Arenasou Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Hi All, I'm currently quoting for an installation that has outdoor lighting and I'm unsure about the required spec for the DMX cabling. Power is fine, just standard SWA. Has anyone installed DMX outside before? I have about 20 units that all need a feed, linked in and out. Should I install some conduit / PVC pipe to run the cables in, or can I run DMX over 1.5mm SWA? Any thoughts much appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamharman Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 DMX wont be reliable on SWA.I have seen (but can't remember where!) direct burial cat5 cable which would do the job, but conduit and standard cat5 cable is probably cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart91 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Canford used to advertise a "sheep proof" CAT5 cable, that animals could chew on without breaking. Unlikely to be cheap though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I've got a friend who worked on an outdoor site specific show a few years ago in Scotland. Mid-show they lost control of a whole pile of fixture and when they investigated they found that rabbits had chewed through the DMX lines in several places. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maeterlinck Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I'd bury pipe/conduit and then pull the cables personally. Pretty fool proof, easy to replace broken cables, allows less robust cables to be used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I regularly install underground cables - generally fibre, but also various telco ones. Rats eat them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richardash1981 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I suspect you will want to go down the conduit route with standard cable, but for moderate quantities (I think about 100m drum up) specialist cable suppliers like Highblade can over-sheath more or less anything with special over-sheaths, which can be had in UV resistant, rodent repellent and various other grades. We've had some on an offshore wind farm, and it's lasted a couple of years cable tied to the outside of the structure so far! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peza2010 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Conduit, and install yourself a draw line while your at it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IRW Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I suspect you will want to go down the conduit route with standard cable, but for moderate quantities (I think about 100m drum up) specialist cable suppliers like Highblade can over-sheath more or less anything with special over-sheaths, which can be had in UV resistant, rodent repellent and various other grades. We've had some on an offshore wind farm, and it's lasted a couple of years cable tied to the outside of the structure so far! Do you have much of a rodent problem on an offshore wind farm?! :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tow Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 Rats eat them. 20 years ago I saw heavy duty SWA fibre cable which had been eaten through by rats. It was only laid for a couple of weeks and cost over 20K to replace. The contractors managed to seal the ducts with the rats already in them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew C Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 Is wireless an option for you? Otherwise, I'd be putting some sort of pipe in to contain standard DMX or CAT5 cable. On the off-shore rats point above. Seagulls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alistermorton Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 One of th eguys at our theatre installs alarms as his day job, and he is forever having to replace the ducting and cabling from outdoor sensors and cameras where rats have found a way in. Doesn't seem to matter what you do, they will get to the cables and they will chew through them, unless they are seriously (and expensively) armoured.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigclive Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 I'm afraid I'm offering yet another rat warning. They really do chew their way through data cables. We've run data with SWA in suitable large diameter underground piping, but seal the ends and even chuck some rat bait in there too in case there are already occupants. You won't appreciate the rat problem until you are troubleshooting a link and pull a defective cable out to reveal either a complete break in the cable or a very messy chewed section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 my friend in the pest control world tells me that rats have a particular fondness for fibre cables - apparently rat’s teeth (like all rodents) keep growing and need to be regularly ground down. In the urban world, they don’t have enough things to chew, and the kevlar reinforcement in fibre cables is quite attractive to them.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew C Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 The railways used to, and may still, lace their cables with poison. At least the rat will chew on it only once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.