US Cable Support > Comcast Cable TV > Cable shut off for RF leakage

Cable shut off for RF leakage

1. depending on the angles in the conduit it can cause stress/damage to the cable. insects or rodents in the cinduit can chew the cable, once the jacket of rg11 is comprimised water gets in and its only a matter of time for the cable to take a crap.

2. stone and dirt doesnt insulate RF....

my thought is why it wasnt fixed when the tech came out.
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I'm better than you!

reply to BiggA
Its not rare for cable to go bad in conduit. Things get in and chew it. In cold the dirt freezes and causes conduit to crack and such which in turn allows water and moisture to build up. Imagines that poor coax when crushed by frozen water. Most of the problem was probably the vcr tho. You would be amazed how dirt doesnt stop leakage at all.
Where i work which is for service electric leakage is detected from outer space. All year long some satellite is detecting leakage. Its often in original backhoe dug trenches so i doubt dirt is any shielding at all.

reply to BiggA
@gar187er: 1. How would they get in there? It's sealed at both ends.

2. Yes they do. Not completely, but by a lot. There is a LOT of water in the dirt, and that water weakens RF immensely.

That tech wasn't the guy who does underground drops apparently, and maybe he didn't just happen to have 200' of RG-11 laying around. Aren't most drops RG-6 anyways?

@rody_44: It's below the frost line specifically for that reason. It would be really stupid to put conduit above the frost line. I'm not doubting if you have sensitive enough gear you can detect the 1% or 3% or whatever the actual number is of the RF that's that getting through the dirt, but my point is that the cable would have to be in horrendous shape to get to that point where it's spewing 20 or 50 or 100 times the FCC limit, such that the FCC limit is being reached at ground level, while the ends could have minor corrosion causing them to go bad and just above the FCC limit, since they're at ground level.

There was no VCR, it was just an old coax cable that was originally used with Betamax gear (for a timeline on it's age).

Actually part of it above the frost line and the part coming out of the ground is above the frost line. Thats what causes the expansion and cracks and eventually the extra water laying in the line. At that point the frost line within the conduit is much deeper do to having the ends of the conduit at the surface. Its almost impossible to replace cable in conduit in the winter do to that exact thing happening. I do undergrounds for a living and in the winter when you dig up conduit its frozen deep into the trench. Kind of like leaving your door open. Even duct seal isnt a insulater which sometimes is placed on the ends. Plastic just cant expand with the ground so it cracks and lets moisture in especially when it rains. I probably do hundreds of conduit pulls a year and can count on one hand how many doesnt have water laying in the conduit. I can only imagine how thick the ice gets up in new england.
There is actually a special conduit used for telecommunications thats called cable con that has no splices and expands with the ground. But they dont use it up there and not at 4 feet.

reply to BiggA
When someone else will come to change the drop, just ask to change the connectors at each end first to be sure the connectors are not the issue. It's not really complicated. If they disconnect the cable drop from the house wiring, install a terminator at that end and there's signal leakage, they can disconnect the cable drop from the tap and the signal leakage stop (cause there's no cable signal anymore in the cable drop), that's means the cable drop leak.

Nobody doubt about the way your cable drop has been installed (properly or not). "Shit" happens. Cable providers must sometimes change underground plant hardline cable under a street feeding hundred of customers cause the cable has been broken for all kind of reasons, that doesn't means the cable wasn't installed properly, and that cost them several thousand dollars to fix this kind of issue. Underground cables doesn't means "life time" cables.

"Shit" shouldn't be happening to a cable that's 4 feet down in conduit... that's why I just don't believe it's the cable while the ends are basically exposed to the elements corroding away.

reply to news
I guess we'll see if they have to pull the cable out what it looks like...

reply to BiggA
4 feet? Do you live in Siberia or something?

New England. The point is that they are BELOW the frost. I don't know the exact frost depth.

Above the frost below the frost, Dirt is dirt

reply to BiggA

Exposed line asking to be damaged by lawn equipment

Where the cable should enter along with telephone for both units

Pedestal

So comcast did a poor job. You want them to break out that cement work so it can go next to the other wires?

go to home depot, pull out your wallet, buy two feet of 3/4 pipe, disconnect the line going to the ground block, slip the cable through the pipe, stick the pipe in the ground, reattach the cable to the grould block. Problem solved.

It is not Comcast's job to put it in conduit. If you can't see the cable and you damage it you should have to pay to fix it.

reply to BiggA

reply to Orlando 57
Yeah, or use a saw to slice a cut in the pipe the long ways, and then slide it on the cable. We did that for phone. The cable is definitely not damaged by humans, it's in perfect condition as it runs from the demarc to the ground, it's in a flower bed.

Doesn't matter - the cable could have been bad from the day of install even. The point is there is a problem and it needs to be fixed. The next time your area is swept you will most likely be tagged and disconnected again since the tech didn't seem to do his job and replace it or put in an order for replacement.
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Ex-Tech at the Beach.
I speak for myself, not my former employer.

reply to BiggA

reply to BiggA

reply to beachintech
There is an order in. Another crew came today, and tried to call for authorization to replace it, but they couldn't get it.

I still don't believe that a cable that is protected by PVC conduit is so bad that it's leaking orders of magnitude more RF than the FCC limit (when you factor in the RF attenuation of water-laden dirt).

The cable probably wasn't bad from day 1, as they haven't found it in 13 years. I'm still convinced it's the connectors.

However, I think the reason that it went over the limit is that within the last year we got whole-home DVR, and when the cable guy came out to put the MoCA filter on, he found an attenuator in the street that shouldn't have been there, and removed it, significantly improving our signal, and eliminating the need for our cable amp. Thus, I'm wondering if the connectors are at the point where they weren't leaking enough before, but now with 6 or 8dB more power on the cable, they are over the limit, and got caught as a result.