Outside plant - prewire customer demarc preference

Tue Nov 28 17:43:32 UTC 2023

> On Nov 28, 2023, at 07:27, Brandon Martin <lists.nanog at monmotha.net> wrote:
> 
> 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.

I’ve never used ENT (never even seen that name, TBH). 1” EMT is readily available at Home Depot and Lowes out here as well as several reputable 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.

Agreed, but out here at least, almost all of the electricians don’t bother with ENT and most do both commercial and residential work, so they just keep EMT on the trucks and usually have up to 2” readily available, with 3” and 4” in the not particularly difficult, but too bulky to carry unless needed category. I guess this may vary with locality.

> 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.

Sure, but smurf tubing is a hole other thing. Amusingly, at least locally, smooth interduct is easier to find than corrugated smurf tubing, though both are readily available.

> 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.

I guess this varies by locality.

> 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.

Interesting… ENT is apparently plastic and has interesting snap fittings. Until this email, I’ve never even looked into it. Used plenty of the “ENT” boxes, but always just called them PVC (since that’s what the ENT stuff is apparently made of). EMT is way more common out here than ENT, and even where plastic is used, most seem to use straight electrical PVC (grey stuff usually) instead of of the ENT brand stuff.

YMMV of course.

Owne