Have you called the phone company?

Our utilities are undergound. There is a trench with 2 conduits. One hold the electric, and the other hold the phone and cable (I'm pretty sure the phone and cable are together, I could be wrong). There is about a 2' separation between the conduits to prevent interference. However, they are in the same trench. I believe the electric is in the deepest part, then sand, then the other conduit (then caution ribbon and backfill). After it was in and we were ready to have it turned on we called phone company. It was easy (the cable, that's another story).

The connection charge is the least of your problems if you have to re-open that trench.

If you have electric underground I would think you'd want phone and cable underground as well. You can't run the phone in the same conduit as the electric. Do you have cable?

What does your contract say about cable, phone and electric?

Both our electric and phone are underground. The electric was run way at the beginning of the build (the builder arranged that) and the phone was run just before the end of the build and we arranged it, so they are in two separate trenches (about 325' long). I'm sure it varies by company, but here, all it required was a call to the phone company and I believe there was a small installation or connection charge (maybe $50?). Give your phone company a call & they'll walk you through it.

Most builders will only make a house cable/sat. and phone ready, which means they wire the inside of the house and place a distribution(or an smart home box) for phone and such to "hook up" to.

Sue pretty much outined everything that you need to do, check contract, call phone and cable companies. Although installation in conduit is the preferred method, there are direct burial cables and and phone lines that can be used. I would just make sure that they use a vibratory knife machine to lay/pull the cable and lines...who actually pays for this always differs, but with 700' I bet you will be incurring the majority, if not all of the costs. It would be extremely expensive, and foolish, to install poles just for phone and cable.

Here the POCO and the phoneco are entirely separate. The phoneco buries their lines less deep than the POCO. The POCO wants 30 to 36" deep. The phoneco here wants to be the last one to bury anything on the property so that their line will not be damaged. They want a minimum of 12" deep. I did get them to come before the driveway concrete since their line had to cross the driveway. Call the phoneco. No cable TV on my isolated road.

AT&T here came and buried our new phone service completely independant of anyone else. It was about 12 inches deep and got cut twice. They had to come out each time, on their nickel, to fix it.

Feel lucky that you paid big $$$ but at least got 700' worth of trench.

We paid over $4000 for the power company to put in an underground conduit from the telephone pole across the street to our house, which is only about 35' back from the street. That was after negotiation and our contractor agreeing to dig the trench on our side of the property line. Overhead to a new pole on the corner of our property, then to the side of our house, would have been free but very ugly.

We were told that the phone/cable companies would put us through similar but totally separate gymnastics to go underground from the pole with their respective services. Our contrator recommended that we pay the power company's contractor on the side to install a separate conduit for phone and cable at the same time the power company's trench was open - so that when the time comes for thouse utilities, they won't have to charge us to dig again. That's what we did - ran us another $600.

Anyway, Verizon is scheduled to come a week from today to install FIOS. Hope it all works out.

The nice thing about conduit is that should the cable need to be replaced, it can (usually) be snaked through the conduit, rather than trying to dig it up and find the break.

"The nice thing about conduit is that should the cable need to be replaced, it can (usually) be snaked through the conduit, rather than trying to dig it up and find the break."

Depends ion who owns the cable.
In areas that the POCO owns the cable they often use direct burial and a few feet of conduit for mechanical protection were it exits on the side of the house.
If you own the cable (and are thus responsible for repair) it might be worth it, but direct burial cables rarely fail unless struck during digging.

Phone cables can be as shallow as the TELCO wants since they are not hazardous.
Many are installed using just a slitter (slits the earth and installs the cable about 12-18 inches deep).
On new construction the TELCO line is sometimes put in the power trench, but it depends on scheduling and local procedures/rules.
Separate would be better from a DSL standpoint, but not by much.
If you are the GC these things are your responsibility to schedule and arrange.

In my area, the phone and power have to be 12 inches apart so that one cable can be serviced/repaired without disturbing the other.

you can do that using a backhoe, laying the power in the bottom right corner of the trench, adding a foot of dirt, and placing the telepone in the 'new' bottom left.

But this costs waaay more [ask me how I know!] than using a trenching machine to put them in seperately.

Happily, my rural non-profit phone co-op puts in the first mile [!] of telephone for free.

I would think the builder should have planned the phone/cable TV runs if he is the GC. I have never seen a house built by a licensed builder that did not include telephone and cable to the house but it could be a regional issue. You would be responsible for planning the installation if you are the GC.

Is your electric trench filled in and at least 24" wide? If filled in or less than 24" wide, you almost certainly would be better off using a trencher. They are easy to use but you will either need help or a ramp system for offloading/loading the trencher in and out of a truck.

