House to Garage Fiber Worklog

[/usr/home]

Project: Run fiber between my house and my garage.

So I've been wanting to do this since we bought the house (last September). and it's finally warm enough to start. I may put my servers in the garage, I'm not sure yet. I'll be running 2 20 meter LC-LC SingleMode patch cables through conduit underground to the garage. On either end will be switches. On one end will be a HP Procurve 1800-24G and the other end a 1400-24G. I have the transceivers already and I ordered the fiber today. I should be here in the next week or two. 20 meters was 15 bucks. Pretty good deal I thought.

Winters here get to -40 C sometimes so I'm hoping this will hold up through the winter. I still have yet to figure out a way to protect the fiber from the conduit to the buildings. I was thinking a flexible type of plastic conduit like what you use when you wire up trailers and vehicles. Any input would be welcome as well. I may run a couple CAT5e runs as well. The garage is connected to the houses' mains so I think I'll be fine using regular CAT5e as a backup if the fiber craps out or something.

Blog post here: http://www.pc-tech.ca/?p=38

Spot where the conduit comes up out of the ground and near the point of entrance to the house. There's a blocked off windows under there that I will drill a hole into and run it into the basement. That's how my phone line comes in.

Where the fiber will exit the conduit and go into the garage. I drilled a hole just to get it lined up in the inside.

View of the outside of my house.

And again.

Getting the hole on the inside made and planned out.

Views of the room in the garage.

Again.

Got a wall plate mounted in there.

We got new desks at work this week so I took my old one home. They were going to throw it out anyways.

The room needs some work. That's my after work project as a hobby. I'm not sure if I'll make it my new office or a man-cave or what yet.

 

[adam30k]

Neat to watch this post.. have you run fiber before? Where are you getting your tools from?

(You may want to resize the photos so it doesn't mess up the margins and scrolling..)

 

[/usr/home]

(You may want to resize the photos so it doesn't mess up the margins and scrolling..)

Works fine on 1280x1024 here.

 

[jeffmoss26]

You must be in Canada...they mount the breaker panels sideways

 

[/usr/home]

Neat to watch this post.. have you run fiber before? Where are you getting your tools from?

(You may want to resize the photos so it doesn't mess up the margins and scrolling..)

No I haven't. It's kind of a ghetto setup, but whatever, it's fun and something to do. For stuff like the drywall saw and the fish sticks I borrowed them from work. (I use them lots here at work.) The rest are just regular stuff like screwdrivers and drills. I hate trying stuff like drilling holes in walls and whatnot because I'm scared to screw up and make a mess and then have it look dumb. I figure if i start in this room in the garage, get a bit of practice with drywalling and stuff like that, I can then maybe do some stuff in the house. Electrical I'm good at, it's the doing it AFTER the drywall is up that is a bit different. I'm fine doing work in an unfinished room, but I hate trying to do something and what if it turns bad, then you are either stuck with it like that, or you have to re-smear and sand and paint and all that crap.

 

[/usr/home]

You must be in Canada...they mount the breaker panels sideways

Haha. Yep, I am. The house one is mounted properly, not sure why this one is like that. I'll need to make a cabinet or door type thing for it to try and hide it a bit. I may have to check local code though to see if that's allowed.

 

[dashpuppy]

Good looking work there user/home....

Im NOT a fan of those steel retro rings tho, hate them with a passion..

 

[jojo69]

yeah, that flexible conduit is called "carflex" and they make all kinds of fittings and adapters for it, Try an actual electrical supply house, down here we have ones like "Greybar" and "Platt" not sure if they are up there but the electricians have to shop somewhere.

 

[Macco]

I've always used rigid pvc conduit and an entrance box for things like this. As far as the colds effect on the jumpers I'm not saying you'll have issues with them but my experience with them is they tend to break in cold environments like that.

First time it happened at work the fiber broke but only enough to effect the 1550nm wavelength on it but the 1330nm wavelength was working fine (fiber was feeding 2 systems via CWDM splitter). Ended up being a long night in freezing weather trying to test that with no equipment and no spare jumpers.

