Moving Utility connections underground
Moving Utility connections underground
(OP)
We are moving the utility service entrance to our house from aerial on the Garage to a location on the house via underground. The utilities come in from the street via two poles. Last pole is 80 ft to the new location on the house.
Going underground to improve "curb appeal" on the house. The lines currently run across the front of the house from the pole to the Garage.
The basic question is how much separation between utilities do we need to provide when burying.
I have references for burial from each of the utilities but none of the them say how far offset they should be from each other?
I was looking at installing 2.5 or 3 inch PVC for the power, and separate 1 inch PVC for the phone, and cable.
Do I need to dig two trenches (one for power and one for phone/cable or ??)
Going underground to improve "curb appeal" on the house. The lines currently run across the front of the house from the pole to the Garage.
The basic question is how much separation between utilities do we need to provide when burying.
I have references for burial from each of the utilities but none of the them say how far offset they should be from each other?
I was looking at installing 2.5 or 3 inch PVC for the power, and separate 1 inch PVC for the phone, and cable.
Do I need to dig two trenches (one for power and one for phone/cable or ??)






RE: Moving Utility connections underground
12 inches would be a minimum. This is for interference.
I would dig separate trenches, but some jurisdictions don't require that if the conductors are in conduit. As a practical matter, the next homeowner may get new cable or whatever, and you don't want the signal installer chewing into the power conduit.
You may want to think about pulling cables through 80' of 1" conduit.
There are also the NEC requirements to meet.
RE: Moving Utility connections underground
I have tried calling into the power company and obviously am not talking to the right department. The lady very nicely suggested that burying the power cable was a bad idea that it would short out!!!
The cable company took a week to get back to me and say that they would charge me $35 to move the connection. Totally avoiding answering the question of depth of burial or spacing.
AT&T....well I'll just add that story to my memoirs
I install submarine cable systems for a living....who would have thought doing trenching 80 ft would be so hard.
RE: Moving Utility connections underground
That way, you can run the trencher one time. Assumes that the inspector has no interest in signals.
RE: Moving Utility connections underground
Happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.
RE: Moving Utility connections underground
RE: Moving Utility connections underground
If you are upstream of the meter socket on the utility side, NEC does not necesarily apply. NESC would definitly apply. We usually run 1/0 TPX to a 200A service, if it's short. Get outside of 100' though and you'd probably be better running something larger to compensate for voltage drop and for AC inrush, that sort of thing. Our company has standardized on 1/0 and 4/0 Aluminum Triplex, but as steelerfan says you can go with 2/0 also.