NTL Cable under block paving

[gricerdave]

We are laying block paving on the front of our house for car standing. Having excavated the ground, the previously laid ntl cables, which are partly covered in green conduit and partly exposed, which were laid just under the soil level and slabs, are now lying on the surface. Having waited for 4 weeks for a visit from ntl to advise on what to do with them, the advice from a very hurried visit was to "just to bury them in the sand under the paving", which will be 2" compacted. The conduit is 1". Will this be o.k., or will the bricks which lie on top of the conduit settle differently to the ones on the 2" of sand. Also of any future maintenance needs to be done, would it be better if the conduit was laid from the house to the pavement to avoid lifting the blocks when they are down, obviously we don't want to do that.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks

[James C]

Those ntl blokes wouldn't even bother burying the cables at all if they could get away with it! I had em round last week and asked them how deep they would lay the cable, they said it would be a full spade depth, i got home from work and realised they meant the depth of a spade end of a fishing hook!
Anyway back to your question, have you got enough slack to drop it under the subbase?

James

(Edited by James C at 11:40 pm on July 23, 2004)

[gricerdave]

Hello James, thankyou for your reply.
There may just about be enough slack to do that. The thing that is worrying me is if the cables need replacing at any time, the whole lot down to beneath the sub-base would have to be lifted, as lengths of cable are exposed. The ntl chaps said this was o.k. as they only needed to be enclosed to protect them from spades etc.
Do you know how they install if block-paving is already in place?

[steve r]

It would be safer if you can disconect the cable at one end and install a conduit in the stone as deep as possible.With the addition of a draw string you should be safe from any further excavation.
Have a look at:- http://www.pavingexpert.com/ducting.htm

Steve Rogers

[LeeB]

I work for Telewest Broadband as an installer and the replies earlier are quite correct cable installers are quite lazy and will try to get off with doing as little as possible. I would recommend laying a duct under the drive for service or cable replacement. How this is done is quite up to you and how much money, work & risk you want to put in to it. Have a look where the cable enters the garden does the ducting from the ntl network run horizontally into your garden or is it bent up 90 degrees to a metal box. If its hoizontal you can connect a 2 inch duct directly to it which runs into a 4 inch duct on the network, if its a bend you may have to dig under the pavement to the connecting bend and remove the bend and connect onto that, but don't touch the tarmac or slab pavement at any cost as you could be fined by your local authority. How ntl will react to having part of their network altered is difficult I know with telewest you can pay £180 to get one of their construction crews out to do the modification to a horizontal tee which then you connect onto.

[gricerdave]

Many thanks for your replies. We have just spent an agonizing hour on the phone listening to musac and adverts, being passed to the right department, being cut off, starting again, listening to the same adverts - yawn yawn. Anyway, they have agreed to send out a supervisor next Wednesday to see if it can be re-laid. I will let you know what happens.

[gricerdave]

The supervisor came today, a day late. He immediately said that the cables needed relaying end to end in conduit to avoid lifting the paving in the future - exactly as we thought. He gave us a date of September 13th as the earliest it could be done, but after protesting that we had been delayed for so long, he is arranging for a length of under-the-road quality conduit to be delivered so that we can bury this and carry on. NTL will then come and rethread the cable though the conduit and take out the 90 degree angle bend from the 4" duct, as you suggested Lee.

Many thanks for your help.