Selecting the right cable

One of the good things about living in a rural area is that there are lots of steel wire fences that are very convenient for attaching things (like cables) to, and not too many roads to cross on the way.

The amount of cable required was carefully measured on a map – 4100 Metres.

There are lots of different types of cable available, but the choice was narrowed down to just 3.

• CW1198 Armoured cable. Available with 5, 10, 20 or more pairs of copper wires this cable would be ideal. It has a heavy steel armour and the cables are encased in petroleum jelly allowing the cable to be submersed in water. This type of cable can simply be laid on the ground and will survive for years. Unfortunately, it also costs about £1 per metre, so was very quickly ruled out!

• CW1128 Outdoor cable. Similar to the cable above it can also be submersed in water but does not have the steel armor. Therefore this type of cable is best buried in a duct. At about 30p per Metre it’s getting affordable, but it’s totally impractical to dig up 4000 Metres of road in order to bury it!

• CW1378 Dropwire. This is the cable that BT use to make the connection between the pole outside and your house. It has two pairs of copper wires and three steel strain wires making it suitable to be suspended. At 15p per Metre (or less if you buy a lot) it’s quite affordable and well suited to being attached to fence wire with cable ties. The steel strain wires make the cable quite robust, so this is what we chose to use.

After trawling the web looking for cable suppliers, I got the best price from Tait Components in Glasgow – close enough that I could collect the 9 x 500M drums of cable myself.

With the cable sorted out, it was time to find the right hardware.

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