Re: Outside plant - prewire customer demarc preference

[Brandon Martin <lists.nanog () monmotha net>]

On 11/27/23 18:52, owen--- via NANOG wrote:
> Why would 1” be significantly harder to get than 3/4”? Both in EMT and PVC, it’s readily available to the best of my 
> knowledge.

Most residential electrical contractors are going to use rated ENT since 
it's what they can easily get at a normal supply house or even home 
center.  This is the stuff made popular by Carlon in their trademark 
blue that makes people call it "smurf tube".  It's readily available in 
1/2" and 3/4" everywhere from home centers to basically any supply 
house.  1" is less common - most home centers don't have it, and since 
it isn't normally needed in residential nor is ENT basically ever used 
in commercial, neither do a lot of strictly electrical supply houses.

You can of course get corrugated communication duct in that size, often 
with mule tape pre-installed as a bonus, but a lot of electrical supply 
houses that deal only in "electrical" and not "communications" don't 
have that and will send folks to a "low voltage communication supplier" 
or have to special order it.  A lot of electrical contractors, 
especially residential, would rather not bother with a separate supply 
run, and having to wait is a pain if it wasn't planned early on and also 
often means you're paying freight separately.

Even then, most of the folks going to a communications supplier are 
going to reach straight for 1.25" or larger in commercial since you 
don't have to worry about drilling studs.  As I recall, my local 
communication cable house didn't even have 1" in stock, but they did 
have 1.25" in stock, and their price was basically the same as the 1" as 
a result.

So it's not that it doesn't exist or anything, it's just that, at least 
as far as I've seen, there's not a ton of demand for it, so local stock 
is thin.

All that said, I just checked Home Depot, and they are showing some 
stock on 1" ENT at my local store, so maybe that's changing.  Used to be 
they only stocked 3/4" and 1/2".  They still only have 25ft hanks of the 
1" stuff (you can get 1/2" and 3/4" in 25 or 100-200ft), but at least 
they have it now.  It is still about 4x the price of 3/4" per unit 
length, though.

--
Brandon Martin