Phoneline cut and paved over

LirW

Hi,

We are having phoneline trouble and this impacts us getting fibre to the home.
So we live in our house (privately owned) in a small council estate in a rural village for a year now. We can get fibre to the home from work, there's just a problem to that: we don't have a working phoneline on our land.
The previous owner was an incompetent DIY freak and built a small porch a few years ago. One of our neighbours is his son and he told us what happened. He skipped the line and paved over it, so we have a good 2 tons of concrete on the former phone line, he hooked his up with the neighbours next door and left it like that ever since.
So our phoneline currently comes in via the neighbours box with a shoddy cable running under the decking in front of the house.
Now the neighbouring house is still council owned and the couple living in it, lovely as they are, are elderly and I'm worried if we stay hooked up there and someone new moves in, they could cut our line and there's nothing we can do.

I had 3 KN group people here in the last 2 weeks talking about different things from doing a survey to a blocked duct.
Talking to eir is next to impossible because they wanna fob us off with the duct being blocked.
Now the engineer said that he could do a civil survey which assesses the cost of running a new line in.

I've read though that eir has a Universal service obligation to provide a line.
So what should we do next and how should we handle this issue?
The engineer said it would make more financial sense to dig a trench ourselves and get the line run through it.

rob808

LirW wrote: »

Hi,

We are having phoneline trouble and this impacts us getting fibre to the home.
So we live in our house (privately owned) in a small council estate in a rural village for a year now. We can get fibre to the home from work, there's just a problem to that: we don't have a working phoneline on our land.
The previous owner was an incompetent DIY freak and built a small porch a few years ago. One of our neighbours is his son and he told us what happened. He skipped the line and paved over it, so we have a good 2 tons of concrete on the former phone line, he hooked his up with the neighbours next door and left it like that ever since.
So our phoneline currently comes in via the neighbours box with a shoddy cable running under the decking in front of the house.
Now the neighbouring house is still council owned and the couple living in it, lovely as they are, are elderly and I'm worried if we stay hooked up there and someone new moves in, they could cut our line and there's nothing we can do.

I had 3 KN group people here in the last 2 weeks talking about different things from doing a survey to a blocked duct.
Talking to eir is next to impossible because they wanna fob us off with the duct being blocked.
Now the engineer said that he could do a civil survey which assesses the cost of running a new line in.

I've read though that eir has a Universal service obligation to provide a line.
So what should we do next and how should we handle this issue?
The engineer said it would make more financial sense to dig a trench ourselves and get the line run through it.

yea your better of doing a trench doesn't have to be big just enough to cover the duct.

ED E

If there's an existing duct then you know where to go to/from. Pay a few contractors to run a new duct between those points and leave a pull in it. The USO doesn't obligate OpenEir to remediate this for you.

LirW

ED E wrote: »

If there's an existing duct then you know where to go to/from. Pay a few contractors to run a new duct between those points and leave a pull in it. The USO doesn't obligate OpenEir to remediate this for you.

There's a paved driveway, the duct runs under it and the drive ends right at the porch so unless we lift that there's no access to it. It's really annoying because it was so incredibly unnecessary from the previous owner to cut it and pave over it.

m99T

LirW wrote: »

There's a paved driveway, the duct runs under it and the drive ends right at the porch so unless we lift that there's no access to it. It's really annoying because it was so incredibly unnecessary from the previous owner to cut it and pave over it.

Sure that's Ireland for you.

Id be looking at the existing duct as your point of contact. So lets say you have access to it at the chamber. Good start.

You can now go two routes.

Route A: Get some environmental crowd in to charge you your left arm and first born in order to either lay a new duct or recover the existing one.

Route B:

Attempt to recover the duct by running the the nearest rental store and asking for a Cobra Rod, Small SONDE (Sometimes called a mouse) and a CAT (Cable avoidance tool).

In a sense what you will be able to do with these devices is run the rod down the pipe like a big rope with the SONDE on the end that emits a signal and use the CAT to track it from above the ground.

