valhalla360 wrote:
wnjj wrote:
valhalla360 wrote:
Go big on the conduit...as you learned with the old conduit...If you want to run communications or 50amp line later, it's much easier if you have a 2" or even larger conduit to work with and the cost difference is negligible.
You’ll want communications in a separate conduit above the electrical in the same trench.
It's fine to put comms in the conduit. The only issue is anyone working on it needs to be qualified to work around electricity...assuming you farm out the work.
We did it all the time on signal systems...finally had to change and run independent conduits for power and comms because as we added more high tech devices needing comms, we were getting a lot of technicians who weren't licensed electricians working on the systems, so technically, they were not allowed to go into any part of the system that had live electrical wires. If they were combined, they had to drag an electrician along to watch...by splitting it out, they could go do work by themselves.
If the comms wiring is in the same conduit as power, the wire and wiring devices and terminations used need to be rated for those voltage levels. Typical cat 5, phone wire, coax, etc. is low voltage only and not so listed.
On a more practical level, it's not particularly good practice to run comms wire in parallel with power wiring for long distances due to capacitive and inductive coupling causing noise in the comms wiring. (Yes, twisted pairs and shielding and so forth do help cut down on this a lot, but it's still not best practice.) Also, it's just generally going to be a pretty bad day and make a potentially quite hazardous situation if your AC power cable somehow crosses to your comms cable, legal per code or not.
Fiber optic cable may well be a different matter since it's inherently non-conductive.
