Fibre cable during house rendering

chubsta

We have fibre to the premises, the cable runs from the pole to a bolt on the wall just under the soffit line, down the wall to a small box near the ground and then through a hole in the wall. We are having the house exterior rerendeted and silicon coated. In order to do that we will have to remove the wire from the wall.

i am used to dealing with copper wire where you can just do what you want with it and it will still work but am concerned about any movement of the fibre due to its fragility. I can’t work out a way of actually sorting it out aside from getting open reach to remove the cable and then refit after the works are done, which will be approximately three weeks. And of course we would be without internet or tv for those three weeks too ( we have sky stream).

any suggestions?

ThisIsWeird

It's pretty robust - just avoid kinking it, or bending it too sharply.

Is it easy to unclip? If so, treat it pretty much like normal wire - with the provisos mentioned.

chubsta

unclipping it won't be too bad as its only held on with those little nail in things, its where it goes to a small box outside, and from there through a hole in the wall (the OR engineer did an awful job of fitting everything on a Friday afternoon so just drilled a hole and poked it through whereas at our other property they put a nice tube in the wall with caps either end).

I guess the solution may be to remove the exterior box from the wall, drag the cable through the wall to the outside without damaging it and then finding some way of connecting an extension cable so that it can be out of the way but we can still have a connection by running the extension through a letter box or something. Really don't want to pay for OR to come out after they did such a bad job last time.

Ayr_Rage

@chubsta splicing and terminating a fibre cable requires special tools and cleaning, it is not a DIY job.

ThisIsWeird

chubsta said:

unclipping it won't be too bad as its only held on with those little nail in things, its where it goes to a small box outside, and from there through a hole in the wall (the OR engineer did an awful job of fitting everything on a Friday afternoon so just drilled a hole and poked it through whereas at our other property they put a nice tube in the wall with caps either end).

I guess the solution may be to remove the exterior box from the wall, drag the cable through the wall to the outside without damaging it and then finding some way of connecting an extension cable so that it can be out of the way but we can still have a connection by running the extension through a letter box or something. Really don't want to pay for OR to come out after they did such a bad job last time.

Is the cable from the telegraph post to the 'small box' thicker? If you imagine the loads placed on that cable as it spans the air in all weathers, it clearly ain't a lightweight fellow - pretty darned indestructible (I helped our OpenReach fitter get ours from the street post, over our garage, through a tree, and on to the house - a whole lot of skipping-wire went on).

And then, from this wee box to your insides, is it a thinner cable? Or does the thicker one come through the wall first to another box?

Anyhoo, I'm not at all suggesting you DIY any of this as it is technically not your property, but there's a good chance that if you open one of these wee boxes, you'll find fibre connectors, either LC or SC (man, Google is good...). In which case, it might be as simple as disconnecting, adding an extension, and reconnecting. Then removing that ext piece once the job is done.

Jem8472

The dropwire from the pole is pretty strong. It can be hit with a hammer with no ill effects. 
There are a number of issues with what you are doing. Is the render also going to be insulating? Is it going to add much thickness to the wall? If so the eye bolt really needs changing for a longer one if not the render with just cover it and you will have a wire disappearing in to the new coat of render. 

You can easily pull out the cleats and put new ones in just get the right sized ones. But as for the CSP (The box on the outside) it would be very tricky to move that out without having to breakdown the fiber cable which would be be an openreach job as you can't DIY that. 

I have seen people build a box to cover the CSP (think a mini gas meter cover) so it is rendered up to that but the cupboard then gives access to the CSP. 

You could ask your CP to have the wire removed and then put back later but obviously it will cut you off and there will most likely be a charge for it.