Cable from House to Pavement

[Khanfaisaluk]

Hi.

I am due to have an engineer coming out on Saturday. My driveway has block paving and currently has no virgin cable connected to house.

To get to the house it will require to go under the block paving or the other option is the cable sits above the block paving which I would like to avoid if possible.

Does anyone know what Virgin will do in this circumstance? Will they remove blocking paving as the length is one car of block paving which needs removing or will they just place above the block paving? 

I have rang Virgin team and been trying to get an answer but unfortunately I have struggled.

[goslow · Accepted solution]

If it is a case of simply lifting some block pavers to cross the driveway and hide the cable, then the installers should do that.

However, much of the installation work to bring cables from the street to the customer's home is sub-contracted out by VM and the quality of the installation work varies wildly. There have been some fairly 'spectacular' photos of past installations on here where the installers have taken the most simple and easiest route from A to B (no matter how ridiculous that has been from a practical or aesthetic POV). Examples of the jobs posted on here suggest that the quality of the work, and the approach of the installers, might depend heavily on the particular skills and attitude of the individual people who show up to do the work.

If you have been told that the date for the cable installation is Saturday, you should ideally try to be there to state exactly what you want doing and don't be railroaded into accepting a bodged installation, just because it is easiest for the installation team.

Worth noting though that VM's installation dates seem to be somewhat 'flexible' so don't be too surprised if no-one shows up on Saturday.

[Khanfaisaluk]

Thanks goslow for the response

In terms of like the work being subcontracted out. Does this take days/weeks or months for it to be carried out?

[goslow]

Timescales seem to vary in individual cases. The job often seems to be in two parts. Part 1 involves bringing the cable from the street to the home and fitting an external connection box on an outside wall (this bit is often sub-contracted). Part 2 involves a connection from the box outside the home to an internal wall connection point and the fitting of the equipment. If everything progresses smoothly and the cable can be easily pulled underground and brought up to the home then things should progress quickly.

The topics which crop up here are usually as a result of some issue happening during the pulling of the cable to the home (such as a blocked duct underground or the lack of an access point on the pavement for the cable to emerge from.

When this happens in the 'gone-wrong' installations on here, chaos generally ensues and VM and its sub-contractors invariably go around and around in circles with little progress being made.

You should probably just wait until your scheduled installation time on Saturday and see what happens. Hopefully your installation will proceed as scheduled. Post back on here if you need to.