[OKDXA] Advice on placing coax in plastic pipe

[Kim Elmore]

OK, I thought I was missing something crucial when I put my coax in 
conduit. I have a two runs that go through the stem wall of the 
foundation. One heads out to the 'low band" antenna field. It has two 
continuous runs of 9913 equivalent coax and three CAT-5 cables. The 
other runs under my driveway to the tower and has four runs of 9913 
and three CAT-5 cables. I didn't worry about water ingress, but I put 
all the cabling in conduit to slow down the gophers. Danged things 
are everywhere out here.

As for fiber: the telco runs tracer wires along the fiber cables. 
They hook up some sort of signal generator to that and trace the 
cables with a receiver.

Kim Elmore, N5OP

At 05:01 PM 9/5/2008, you wrote:
>Kimberly Elmore wrote:
>>I must be missing something here. If the coax run is continuous 
>>(good, intact coax with no connectors in the conduit) and below the 
>>frost line, what difference does it make if water gets in the 
>>conduit and makes the jacket wet?
>Makes no difference at all... It just seems wrong to run electrical 
>conductors in a wet location but as a former strap hanger I can 
>guarantee you there are hundreds of miles of wet cables in subways 
>and sewers under the larger cities of the east coast. Subterranean 
>real estate is too limited not to multitask those tunnels and water happens.
>
>I like the idea of some sort of conduit as it's SOP for me to get a 
>bigger & better idea shortly after completing a project and if I 
>ever need to re-pull the cable that beats the pants out of a direct 
>burial install. The only catch to perforated pipe might be silt 
>working its way into the pipe over time making a re-pull difficult 
>or some bizarre chemical reaction with salts or minerals in the 
>soil. The latter is a real long shot as PVC is fairly non-reactive 
>and if it did would likely be a slow process. If I lived in upstate 
>PA where sulfur creeks are common I might think otherwise, but there 
>could be an advantage to damp coax below ground in terms of choking 
>common mode RF on the shield or lightning protection. Better to 
>dissipate a direct hit by smoking the coax before Thor gets near the shack.
>
>Slightly off-topic thot:  If a telco / cable company runs fiber 
>optic through plastic pipe, how does someone with a metal detector 
>find the run before the backhoe arrives? Yeah, I know, look for the 
>splice boxes about 500' apart. The cable runs between 'em. Usually.
>
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