Your opinion please: New build/spec house/wires and cables mess

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Your opinion please: New build/spec house/wires and cables mess - who is responsible?

ageorge

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#277265 4-Oct-2020 16:54

Greetings the subject says it all. Pre-settlement I believe the responsibility of these wires in images below belong to the building company to sort out, but the real estate dealer says its the responsibility of the body corp that these buildings will be managed under. However, they are not body corp until the sale is settled.

Anyone care to comment?

The big green box has a bunch of cables coming out from the ground, then looped around the box which I guess is the old POTS standard. The wall Cat5 cables I believe at minimum should be covered by an outside cover, ready for Telecom to do an adsl connection.

Thanks for considerations.

Alistair Grant George

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#2579153 4-Oct-2020 17:30

Green pedestal looks like electricity box to me (415v), but I would have expected the wires to be conduited and protected. The conduit coming up close to the edge of the house looks like fibre, which is correct as only the fibre company can terminate it correctly, but you’d think the builders would have organised that too.🙄

what a mess. Even copper connections are brought into the house in a conduit, free bury shouldn’t be the design these days.

what does your contract say? You’re clearly paying for services to be installed safely, this looks an odd setup. Where in the country is this?

________

Antoniosk

ageorge

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#2579159 4-Oct-2020 17:52

antoniosk:

Green pedestal looks like electricity box to me (415v), but I would have expected the wires to be conduited and protected. The conduit coming up close to the edge of the house looks like fibre, which is correct as only the fibre company can terminate it correctly, but you’d think the builders would have organised that too.🙄

what a mess. Even copper connections are brought into the house in a conduit, free bury shouldn’t be the design these days.

what does your contract say? You’re clearly paying for services to be installed safely, this looks an odd setup. Where in the country is this?

Location just outside of Katikati. Yes I was wondering about the Green box and surrounding cables as they are far to big to be used for telecommunications. Perhaps its a historic install in the area I have no idea.

So you reckon I should go the builders to sort it out? certainly, I dont expect to get a botch-up like that in a new build.

cyril7

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#2579162 4-Oct-2020 18:03

Hi as antonios says the green pillar is 415v power NOT chorus.

Just to clarify, is this in a closed/gated community or retirement home?, or is it in a public street, reason I ask is the leadin conduit appears to be 20 or 25mm grey data conduit, I may be wrong.

In general I dont see any issue, Chorus or whoever will terminate on the side of the house with what provided, yes its exposed, but thats just the way it rolls, nothing to be seen here. Once Chorus or whoever terminate it will all be covered.

As for what happens down near the street edge, again its for Chorus or whoever to take the cable from the edge of the property to their network, whilst it looks a bit unweildy its very likely that the cable layout in the street is well understood and what the sparkie has done is similar/same to all other units/homes in the sub division, I see the adjacent apartment seems to be identical.

What does concern me is that two cat5/6 cables have been run to the ETP location. Its 2020 we have had FTTH for over 7yrs now, whilst its quite possible that this location may never see fibre there is also a reasonable chance in the next 10yrs (the house should have a 50yr service life) that fibre will arrive as the 89% fibre coverage creeps up. So there is absolutely no excuse for the sparkies to not have run opticat5e from the home distributor or first outlet location to the ETP, this should be the norm now, NOT a pair of cat5/6

This last point p1sses me off big time, I was called into a new build recently, it was an expensive build, two story tilt slab probably cost $2m+ but the sparkie failed to run a opticat5e to the ETP, because the house was at a beach front location he had assumed there was no fibre, "who would put fibre out here he said" even though all the way through his first fit Telsys parked a trailer with a massive reel of green microduct on the verge right in front of this house, he would have probably parked right next to it, talk about head up his ars3, anyway thats another story, but sparkies need to wake up, rant over.

Cyril

ageorge

626 posts

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#2579269 4-Oct-2020 19:35

cyril7:

Hi as antonios says the green pillar is 415v power NOT chorus.

Just to clarify, is this in a closed/gated community or retirement home?, or is it in a public street, reason I ask is the leadin conduit appears to be 20 or 25mm grey data conduit, I may be wrong.

In general I dont see any issue, Chorus or whoever will terminate on the side of the house with what provided, yes its exposed, but thats just the way it rolls, nothing to be seen here. Once Chorus or whoever terminate it will all be covered.

As for what happens down near the street edge, again its for Chorus or whoever to take the cable from the edge of the property to their network, whilst it looks a bit unweildy its very likely that the cable layout in the street is well understood and what the sparkie has done is similar/same to all other units/homes in the sub division, I see the adjacent apartment seems to be identical.

What does concern me is that two cat5/6 cables have been run to the ETP location. Its 2020 we have had FTTH for over 7yrs now, whilst its quite possible that this location may never see fibre there is also a reasonable chance in the next 10yrs (the house should have a 50yr service life) that fibre will arrive as the 89% fibre coverage creeps up. So there is absolutely no excuse for the sparkies to not have run opticat5e from the home distributor or first outlet location to the ETP, this should be the norm now, NOT a pair of cat5/6

This last point p1sses me off big time, I was called into a new build recently, it was an expensive build, two story tilt slab probably cost $2m+ but the sparkie failed to run a opticat5e to the ETP, because the house was at a beach front location he had assumed there was no fibre, "who would put fibre out here he said" even though all the way through his first fit Telsys parked a trailer with a massive reel of green microduct on the verge right in front of this house, he would have probably parked right next to it, talk about head up his ars3, anyway thats another story, but sparkies need to wake up, rant over.

Cyril

Its a bunch of 12 villas all built similar style, managed under a body corp. Its not closed/locked gate, you drive off the road, and have open access to any villa.