Ideally, phone/cable (low voltage) and main electric feeds should be 24" apart to prevent electro-magnetic interference with phone/cable. The lines can cross each other but ideally at a 90 degree angle. Telephone and cable companies often direct bury with armored cable but I recommend using 3" conduit. The technician in me prefers the ease of removal & replacement to splice repairs (splices = noise = degraded performance). Install pull-string either as you install the 10' sections of pipe (Sch 30 or 40) or, after installing the full length of conduit, tie the string to a plastic bag, stuff it in one end of the conduit and use a hi-powered shop-vac at the other end to suck the string through the pipe.

Check with your telephone and cable companies as you may save money if you pull the wires through yourself. Also check what type of cabling they use. Telephone should be at least Cat-5e and cable will likely be RG-11/U. It's best if both cables can be taped together and pulled at the same time. If pulled separately, the 3" pipe size and a slow pull should eliminate friction between the two cables. Too much friction can rub off the outer insulation layer of cabling.

Hope this is not too much detail but I thought it would help if you have to do the installation yourself. Good luck.

terry, in my area, the cable co is lazy about this sort of thing... for spec houses, they will just come around after grading but before the yard is sodded, and just throw the cable on the ground. It gets covered up by the sod, but it's only 1" down, and invariably it gets cut as soon as the homeowner starts landscaping. We had it in our contract that the builder had to put in conduit for the power, phone, and cable, so when we called the conduit was sitting there ready to go. And... they charged us $75 extra to blow it through the conduit! And it took two weeks. The phone company, on the other hand, was much better; they came prepared to blow the line (if you don't have a conduit, they use a slit trencher) and didn't charge anything extra.

(An odd aside: when we dug up the conduit ends at the pole, there was an extra mystert conduit that we didn't install... we can't figure out how it got there or where it goes. It definitely does not go back under the street; it seems to go down the property line between our lot and the adjacent lot. All the land bordering on our lot is unimproved. It's too small for power, and the phone and cable people don't know anything about it.)

terry

If you are using a large residential builder - they normally handle the utilities (at least my last builder Toll Brothers handled Gas, Water, Power and Phone). However, if you are doing a custom home -like I am now - then it is a different story.

I first scheduled the power to be installed - and am paying the delta cost to run it 700' from the main road to my house underground. Then after the power goes in, I have the phone company coming in to trench the phone line.

I was told that in most cases, the phone company will use the same trench as the power company (but not always) and when they do - they put ther teleco wire above the power line. In my case, the power line will be down 30 inches in conduit. The phone line will be 12 to 16 inches deep - and I doubt it will be in conduit.

Custom builders are not usually responsible for ordering the utlilities - but they must be involved in coordinating the activities with the power company. I had to provide my builder contact info to the power co. so they could communicate. My builder is putting in a well and geo-thermal HVAC - so there is a lot of digging going on that must be coordinated. But you have to order the service - since the account will be in your name. Once power is in, the telco should follow the same trench path so not a lot of coodinating with my builder will be needed.

The phone and power companies are not good at coordinating with each other - so I am acting as the coordinator. I found out from the power company when the job will start and finish, then I added a week to that date and set the phone schedule. I talk to the power guy once a week just to stay on top of the schedule, and if it changes I call the phone company (had to do this once already). This is one of the hidden joys of building a custom home.

One could ague that my builder should handle all of this - but I decided that it was worth my time to make sure it is handled properly and things are done right. I also plan on being there at the start of the power trench digging just to make sure the back hoe drivers understand which way they need to go. I have heard horror stories about the low bidder workers that the power company outsources to in my area.

Hope this helps.

I can tell you how we did it here in upstate NY. Our companies are Verizon for phone and National Grid for electric.

My brother, electrician, convinced me to run 3 lines from the road to the house. One (the largest) was strictly for electric. The second, running telephone and the third empty for future use.

The cost was negligible since the excavator dug the hole while waiting on another crew member for other work. The cables (and pull string on the spare) were installed by my brother and cousin, another electrician. The cable was industrial scrap that we bought at the electric supply house for a tiny fraction of the actual cost. We only needed 280 feet including spare on each end. The electric supply house had 282 feet on a nice wooden spool that now serves as a table out by the fire pit.

The phone cable was supplied for free by Verizon and was even delivered to the building site and unloaded. My husband and my neighbor (another electrician) pulled the phone cable after work one night.

Kelsey-700'!! I guess I'll stop gripping about 350-400' which is what we hae to run. We also had to go with 400amp service because of the distance to the transformer. Our phone will have to be separate since the electrc is running from the rear of the house and the phone box is at the front of the property.

I guess it depends where you live. We're having 400 amp service run all the way to the house from the transformer(approx. 700 ft.), and it's not costing us anything. But we're in Oklahoma (OG&E).

And the phone company (AT&T) has assured me that it won't cost anything (other than the standard $55 connection fee) when it comes time to get the phone.

Cable is not an option (we use satellite for internet).

Our electrical co-op ran our line underground from the transformer to our house.
The telephone company ran its line about 6" under the ground from a different route.
If you plan on doing any landscaping, have your utility companies come out and mark your lines.

In our area, the telephone lines are shallow.