BT cables - how deep (roughly) are they in ground??

Bored waiting for Orange / BT to carry on NOT solving an issue, so wondered if anyone knows roughly how deep the cables are, in the ground, from a standard in path DP BT cable bunker?

The main cable on the property we are trying to solve this on, is about 3ft away from the mud/grass and in turn runs about 25-30ft to the DP...

Anyone know (roughly) how deep?

About 6 months ago we hit the incoming underground cable for our property while gardening at about 2-3 feet. In the Ducts it could be a bit deeper but check around for BT duct photos where you see the cables going into the holes in the sides.

Here is one for example (One of the holes is just beneath the big black Fibre box):

http://www.farina1.com/fibre/wgc_media/source/IMG_44...

Edited by chris6273 (Sun 20-May-12 18:43:36)

They should be at least 350mm if under a road/hard surface and at least 450mm if under soft surface.

12 to 18 inches and even deeper . Watch out if the premises is late 60's to early 70's some of the direct in ground armoured cables can be little shallow.

In reply to a post by 5km:

They should be at least 350mm if under a road/hard surface and at least 450mm if under soft surface.

I tripped over a VM cable coax on a London street

BT have also been known to just 'hang' cables in hedge rows.

Yes I've also seen VM cables just lying on the surface in peoples front gardens. I guess the engineer couldn't be bothered to dig a trench.

this one popped out of a thing looking like a stop tap on the pavement, then went into a manky green spiral wound duct laid across the garden. Lovely.

How deep are BT cable ducts? .... Obviously not deep enough to aviod getting smashed up by National Grid Gas contractors who were fitting a replacement Gas main in the street near me two weeks ago. They had to dig across the BT route but the surveyors had marked the location of the BT duct in their way .... So they put a dogleg in it to avoid the marking and just landed up smashing the clay duct pipe up a few metres to the left instead! duh!

So all the cables were left exposed for a week in the hole, then they just covered them over with soil rather than replacing the ducting.

My fibre cabinet now seems to be the only one that wasn't commissioned yesterday, so I'm wondering if they damaged the fibre due to their muppetry. grrr!

In reply to a post by Colin_London:

How deep are BT cable ducts? .... Obviously not deep enough to aviod getting smashed up by National Grid Gas contractors who were fitting a replacement Gas main in the street near me two weeks ago. They had to dig across the BT route but the surveyors had marked the location of the BT duct in their way .... So they put a dogleg in it to avoid the marking and just landed up smashing the clay duct pipe up a few metres to the left instead! duh!

So all the cables were left exposed for a week in the hole, then they just covered them over with soil rather than replacing the ducting.

My fibre cabinet now seems to be the only one that wasn't commissioned yesterday, so I'm wondering if they damaged the fibre due to their muppetry. grrr!

That is about right for some contractors.

Can I suggest you actually call teh BT Network Protection or Dial Before You Dig team:
http://www.openreach-communications.co.uk/our-networ...

They will be most interested to hear about it as it will be a major problem if there is a repair needed or your fibre needs replacing.

I did it myself - with pictures a few years back ... the contractor denied everything but BT had the evidence and he was billed for the costs.

I just dropped them an email so I feel that I have done my civic duty! They hadn't tarmaced the trench this morning so it would still be possible to uncover the damage with a shovel. The contractors may of course have made good before they covered it over......