The conduit was more black than grey, probably 20-25mm. Sorry I am not there right now to be more specific.

Thanks for the heads up re opticat5e yes I will put that down as a condition, as near Katikati most areas are being upgraded to Fibre.

Getting back to the coil of wire though, the 2 adjoining units are now complete. They have power reticulated, so why should the HV cables still be in such a compromising location?

Thanks guys for your valued info.

Al.

ageorge

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#2579272 4-Oct-2020 19:39

By the way, the 25mm cable, surely they would not be carrying 230vac supply and be exposed like that?

cyril7

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#2579279 4-Oct-2020 20:12

Hi, I think you need to provide more detail of the bunch of cables surrounding the power pedestal, are you saying the neutral shield power feed to the house is included in the bunch we can see, is the power actually on in the house or not.

Cyril

ageorge

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Ultimate Geek

#2579298 4-Oct-2020 20:58

cyril7:

Hi, I think you need to provide more detail of the bunch of cables surrounding the power pedestal, are you saying the neutral shield power feed to the house is included in the bunch we can see, is the power actually on in the house or not.

Cyril

// neutral shield power feed to the house is included

not understood. Ive only looked at the cables; the other thing is if a cable is carrying high current you dont leave it in a coil.

1 of the cables is black, the others look like Alkathene; they all have been buried and come out adjacent the Power Box.

As I said the reticulation is on, power outlets working in houses.

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cyril7

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#2579427 5-Oct-2020 09:47

Hi, ok so I see clearer now, the main issue you have is a large coil of neutral shielded power feed around the power pedastal, it seems along with that is the chorus 049 copper feed is also wrapped up with all that.

So the 049, as mentioned Chorus will sort that when they connect, but as for the power cable wrapped repeadly around the pedastal, and as you say its live and carrying current, then that is the builder to get the electrician to sort out. In my view this is not acceptable and should be sorted. If you get no action then get the local lines company involved, as I doubt they will be happy. Maybe some of the other sparkie's on GZ might chime in with there opinion.

Cyril

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2595265 31-Oct-2020 08:28

cyril7:

Hi as antonios says the green pillar is 415v power NOT chorus.

Cyril

Hi again Cyril. The green box with coils of cables nobody wants to touch eg building company, developer, ME.

My neighbor is hacked off as he doesnt want all the cables hanging out of wall and the riser as well which is fair enough IMHO, as they are meticulous and both of us have purchased new properties which you would not expect to see cables hanging out of walls etc for kids to come along and play with or whatever.

Im still at a loss as to whom the responsibility would be to tidy things up.

It would require some sort of wall distribution box/cover, and the coil of cable dealt with in whatever is the most appropriate manner.

Any advise??

The electrical company have otherwise done an exemplary job in wiring internals. What does surprise me though, and seems standard practice, you will see the inside distribution box which has all ports and RF connectors for household connectivity. The odd thing is that it would make sense to locate the modem/router in this box, but the box is made of steel, an almost perfect shield. Yes, I know for short range wifi should penetrate the box, but wifi really does need to be in a good location, and why would you put sockets in a box if not for the router?

Thanks again. Al.

cyril7

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#2595269 31-Oct-2020 08:49

Hi, so in the original picture of the green pillar, you can see both the heavy neutral screen power cable, and also the thin cables, I presume the thin ones were infact Chorus, so from what you are saying the chorus ones have been sorted, but the heavy power one remain? If so it really is the electrical installation company to sort, if those cables are currently carrying load then its simply not acceptable that they are left exposed like that. Maybe update the picture so we can see the updated state.

Have you contacted the lines company, or sent them a picture, I doubt they would be happy and in the least should be asking for the sparikes name and they contact him and read the riot act.

I assume as you have now connected to Chorus all the cables on your apartment have been tidied and a Chorus ETP box fitted over? So are the neighbours not doing the same? if they are not connecting to Chorus network then purhaps just get a 25mm single port wall box and use it to cover the cables and make it tidy.

As for the steel box, yes that is an issue, but the simple fix is to site the router out in say the lounge in the AV cabinet or maybe the office/study, if you have two data runs to that location use one to take the VDSL to the router and one to return the lan to the hub and put a basic switch in the cabinet to distribute throughout the house. In your situation as you are on VDSL you can get a way with just one data run to the lounge or where ever you site the router, if you use a pair of data/phone splitters to take the VDSL to the router and return the lan ethernet (albeit at 100Mb/s max).

Alternatively, my preference is to install ceiling or inwall WAPs and put the router in the cabinet and turn its wireless off.

Cyril

gzt

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#2595281 31-Oct-2020 10:12

You would not want kids running around there doing the things that kids do. From that pov it's a safety issue. If making it safe requires the power is disconnected until it is resolved then it becomes a body corporate issue to resolve like it or not.

Maybe the question from your perspective is has the seller fullfilled their obligations in the s&p for settlement.

ageorge

626 posts

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#2595289 31-Oct-2020 10:42

Thanks gents for the info. I'll follow up accordingly.

Cyril, the VDSL is not connected yet. I will ask the installer to also put a wall box for the neighbours which the building company can pay for.

I'll try the wifi from the steel distribution box, as it will be used as holiday home, and dont want fiddlers changing router settings.

As for green box with coiled wire that hasnt changed since. First instance I'll contact the sparkie company and ask them if there is any history maybe they will sort it.

nickb800

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#2595343 31-Oct-2020 12:06

I'd be pretty amazed if the lines company livened up that neutral screen cable coiled on the surface of the ground. I wonder if that coil was for a temporary construction site supply or similar