[mythtv-users] Underground vs. Overhead Utilities

Daniel Kristjansson danielk at cuymedia.net
Wed Jan 28 01:19:00 UTC 2009


On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 16:31 -0700, Brian Wood wrote:

> > Water and sewage have to be underground to start, so you have to dig. It
> > is not that much more expensive to add pipe for natural gas, electrical,
> > cable and telephone. Then you only have watch out for hungry backhoes...
> > and worry about broken water-mains.
> 
> I have never heard of any place where water, gas and electric were in the same 
> tranch. Can you imagine what would happen if a backhoe did hit that 
> collection of utilities? i wouldn't want to be anywhere near it.
> As was pointed out, the cable itself is more expensive for underground use. In 
> most locations high voltage (at least primary, if not secondary) has to be 
> isolated from low-voltage stuff like telephone and cable TV by a buffer of 
> sand or other method.

Brian, this has actually been done for a long time in cold places,
and geologically active places like Japan. Where I've seen it, a
trench is dug for a concrete conduit then the utilities are placed
inside. The conduit is large enough to allow robotic access with
concrete roof panels for opening things up, or are large enough
to allow a small person comfortable access. The municipality owns
the conduit itself and charges a small fee to the utilities using
it. This allows repairs without as much expensive digging, and
backhoe operators just don't attack the electric, gas and water
conduit with the same vigor they employ against fiber and other
wimpy utilities. ;]

-- Daniel



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