Outside plant - prewire customer demarc preference

Tue Nov 28 15:42:21 UTC 2023

Why not just use SCH40 PVC sticks? Everywhere stocks that in copious levels. 

----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Brandon Martin" <lists.nanog at monmotha.net> 
To: nanog at nanog.org 
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 9:27:58 AM 
Subject: Re: Outside plant - prewire customer demarc preference 

On 11/27/23 18:52, owen--- via NANOG wrote: 
> Why would 1” be significantly harder to get than 3/4”? Both in EMT and PVC, it’s readily available to the best of my knowledge. 

Most residential electrical contractors are going to use rated ENT since 
it's what they can easily get at a normal supply house or even home 
center. This is the stuff made popular by Carlon in their trademark 
blue that makes people call it "smurf tube". It's readily available in 
1/2" and 3/4" everywhere from home centers to basically any supply 
house. 1" is less common - most home centers don't have it, and since 
it isn't normally needed in residential nor is ENT basically ever used 
in commercial, neither do a lot of strictly electrical supply houses. 

You can of course get corrugated communication duct in that size, often 
with mule tape pre-installed as a bonus, but a lot of electrical supply 
houses that deal only in "electrical" and not "communications" don't 
have that and will send folks to a "low voltage communication supplier" 
or have to special order it. A lot of electrical contractors, 
especially residential, would rather not bother with a separate supply 
run, and having to wait is a pain if it wasn't planned early on and also 
often means you're paying freight separately. 

Even then, most of the folks going to a communications supplier are 
going to reach straight for 1.25" or larger in commercial since you 
don't have to worry about drilling studs. As I recall, my local 
communication cable house didn't even have 1" in stock, but they did 
have 1.25" in stock, and their price was basically the same as the 1" as 
a result. 

So it's not that it doesn't exist or anything, it's just that, at least 
as far as I've seen, there's not a ton of demand for it, so local stock 
is thin. 

All that said, I just checked Home Depot, and they are showing some 
stock on 1" ENT at my local store, so maybe that's changing. Used to be 
they only stocked 3/4" and 1/2". They still only have 25ft hanks of the 
1" stuff (you can get 1/2" and 3/4" in 25 or 100-200ft), but at least 
they have it now. It is still about 4x the price of 3/4" per unit 
length, though. 

-- 
Brandon Martin 

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