1k ft trench run electric,fiber,data,voice – how far apart ?
Greetings:
I am connecting two buildings in the campus and need to bury power, fiber (62.5/125 multi-mode 6 strands), cat5e 3 cables, cat3 25pair bundle in a single trench. All cables are rated for direct burial. My question is how far away should I keep the electric from the rest of low voltage ? And how best to do it. Are there spacers available that I could use ?
I will be putting surge protectors at the service entrance for cat5 and cat3. Fiber don’t need surge protection
What is the best way to ground the entire run (electric and low voltage) ? Since these buildings are grounded separately (ie no common ground between them), how do I mitigate the risk of ground loop ?
The seperation between electrical and and low voltage data will probably vary according to each cat 5 wire manufacturer but 5″ or 6″ is pretty common. Could be less if the wires are shielded. I don’t think I’ve seen direct burial cat 5 and not sure why you’d need to ground it since UTP cable is by definition not shielded or grounded unless you’re using STP? Is this also a direct run? 1000 ft is too long for cat 5 runs. They should be no more than 328ft (100 meters) without some form of repeater in between.
