upinflamezzz
IS-IT--Management
I hired a company to run fiber between some buildings above ground through the rafters. It's all indoors and they used orange conduit which is quite an eyesore. Should they have used grey?
Thanks,
Jarod
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Orange Conduit vs Grey Conduit/Innerduct
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I hired a company to run fiber between some buildings above ground through the rafters. It's all indoors and they used orange conduit which is quite an eyesore. Should they have used grey?
Thanks,
Jarod
If aesthetics were important, the contractor should have been told beforehand. Orange is quite common for fiber runs, and the contractor probably defaulted to what they were most accustomed to using (or what was most readily available). More importantly, since the cable run is indoors, the fire rating of both the innerduct and the fiber cable must be appropriate to the environment(s) they're in.
Orange is standard for innerduct, just like Red is for Fire Alarm wiring and equipment. There is a semi-translucent innerduct that is UV stabilized for outdoor use too. If aesthetics is a concern where you are, you can always run a 4in or greater Gray Schedule-40 PVC conduit and paint it, then have the fiber and innerduct run in that. Just be mindful of the number and total radius of your bends between pull points, and distances per section between pull points.
Orange is indeed the standard default color, but for this indoor application a number of other colors are available for fire rated (riser or plenum) non-metallic flexible raceway (innerduct). If, in addition to a color requirement, a rigid appearance would have been preferred, then there is fire rated non-metallic rigid communications cable raceway in various colors as an alternative to painting PVC (which itself might have electrical code restrictions on its use in this scenario if the run involves any part of a plenum or riser space, or high temperature).
Most things gray in my experience are either for power or underground. Orange is definitely the color for indderduct in buildings. Most everyone knows what's inside. We quit running innder duct years ago and just used plenum armored fiber in buildings now. It's actually cheaper than inner duct plus fiber.
Clint
Clint
Good point. Armored fiber would have been a fine choice for this application. Note though that if the fiber is singlemode the armored jacket would be yellow (this job seems to be all indoors), and would the "aesthetics" still have been a problem, even though the diameter is a lot less than innerduct (less visible). On the other hand, if it's armored OM3 or OM4 multimode, then aqua colored shouldn't be objectionable. (I'd like to think they didn't run OM1/OM2 - back to orange if they did - but why run this type of fiber anymore, especially for an inter-building connection).
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