[fillydee]

My new theater is going to be in the top room of a detached garage that I am building. In order to run the main power to the new building I have to cut through the existing driveway. I also need to put a drain line and my new RG6 satelite wire through there. The RG6 essentially has to take the same route as the power. About 100' in addition to the driveway cut out. Is it alright to run the RG6 in the same trench as the power line? or is there a good chance it will pick up interference? I can probably seperate them about a foot or so under the driveway, but I would really like to run them together to avoid having to dig a whole new parallel trench.


What do you think? I am tempted to try it to make life easier. But if there are issues, I will probably have to run a whole new line.

 

[BIGmouthinDC]

A little off target but did you look into using a method that doesn't involve trenching the driveway?


I had an irrigation system installed and later cable came down the street. They used an air compressor driven ram. They dug a hole on both sides of my black-top drive, pointed the thing and kept their fingers crossed.


More here about the technique:

http://www.ukstt.org.uk/trenchless_t...es/#Section-43


I've always read that 100 ft is about the limit for a Sat cable so you may want to do some checking on how to deal with that issue.

 

[ND23]

Maybe you should have a 2nd satellite dish mounted on the detached garage, and avoid running RG6 from the house to the garage?

 

[fillydee]

I don't think the compressor driven ram would work. It would be fine if I was just runing the power and RG6, something w/ a small diameter. The other main issue I am addressing with the concrete cut out is a drainage problem. I have to move some water that collects on the other side so I am looking at a 4" drainage pipe running under there as well.


I think I am fine w/ the length of run of RG6. I have been told by other people that 200ft is the limit. With a quick search on the internet i saw most recomended 100ft, but eventually found a site that says 200ft.

http://www.salemmusicnetwork.com/tec...abcpage6.shtml


However I think I am well over 100ft. I need to go out and take some better measurements. I hate to put up another dish. I currently have the wide 3lnb dish for HDTV and there is still one open slot on the multiswitch. Not to mention I think I will probably have a hard time getting a good line of sight from the garge due to trees.


My main concern is if I need to be to worry about electrical interference with running it near a power line.

 

[ccoolidge]

For your cable run, you could use RG11 which has about half the loss of RG6. You can usually find spools of it on ebay pretty cheap (I picked up a 500' roll for something like $75 a couple years ago). Another option is using an rf amp which will amplify the signal (but will not address the slope/tilt). You may be fine with just the RG6 if you have a good enough signal (if you have a spool of RG6 handy, make a 200' jumper and make a 'test run' between the multiswitch and a tv out in the garage and see what it looks like. You can always reuse the cable). As for trenching with the power, a run that long parallel to power will undoubtedly pick up some noise. You could use a compressor driven ram to run the cable separately. If it absolutely needs to be in the same trench, at the VERY MINIMUM, separate the cable from the power by 12" inches of dirt.

 

[fillydee]

Thanks for the feedback. I will check into the RG11 prices when I go to the wire store today. It is so much cheaper buying wire through a place that specializes in wire. For example RG6 is around 11 cents a foot vs 21cents at Lowes.

 

[bfoster]

I have power and sat feed in the same trench to my garage with no issues.