors. Typical grounds used for protectors are metal water pipes, grounding rods, well casings, chemical rods, etc. (Double check local building codes for options as local building codes do vary) The communications equipment is typically connected to the power companies multi-grounded neutral (MGN) system and is the best source for a single point ground. Connect the protector (primary and secondary) and cable shield grounds to the equipment grounds (i.e. Multi-Grounded Neutral) with a six AWG solid copper bonding wire.

Tip 2: Physical Connectors - Make sure to use the recommended ground wire size and UL listed ground wire connections. Any ground wire longer than 60 feet in length the next largest wire gauge should be installed. Use a large radius at each bend in the ground wire. DON'T coil the ground wire under any circumstances. Coil wire can act as an inductor that dramatically increase the resistance of the path to ground, jeopardizing the effectiveness of over-voltage devices.

Tip 3: Check Ground System Impedance - There are numerous brands of equipment and methods for checking the integrity of a grounding system. Pick one that test both continuity and the impedance (total resistance) with respect to a true ground. And ideal ground should have an impedance under .250 ohms.

Tip 4: Cable Shields - The metal cable shield should be bonded to the protector/ground systems on both ends of the cable.


Tip 5: Unused Cable Pairs - They must be grounded on the unprotected side of the protector.

Tip 6: Campus Building - Treat each building independently. Do all of these tips in each building.

The effectiveness of all over-voltage protectors relies in a path of least resistance for "dumping" transient voltages. The higher the resistance to ground the higher the true activation level is for a protector and the lower the better.

Special thanks to ITW Linx and you can order burial cable, lightning protection and everything else for your installation at Discount Low Voltage

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"By Mercy Salinas"