Forum Discussion

DiamondD's avatar
DiamondD
Joining in
8 months ago

New installation (sort of)

Good afternoon all, totally new to this forum and to VM!

currently my son is living in my house but is moving out and we are moving back in. We’ve been in Greece for a while. My son has VM and is taking it with him to the new house. So far so good! I imagine that we will be ordering a VM package in the next day or so but I do have a question that I’d like to ask someone before we go ahead.

We are having a new drive installed in September. The installers say they will dig out, put in a base and then the imprinted concrete will go on top of that. It will be at a depth of around 10 inches. I don’t know if the cable that is already under the existing pebble drive is in conduit and if there is any slack or even how deep it has been buried! If the installer digs down too far the cable may then not be long enough. Can I get a new cable run to the house with some slack so that when the new drive is installed it doesn’t have to be dug up? I’m concerned that we get the install done now and then when the new drive goes in there is nothing we can do!

Dave.

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    8 months ago

    If you have a pebble-covered drive in place at the moment, you could do your own mini-survey and very carefully dig down a bit to see what is under there. VM cables are usually installed in the cheapest/quickest way possible. Often that is just buried direct just an inch or two below the surface.

    If you do already have conduit under the drive, there is nothing to stop your driveway installer burying that in the sub-base of the drive as long as each end is accessible. If you don't have any conduit in place your installer could fit some for you as part of the driveway build and you could put the existing cable though it. There is usually a connector plug in the omnibox on the wall outside which would allow you to separate the external cable from the internal cable so you can thread the external cable into some conduit.

    If you are putting in new conduit you could also leave in a nylon draw rope so, if you ever needed to pull another cable through in the future, once the driveway is laid you would be able to do that easily as long as each end is accessible.

    VM's cable-installation process are a source of regular complaint on here (due to delays in installation and general chaos around the process). You may be courting disaster by getting VM to relay your cable, if there is nothing wrong with it.