I routinely find tv cables immediately below the sod and I am sure I have cut through them in the past without even knowing while digging for a corner.
Is there a code or requirement about the laying of cables, fiber optic, wires, etc about how deep they are to be?
Is this a national code, state code??ÿ
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I do believe in Oklahoma the Corporation Commission has some statutes that require a minimum depth for buried utility mains in the R/W.
I'm going to make a guess here and say what you're talking about is a service drop, a line running to the service from the feeder cable, and not the main feeder itself.?ÿ Shallow multimedia and telecommunication drops are common around here.?ÿ
They are placed with a walk-behind contraption that fits through back yard gates and resembles a roto-tiller.?ÿ It has a moldboard attachment that vibrates its way into the soil and plows the coax under the ground.?ÿ If the ground is hard placement can become difficult and time-consuming.?ÿ Since the contractor is paid by the job he usually makes the depth as shallow as he can get away with to speed things up.
I'm going to guess a good number of phone and multimedia service calls have to do with disturbed or interrupted service drops.?ÿ I've seen cases where dogs dig them up and chew them in two.
If there is a "standard" it is regularly ignored.?ÿ I've had crews probe into MULTIPLE pair phone cables less than a foot deep.?ÿ I've cut my own phone line while planting flowers.?ÿ It was less than 2 tenths deep.?ÿ Technically, if you are excavating (including driving a rebar) you are supposed to call the Dig Number.?ÿ Of course I don't know anyone who adds three days delay into a job to wait for a locate.
Andy
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Service drops between the utility riser and the building are usually the responsibility of the homeowner.
If they are not the all-weather underground version and inside some type of PVC or other protective tubing and less than a foot deep, it is probably not going to last very long.
My dogs will dig those up and shred them into pieces.
In Florida CATV lines are either on top of the sod or right underneath it, at least in production housing. Contractors want to close these houses as fast as they can so they don't wait for things to be done properly. The cable company apparently doesn't check or care where the cable is. Thus, they just lay it on the ground sodded or not and just move on to the next. Many people have closed and moved in their new homes with the cable just laying out in the back yard. ?????ÿ
811
Our local budget service provider just strings their coaxial cable on the ground and through the brush. I've even found where rather than do a bore, they'll just fish it under the road using culverts. One heavy clearing job come to mind that involved a cluster of their cables strung throughout the brush in a badly overgrown utility easement. I asked the clearing contractor if they presented a problem. "No way man, hydroaxe goes through them like butter!". They'll will wait until our people clear and grub the route and then jump to plow theirs in, sometimes before our own people have a chance to get ours in there. How they get away with it I know not but it's clearly part of their business model.
I started to test the GPR method and get really interesting results (find it on google)...
Journal Article published 19 Jun 2019 in Remote Sensing volume 11 issue 12 on page 1457
Kinematic GPR-TPS Model for Infrastructure Asset Identification with High 3D Georeference Accuracy Developed in a Real Urban Test Field
"In Louisville, Google Fiber reportedly was burying cables in "nano-trenches" that were just two inches deep.
But Louisville residents soon found exposed cables, as a?ÿWDRB article?ÿnoted in March 2018. "When you're walking around the neighborhood, [the lines are] popping up out of the road all over the place," resident Larry Coomes said at the time. "People are tripping over it."
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