During the early phase of constructing the barn I tried hard to identify all the opportunities to maximize the utilities of the project, including improving the entire property, especially the cabin that is about 1/8 mile away along the private driveway. Now with the barn in the finishing phase of stage I there is nothing I wish that I had provisioned except one. That is running an Ethernet between the barn and what I call the tractor garage adjacent to it separated by the big concrete pad. It would had been so easy to throw in a conduit between the two buildings before the external concrete was poured.
It was not an oversight. In fact I considered but dismissed the need of wired network in the uninsulated garage building. As the barn project is huge there were also limits of the detail planning and design a person can do.
As I continued to refine the installation of security cameras I would realize the inner gate as well as the tractor garage are both critical locations to mount cameras to monitor the main house as well as the barn from intruder before they get indoors. Thankfully, despite dismissing the need for that network cable run, I provisioned a short conduit run from inside the barn out to the gravel surface on the West side. I did that so a wiring could be added from inside the barn, and travel under the 5 feet wide apron.
the 1" PVC conduit that I provisioned
To use this provisional conduit I needed to dig down through the shale rocks to get to it. I followed the local code and buried the conduit deep. It was a full 10 feet conduit after the bend so it extend beyond the apron by about 5 feet. As I am retrofitting a conduit run between the two building and would be hand digging into the compacted shale base I want to dig as shallow as long as there is no risk of damaging the conduit from use or future projects.
it is 20" down in the shale fill
The distance between the two buildings is 50 feet. To protect the retrofit conduit I planned to run it along the edge of the concrete slab hugging it closely. That allow me to not digging deep by hand. I figure 6 to 8 inches should be enough.
I cut the conduit as close to the apron as possible and added a 90 ell to bring it up to near the surface
As I only need to run one, or at most two Ethernet cables in the conduit 1" is overkill. I transition it down to 3/4" to save some money. I could use 1/2" conduit but the cost difference is minuscule. Also reduction of two sized is not ideal and requires more work and material.
using a reduction bushing would add a step which making pulling the cable more difficult
At the time of this first dig I didn't have the needed conduits to complete the work and with rain coming fill the dug hole to protect the apron under fill from erosion. I filled the dug hole and compacted it. I didn't want to make a 3 hours round trip just to go get the conduits.
I trenched along the concrete pad a short segment to see how hard it is
I used the opportunity to pick up the needed conduits when I bought the last 6 sheet of tongue and grove plywood used as wall panels
I decide to use heat to slightly enlarge the 1" pipe so the 3/4" pipe can fit inside
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