Installing Fibre - Who to Ask?

Property & Home
1

We have two properties on our lieu-dit. Our main house and our cottage/gite.

The main house already has fibre installed. A fibre line comes down the chemin behind our house, attached to electricity posts. The post nearest the house is high up on a bank and the fibre stretches across to the house itself and comes in a roof level.

We would now like to install fibre in the cottage but need advice as to how it can be done. We are struggling to find someone who can help us.

Talking to Orange, they are only interested in installing/laying the fibre once the preparatory work has been done by someone else and then coming along and bringing the fibre into the cottage to a livebox.

We need a technician who understands fibre, who is prepared to come and look at our particular circumstances and give us advice.

The issues we don’t have answers to (and Orange aren’t interested):

The fibre that comes to the house, can it be extended on down to the cottage? Or will another line have to be brought along the electricity posts from the white box at the top of the chemin?

Or, indeed, are we not able to have a second installation down to our cottage?

The last electricity post is high up on a bank. At the bottom of the bank is a drainage ditch which goes under the chemin and emerges the other side in our field. How can a fibre line for the cottage cross all that? Do we need another post in our field so that the line can be carried high above the ditches and chemin?

Once on our land, can we drop the line down into the ground and have a shallow trench all the way down to the cottage?

There are more issues about how and where the line can be brought up from the trench and into the cottage.

We know guys who will dig a trench for us, but that is not enough. We need much more info/advice, but who do we turn to?

Any thoughts/advice/actual experience please. Much appreciated.

2

Distance between man house and cottage/gite?

How does electricity get to the cottage/gite?

I can’t see any need to run fibre to the gite when running Cat6/7 Ethernet cable or using wireless links would work very nicely.

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3

I seem to recall we had an entire thread about someone doing just this, hopefully someone will present themselves as the author of the thread and link to it, but this is exactly what I did for all my outbuildings, just ran Cat 6 from the existing house setup to the cellar and then through the gaine that runs underground into the outbuildings. I guess if youre considering selling buildings separately. It may make sensee giving it its own line, but otherwise piggybacking should work fine.

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4

Hi Sue

I was going to add fibre to our gite but approx 18 months ago but instead I installed a WiFi bridge to our gite which is about 70m away.

The same system can easily work for up to 1km.

The system cost approx 140€ with no ongoing fees.

Installing it was not particularly complex.

Something like this one:

We get approx 500mb/s at the gite.

At the time it was discussed here:

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5

Ethernet is what we have at the moment and it trails down the garden attached to bamboo poles with clothes pegs, past swimming pool, bypassing a rose growing up a pergola, across a lawn which makes using the robot a challenge and comes in at the first floor having pushed its way through a hazelnut hedge.

I am the one who posted the original thread. We have put up with this cack-handed set-up through winter and spring because we have been living in the cottage. Now I want that all out the way. It’s a horrible nuisance and looks ugly

I bought a wifi bridge and no way will it work for the layout of our land with trees in the way, a drop down to the cottage, lying below a bank on which the hazel trees grow.

Sorry everyone. Thanks for your suggestions. Your land layout maybe simpler, your technical skills more sophisticated. But this is not a DIY job for us. It took me long enough to drill the hole through the old house wall to thread the cat 6 cable through to the livebox in the house and then took an entire afternoon using CHATgpt to make any sense of how to get the thing in the cottage to talk to the thing in the house. Then not helped subsequently by the 100m cable being cut in half so I spent another afternoon splicing the two halves together.

I need someone/an organisation to take the entire task off our hands. I have come to realise at nearly 80 that my job in life is to keep other people, who do know what they are doing employed.

6

Thanks @Mat_Davies I posted an almost identical post. I still do not have a good solution and we are planning to sell and move back to the UK and I’m in the process of getting the place looking nice for sale. Ethernet cable trailing across the garden is not the answer.

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7

Would a 4G solution from Bouygues work ?

8

Sadly no signal here.

9

Well said :slight_smile:

@Rachel05 the age might be different but don’t let Stuart see this ! :slight_smile:

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10

Hardly :slight_smile:

But from what you have said I think Ethernet cable in a trench might be the only option if you want a network connection at the gîte.

11

How does electricity reach the gite?

I’ve seen black exterior use Cat6 cable tied to black electrical cable running between a house and a gite 40 metres apart and you couldn’t spot it unless you knew it was there.

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Underground. Got cut through twice during the renovations. :roll_eyes:

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13

I take it there’s no easily accessible cable duct that some nice person left a length of bailing twine inside to help pull new cables through?

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14

If that is where the last juction is then the answer is yes.

You need to find out whoever was contracted to install the original infrastructure. Where I am the actual operators (e.g. Orange) did not carry that part out. The installers should know who is responsible for what.

That might be the case - it’s hard to tell without a map & photos.

Yes, you can privately install a green duct that in that manner, 500mm deep.

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15

Thanks Badger, this is just what I needed to know.

16

I know nothing about internet cables, but I do know that assuming that it is one unbroken length of cable, then there really should be no problem with routing it through the pipe that takes the ditchwater under the chemin.
Cables are inherently waterproof due to the plastic exterior. Sunlight is what degrades them over time so being in a pipe under the chemin should be just fine. Perhaps your existing cable across the garden will be long enough for the new route ?

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Thanks Robert. Good point. if so, that would make life easier. Bring the new fibre cable down the chemin from the white box at the top, going from electricity post to post. Come as far as the last post, bring it down the post to the bank. Take it down the bank and into the ditch, cross the ditch and feed the cable through the concrete tunnel, bring the cable up out of the ditch onto our land and then dig a shallow trench all the way down to the cottage.

All I have to do now is see if I can find contact details for the original contractors and discuss this with them.

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18

If you have a second fibre run, you will need a second fibre modem for the gite/cottage.

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I know. We run the two properties quite separately and prefer to have all the utilities separate, so we know what each is costing.

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