Had an engineer out yesterday who sprayed in white the proposed new route of a new cable which will be going in.

One thing which we didn't understand was that the engineer sprayed a big box with B.T in the middle of it... about 10 feet up the road from where the cable goes back to the cabinet (It even goes past someone elses' driveway).

We have a very long stretch of wall going the correct way between our two driveways (where the old route still goes) so any ideas why the engineer would propose the cable to be joined to the frontage tea about 10 feet the other way than plotting it the other direction towards the cabinet?

Also he did not track the old cable, he just plotted the course for a new one (Which is good news I suppose).

The pavement behind the long wall doesn't have any existing manholes so there would be plenty of space.

Also how will the engineer attach the new cable to the existing pair in the Frontage Tee if the length of the existing pairs is shorter?

Edit: Here is a picture of what I mean: http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8892/croppedr.png . The current cable joins the frontage tee around where the white line starts to appear I believe. The frontage tee (cabinet end) goes the opposite way to where the white box is (Goes towards the background at the moment). When the engineer was looking in the DP I didn't see any spare pairs (The DP is literally right next to where the red car is parked in the photo).

I'm just curious as to how this is all going to fit together considering the facts .

Edited by chris6273 (Thu 13-Sep-12 18:44:00)

The 'big box' would normally indicate a JF4 foot way box to be built over the resulting joint. From the existing DP further up, does the cable then run down past your property to the cab ? If so, then makes sense, if not, and it is fed from the red car end of things, the engineer has done summat wrong....

The cable which we have at the moment joins the frontage tee at the end of the first wall, about 5 meters further up the road (Towards the red car) than the white box in the photo, we believe. The line goes from the end of the drive towards the red car and then to the cabinet, so it doesn't go past where the proposed box is at all in fact the frontage tee joins to the cable before the red wall in the photograph, on the opposite side to the new white box.

Here is an edited version of what I mean. The BLUE cable is the Frontage Tee and the RED cable is the current cable going into the property. The GREEN dot is where the fault is believed to be: http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/9923/croppededite... . The cabinet is further up the road than the Red car.

What will happen if the engineer has indeed done something wrong? Obviously we are in no place to tell the construction team as they are contracted by BT Openreach to carry out a job.

Edited by chris6273 (Thu 13-Sep-12 21:36:36)

Maybe there are extra tees in the cable and they plan to connect you to one further up and write off the existing connection as bad?

Fingers crossed that's the case if there are spare tees available. What will happen if there isn't? Will they simply come back and re-dig the trench the other way?

I must admit, the engineer didn't appear to check the closest DP for spare tees.

Edited by chris6273 (Fri 14-Sep-12 14:19:14)

Hmm, looks odd to me, the only theory might be that the engineer planned on using the second spare pair which is fed back up the wrong way on the cable ...... but I would doubt that.

I guess this is all just conjecture, I should have a little more faith, the three guys who do track and mark around here are mustard.

Sit tight, if nothing else you will be getting a new lead in cable, always a plus.

Keep us posted anyhow.

Okay, will do

Out of interest that "second spare pair" which you are talking about - If the engineers connect me to that, would it have the possibility in making my line a lot longer?

The only other route the line can take to the other closest cabinet is about 600 meters compared to the 100 meters or so for the current cabinet.

What is this second spare pair?

Just another pair of wires in the same cable that your current pair are in.

A quick update on the progress of the problem:

After missing 2 appointments over the past week, the contractors worked their socks off for about 5 hours today, from about 10am till 3pm.

They managed to get the grey duct in (Looks quite large in diameter) from the BT18 box at the top of our driveway to the new manhole (Which they also appear to have fitted):

http://imageshack.us/a/img696/8586/img0031js.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img694/4092/img0032vu.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img217/6037/img0033pn.jpg


I'll be interested in how they are going to get the cable around this tight bend into the BT18 box (Old one enters from the bottom):

http://imageshack.us/a/img688/2148/img0030ld.jpg


All in all certainly looks like good progress. Fingers crossed they have a spare pair in the frontage tee. Looking forward to seeing some brand spanking new (and hopefully better) line stats after this work is finished as well as a clean line.


One thing which I am interested in is how will they go about connecting the cable to the frontage tee? Will they put a new DP in the frontage tee? (All of this has got me interested )

Edited by chris6273 (Fri 21-Sep-12 18:57:41)