Cabling standards question?

[DocGreen]

Cabling a new network in an existing building. One of the runs needs to go through a factory area, and every place I'd normally route the cable is riddled with electrical conduits. I'm running my (unshielded) Cat6 in conduit as well, but can anyone tell me the minimum separation I need between the data & electrical conduits? They'll be running parallel for 50+ feet.

 

[mikeroq]

Ideal, you wan't it far away, but you probably won't have any issues being near it. Myself I would put it about a foot away, just to keep them separated.

 

[mr m]

I'm not sure there is a published spec for that or at least I've never found it.

One thing to remember is if you have to cross the data with AC is to do so at a right angle. I've run them at least a foot away when I could but had to have them close with no ill effects when sharing cable trays or a conduit when penetrating a block wall.

 

[DocGreen]

Like Mr M said, I wasn't able to find a published spec, but...

One of my installers used to work in COMMS as a Project Manager in the Air Force. She was able to get in touch with one of the bases she was stationed at and had them look up the military specs, which require at least 6 inches of separation when both data & electrical are run in [separate] conduit.

If it's good enough for the military, I'm sure it will be good enough for a small manufacturing business.

 

[phaZed]

You can't get much better shielding than a metal conduit.

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

The fact that it's in a metal conduit means you have a very good shield and don't really need any separation.

To answer your original question. I have never seen or read any standard, white paper or recommendation calling for a minimum separation when running data cable in a metal conduit.

 

[Markverhyden]

Cabling a new network in an existing building. One of the runs needs to go through a factory area, and every place I'd normally route the cable is riddled with electrical conduits. I'm running my (unshielded) Cat6 in conduit as well, but can anyone tell me the minimum separation I need between the data & electrical conduits? They'll be running parallel for 50+ feet.

As long as the conduit is metallic it is, for all intents and purposes, a Faraday Cage. So proximity should not be an issue, especially if you are using a metallic conduit for the data run. I see plenty of network runs tie wrapped to metal conduit power lines and the site has no problems. The problems come when they are not using metallic shielded AC or high DC runs.