Second time it happened to me was a bit easier to fix, but happened @ 2am in the middle of a blizzard. Needed my snowmobile to get out and fix that one.

Ended up using these jumpers from Clearfield during our FTTH deployment to avoid that issue.

Good looking work there user/home....

Im NOT a fan of those steel retro rings tho, hate them with a passion..

I use them when I have to - prefer these though. No need to level them, just use a holesaw and mount it.

 

[/usr/home]

yeah, that flexible conduit is called "carflex" and they make all kinds of fittings and adapters for it, Try an actual electrical supply house, down here we have ones like "Greybar" and "Platt" not sure if they are up there but the electricians have to shop somewhere.

I found the term that I'm looking for. Split loom . I ordered some 5/8" stuff on eBay. (It's way easier and cheaper to get in eBay opposed to online stores.)

For $15 bucks a fiber cable, I guess we'll see how well they work/last. I'm not concerned about weather, moreso the hot/cold part. If I could properly bury fiber I would, but I can't. Stupid stamped concrete. It's either arial or this way and I figured this was the better way.

Those retro boxes look nice to use. You'd get a nice clean hole with a hole saw then too rather than hacking a square hole with a drywall saw.

It sucks where I live, I can't get any of the parts I need around here. (I live in a city of ~17,000) Anything like that would be 3 hours away, if they even have it. I just ordered all my stuff off eBay for a good price. I think the total cost to do all this will be ~$90 for the transceivers, two cables, split loom, expanding foam insulation, and the miscellaneous boxes and whatnot. That's my monthly allowance spent there .

 

[jeffmoss26]

I like the Caddy MPLS brackets. I've used Arlington LV1 but I am not really a fan. The only problem with the Caddy ones is you havwe to make sure you don't put the screw through your finger.

 

[/usr/home]

Received the Fiber today. If the weather cooperates I'll try and run her here tonight after work.

 

[ChRoNo16]

Where do you live at?

 

[/usr/home]

Where do you live at?

Southwest corner of Saskatchewan.

 

[/usr/home]

Copy of post from my blog.
http://www.pc-tech.ca/?p=76

I received the fiber cable today in the mail and started as soon as I got home from work. The weather was kind of stormy and threatened to rain so I didn't take any pictures of the actual pulling of cable since I wanted to get it done before it started to rain. Here's a few pictures and descriptions.

Fiber and CAT5E enter into the garage. I will put a wall plate on it once I get my punchdown tool back from work. Hopefully I'll do that tomorrow.

Fiber finished being ran and testing the link between the house and garage. Jperf wasn't working very well, but on file transfers I was getting ~ 80 MB/s. I normally can hit ~115 MB/s on my desktop, but this is a just a 5400 RPM drive in my laptop.

Another shot through the door.

Closeup of the LC SFP. The switch is an HP Procurve 1400-24G.

Where the fiber exits the underground conduit and enters the garage. I have the conduit taped shut for now till I get my loom and can do a better job. I used mono expanding foam to close up the hole. I accidentally used too much here.

Behind this wall is an exterior window. The basement was framed and insulated so this wall covers up the window under my deck. I drilled a hole in the window frame and pulled the cable through. I also used mono to close the hole in the window frame.

Cable still needs to be tied up, but this is temporary for now.

Where the CAT5E and fiber come to the rack.

Picture of the core switch inside the house. It's an HP Procurve 1800-24G. Same SFP as the garage switch.

Picture of my rack as it currently stands. It seems to change quite often.

 

[Jay_2]

what fibre modules did you use with your Procurve?

 

[Adam]

Make sure you put some orange loom around that fiber...

 

[dashpuppy]

Make sure you put some orange loom around that fiber...

No need.

 

[Ockie]

Haha. Yep, I am. The house one is mounted properly, not sure why this one is like that. I'll need to make a cabinet or door type thing for it to try and hide it a bit. I may have to check local code though to see if that's allowed.

The sideways mounted panel is to Canadian code. Canadian electrical code requires that the main service entry feeders are isolated from the branch breakers. This way you will never have a unprotected main running over an area where you may be working.

