Just finishing up wiring on a 3500 sq foot house and customer has asked me for a proposal...

I've done several Leviton SMC panels, but this one is different....

Topology:
All utilities are about 1200' from installation. Customer has small building at start of 1200' run.

Presently POCO has put in poles (POCO owned) and fed the utility building. From there:
250' of 2"PVC (2 runs) to barn/office.
150' of 2"PVC (2 runs) to house.

House has 8 CAT5 runs, 10 RG6 runs, and CAT5 for phones to inside utility room.

Barn/office has 7 CAT5 runs, 2 RG6 runs, and CAT5 for phones to utility area.

TELCO will run on POCO poles to utility bldg for reasonable $'s; Cable CO wants over $1000 to make the same run -or $100 to put DEMARC in small building at start of 1200' run. Cable Co will supply Cable and Internet connectivity.

Assuming I can get TELCO and Cable Co to utility building, I'm looking for ideas on how to proceed.... Small SMC panel in utility building, and then out to the barn/office and house to 2 more small SMC panels? Copper (underground CAT5) with surge supression (at each end?), or Fiber with media converters at each end?

I considered wireless for the 1200', but it's not line of sight. Could trench it, but roadway is more like 1900'.

Would appreciate any ideas or experiences.

If you can put your demarc at the beginning of the run your only real option if fiber for the Internet/Ethernet connection, you are limited to 100 meters (appros 320') for CAT5. You can put everything on fiber, but the only one that is cost effective is the ethernet, should be able to get a set of media converters for about $250. POTS over fiber and baseband video over fiber can get a bit costly, but for both of those you should be fine with copper. If you go underground make sure to run a multi pair cable, 25 pair or the like, so you have extra pairs if anything happens to the cable. For the coax for catv make sure you pick something with low losses, RG-6 will not cut it for the 1200' run.

As for the SMC panels, I assume you mean a panel that has snap in modules for phone breakout, catv breakout, etc. It is probably more cost effective to hand a sheet of plywood and lay everything out yourself, it lets you lay everything out with plenty of room, service is a bit easier, and you have room to grow. And for service technicians sake, tag EVERYTHING, twice, it makes troubleshooting so much easier when you know exactly where all the cables go.

Once you figure out all your costs and associated labor, it may be cheaper in the end to have the cable company run the drops along the poles and have all the demarc equipment in the main house. Cable modems do need to be reset every now and then, and it would be quite a pain to have to walk out the a utility building whenever there is a problem.

Hope that helps,

Jim

I would run 2x 1/2" hardline or RG11 from the utility building to the house and barn, as well as 25 or 50 pair tel cable, and 4 or 6 strands of Multimode fiber. land everything on a backboard.

Now you have options.. You can put the cable modem out in the utility building, and use media converters and/or a small switch to feed the net in both directions, or you could put it in the utility room in the house, and not put any active devices in the utility building, and just cross-patch the fiber.
ditto for telephone.. especially if they decide to put in a key system.

Make sure you have enough telephone pairs to be able to cross connect one building to the other with spares for expansion and incoming lines.

If you earch on CDW.com, you can find a bunch of small ethernet switches that have 1 or 2 fiber ports, or can take fiber modules. Depending on if they want 100mbit or gigabit, speed, and managed or unmanaged switches, these can be cheaper than media converters.

Check with POCO, and see what it would take to get permission to run a private cable along their pole line, and price out having 1/2" or 3/4" hardline installed along that run.. you could then have CATV demarc at the pole at the far end of the run (just jumper between hardline runs).

Well, lets see. I think you are in over your head here as soon as you mention Leviton SMC panels but I'll give you some ideas.

What do we have:

1200' pole line from street to utility building. No biggie there. Utilities should take care of that and put their demarcs in the utility building.

From utility building-
250' to barn/office and 150' to house.

We'll take the data first. It's a 400' run from the barn/office, through the utility building and then to the house. That's beyond the capability of copper's 330' max. You are going to have to install fiber.

For CATV it's pretty easy. A single run of RG-11 from barn/office and house back to the utility building.

For voice you need to plan on the installation of some sort of phone system. The control unit should be located in the building with the most number of phones to keep pairs between the buildings to a minimum. You don't specify but that sounds like the house.

So from the house back to the utility building you will need at least two pair for each phone located in the barn/office and at least one pair for each telephone CO line on the demarc.

From the utility building to the office/barn you will need at least 2 pair for each phone there.

At each of the three locations you will do a cross connect as well as install a BEP (building entrance protector) with protectors for each pair. The RG-11 will also require grounding blocks. Fiber requires nothing.

The most important thing here is the use of proper cables. RG-11 flooded, filled 25 or 50 pair. Fiber has to be suitable for wet location, usually gets pulled through innerduct.

I can tell you right off that this isn't going to happen if the 2" PVC has already been installed. It isn't big enough.

Think you can handle it? If I were you I would pass on this one.

-Hal

[This message has been edited by hbiss (edited 06-06-2006).]