Now you can pinpoint exactly where the duct is, go to the point closest to the house where you can dig straight down after cutting a small access box in the driveway and you can then T the duct off and bring it up at a corner wall. Probably best to do that at the corner of the porch and the house if that is how the duct is running anyway.

OTHERWISE

Get that mini digger out and run a new duct in. This is a massive pain. And expensive.


Either way please do let us know how you get on. The more experiences shared on here gives others with a similar problem a fighting chance at a easy install.

LirW

Doing all this heavy work is financially not doable for us at the moment unfortunately.
The engineer recommended to dig the trench ourselves since recovering the old duct really is absolutely no option here since we can't remove that porch that's placed on the former exit.

Anyway, he did a survey and said that eir will get onto us within the next few weeks with a price and what to do. For now we just try to argue our case, KN doesn't really care either way what's going to happen.

m99T

LirW wrote: »

Doing all this heavy work is financially not doable for us at the moment unfortunately.
The engineer recommended to dig the trench ourselves since recovering the old duct really is absolutely no option here since we can't remove that porch that's placed on the former exit.

Anyway, he did a survey and said that eir will get onto us within the next few weeks with a price and what to do. For now we just try to argue our case, KN doesn't really care either way what's going to happen.

I dont know why he said it would not be recoverable. You would easily be able to join the old duct up to a new small duct that runs around the porch to the house with the use of a small hole as an access box (Get a plastic lid for it).

That would be my way of dealing with this problem. Cost effective and fast.

LirW

m99T wrote: »

I dont know why he said it would not be recoverable. You would easily be able to join the old duct up to a new small duct that runs around the porch to the house with the use of a small hole as an access box (Get a plastic lid for it).

That would be my way of dealing with this problem. Cost effective and fast.

According to them the easiest would be digging a small trench beside the drive and put a line in there. But now we're waiting anyway what eir comes back with and go from there.
We always have the backup of running the line to our phoneline at the neighbours house, doesn't solve the problem of our own line but at least we have fibre.

Glass fused light

Sorry but why dose it have to be buried, every house in the countryside has a overground connection?

Johnboy1951

Glass fused light wrote: »

Sorry but why dose it have to be buried, every house in the countryside has a overground connection?

No.

Only one of my neighbours has an overhead connection for a phone line. All others are underground.

ED E

Glass fused light wrote: »

Sorry but why dose it have to be buried, every house in the countryside has a overground connection?

In built estates there may be no OE poles, theres nowhere to take it from OG.

listermint

i dont get it ?

You can get some contractors in to dig in front of the porch, recovering the original trunking and connect into it. Its not rocket science.

Id do it myself, Rent a mini digger, check for lines power/gas/eletrical. and dig the hole to locate the cable. It cant be more than 600-700mm down.

Doing it yourself would cost about 100 Euro.

LirW

listermint wrote: »

i dont get it ?

You can get some contractors in to dig in front of the porch, recovering the original trunking and connect into it. Its not rocket science.

Id do it myself, Rent a mini digger, check for lines power/gas/eletrical. and dig the hole to locate the cable. It cant be more than 600-700mm down.

Doing it yourself would cost about 100 Euro.

The whole porch is surrounded by a concrete drive, the land is sloping the cable, like in all other houses runs under the drive so we'd have to break concrete to locate it and this would be fairly expensive to fix up again as far as I know.
The drive goes from the footpath up directly to the house.

listermint

LirW wrote: »

The whole porch is surrounded by a concrete drive, the land is sloping the cable, like in all other houses runs under the drive so we'd have to break concrete to locate it and this would be fairly expensive to fix up again as far as I know.
The drive goes from the footpath up directly to the house.

I'd have expected the porch to be surrounded by concrete. As with all front porches.

As I said I'd dig it up myself after doing cable gas and power checks

Rent a mini digger with breaker and locate it.

It's basic stuff for a contractor or anyone with low level DIY skills. You might have a handy family member.

Putting concrete back down when done isn't tough work.

That's all easy.

Cutting a new line up your entire driveway... No crack