The only way that they are able to comply with this code is to get a wireway through built into the panel (factory would require to do this, which some do)... but these panels are expensive. The other cheaper and more cost effective method is to simply turn the panel on it's side and isolate the main feeder section with a simple divider (I am not sure if the divider is specifically required by code, they may be satisfied without it as long as the unprotected or main feeder is separate from branch circuits.



As for your home trusses which are cut up, that is definitively not to code.

 

[dashpuppy]

As for your home trusses which are cut up, that is definitively not to code.

i saw that too, and shreeked those would be floor joyces

 

[Jay_2]

wow only just spotted that myself! Thats quite a bit of wood taken out there.

 

[dashpuppy]

wow only just spotted that myself! Thats quite a bit of wood taken out there.

someone should be fixing that hey

 

[Berg0]

jack it up to level with a telepost if sagging and laminate 2x10 on either side, carriage bolts and big washers.

 

[/usr/home]

As for your home trusses which are cut up, that is definitively not to code.

Didn't even notice that. I don't even know how long ago it was done. The house is over 100 years old so who knows when that happened....

 

[Ockie]

i saw that too, and shreeked those would be floor joyces

Yes. "Joists" is the correct term for that specific type support.

 

[Philj]

Great project! What GBICs are you using on the switches?

 

[/usr/home]

I got them off of eBay for 5 bucks each. I grabbed 6 of them. I'll get the model number tonight when I get home.

 

[Philj]

Hi, any update on that model number? Thanks!

 

[/usr/home]

Hi, any update on that model number? Thanks!

Sorry, I got one if front of me here. It's a:

JDS Uniphase
PN: 52P6537
JSP-21S0AA1

 

[JMasterFunk]

Here I am, searching the internet for other people who have run fiber between their house and garage, and it leads me to another guy from Saskatchewan. Looks mighty fine. I do have one question. Why single mode instead of multimode?

 

[/usr/home]

Here I am, searching the internet for other people who have run fiber between their house and garage, and it leads me to another guy from Saskatchewan. Looks mighty fine. I do have one question. Why single mode instead of multimode?

You must be from SK with the mennonite name of Funk . Why? Because I found the GBICs for the switches for 5 bucks and they were singlemode LC ones so I went with that. I was doing it for cheap (being a mennonite and all.) Haha.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Fun looking project! And I have that exact same chair, I'm sitting on it now.

 

[ziggo0]

My local Krogers....had to stop in to get a key off my buddy who is a manager there, nothing to do with networking but my god.

 

[bds1904]

i saw that too, and shreeked those would be floor joyces

looks like someone is in for some sistering soon, unless he likes wavey floors...

 

[Red Squirrel]

My local Krogers....had to stop in to get a key off my buddy who is a manager there, nothing to do with networking but my god.

lol that actually made me jump when I saw that pic. It looks like a giant spider web, I have a phobia of those. Wow what a mess lol.

 

[Blitzrommel]

Just curious - what kind of 2wire modem/gateway is that?

 

[dashpuppy]

Just curious - what kind of 2wire modem/gateway is that?

The kind that suck ass, that are locked by provider where the PROVIDER wont give you the password for, so you must install a HACKED firmware to do what you need to get done LOL !

 

[/usr/home]

Just curious - what kind of 2wire modem/gateway is that?

3800 series. My ISP (Sasktel) uses them. If you put them in bridge mode they are fine. Rock solid. For a regular home use they are good as well. If you have a larger network and use them as a router they start to crap out

I have a static ip so port one is my bridged pirt for my static ips and the other three are still behind the 2wire. I run my guest vlan to it and that way they have a completely different network and public dhcp address.

 

[/usr/home]

looks like someone is in for some sistering soon, unless he likes wavey floors...

Too late for that. It's not bad but there's multiple additions that have settled making parts of the house not quite level. Nothing serious or really noticeable. The house is 100 years old though.

 

[moose517]

My local Krogers....had to stop in to get a key off my buddy who is a manager there, nothing to do with networking but my god.

Worse then the kroger store i work at, and i thought the wiring was sloppy XD. I'll have to try and get a pic of it