In reply to a post by partial:

If pavement resurfacing is cutting Virgin shallow trenched, unprotected, directly buried fibre tubes one of two things is happening.

Either Virgin shallow trenched, unprotected, directly buried fibre tubes are much more shallow than the armchair expert's book says.

Or the subby doing the resurfacing is digging down way. way deeper than they need to, maybe as a public spirited gesture to ensure that their resurfacing is much better than the council has specified.

My money is on the former.

?????? What the heck are you on about posting that in response to my post, which was entirely about the OP? You can't even claim the lame excuse of laziness and just replying to the latest post. It stinks of your persistent previous trolling of me on this site. Please stop it.

There is no mention of Virgin by the OP, so you either got confused by other posts in the thread or found it from his opening post in this thread, where the 300mm is also given. So it isn't a typo.

300mm = 30cm = 11.8 inches. In green tubing and with green warning tape above it. No protection against the digger one assumes, but the question is why it is digging that deep. Which is precisely what my post was about.

You were putting your money on a dead horse. Not a good idea.

Not just resurfacing, the road and footways are being re-kerbed as well. The dropped kerbs at each junction require at least 350mm for bedding. The contractor has uncovered bundles of 8mm ducts, one for each house I presume; they aren't even in tubing and the bundles have become filled with little stones between them. Glad I don't rely on this job.

Edited by Malwaremike (Tue 21-May-19 15:29:55)

Utilities, including VM, should have been given a heads up so that they could lower their plant. It's what happened here when works were done that would have impacted them.

The microducts are okay on their own. They are not held by larger ducts and are supposed to be okay to bury. It's not direct burying they are ducts and that's how they are intended to be used.

Contrary to what some may say it's not the same as directly burying cables. A directly buried cable breaks it has to be replaced in full, fibre can be reblown down the microduct if need be.

Oh well.

So VM can expect to redig all their trenches after less than two years? Two ducts across our driveway have been severed at a point only 200mm below the blacktop surface. Contractor tells me on his last job the ducting contractor had made two cuts in the blacktop, scraped a groove with a shovel, then asphalted directly onto the ducts. The resurfacing contractor found the hot asphalt had fused the plastic ducts into a solid sheet which came up on the first bucketful. Our job is now in limbo while they work out a repair scheme, but better now than having to carve up our nice new entrance.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

So VM can expect to redig all their trenches after less than two years?

Yep.

Exactly - they should have been laid correctly at day one.

Virgin's shoddy build of shallow trenched, unprotected, directly buried fibre tubes has an immediate impact when they are cut by unsuspecting streetworks contractors.

But perhaps in the longer term minor, unreported damage by contractors to the shallow unprotected tubes will hit as the tubes become water filled.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Exactly - they should have been laid correctly at day one.

Sometimes operators have to move or lower ducting. That's life. If they had the 250mm of cover, which OP informed they did, they were installed correctly.

VM had to lower ducts near here to accommodate others' works. They were installed correctly.

Backing up what Ignition has advised here is a diagram straight from the horses mouth (Virgin Media) on their new build requirements. 250mm min.

VM New Build Ducting

Gary's diagram specs a 96mm duct with 250mm cover on top. Installation around here is 8mm microducts laid in a 300mm deep trench cut along the footways and crucially under my driveway and that of my neighbour. The ducts were severed when the resurfacing contractor was excavating for a dropped kerb at the edge of my driveway. Virgin worked until 2145 that night to restore service.

One of the breaks may have been caused by a sharp stone, forced through the bedding by the increasing number of LGVs which use the footway as a convenient loading bay or to take phone calls etc. As Partial says, further damage to the network is to be expected ...