Ideas for outdoor con box or other ideas

[fastline]

I am having to work a design that is turning into a cluster F... Basically 150ft from a building, I need to serve up 120V to a powered gate, a 2 conductor low energy switching circuit to activate gate, 2 CAT6 cables for each card reader at gate, then at least 2 CAT6s for 2 cameras out there. What I am trying to do is clean up how all this enters the building, rather than a line of LBs... Looks like crap, but.....

I am also torn on that 2 conductor going to gate opener. Really would like to ride it in the pipe with the power, but I know it should not be in there.

More to the point, due to distance and complexity, I was thinking of setting a con box or similar at about the 100ft mark because I have to come out of the ground there anyway. My thought was to do pull loops in there so if something gets damaged out there, there is an easier way to repair rather than a complete home run. I was looking at communications type pedestals. Never have really used them though. Not even sure this is the right strategy.

 

[charlie b]

I am also torn on that 2 conductor going to gate opener. Really would like to ride it in the pipe with the power, but I know it should not be in there.

I'm not sure why not, at least not from an NEC perspective. As long as the two have an insulation rating at least as high as the power voltage (a very high probability), you can put them in the same conduit as the power conductors.

Now, as to whether the "low voltage" game rules prohibit the sharing, I have no facts to offer. Perhaps someone with experience in that area (I have none) can chime in.

 

[fastline]

I'm not sure why not, at least not from an NEC perspective. As long as the two have an insulation rating at least as high as the power voltage (a very high probability), you can put them in the same conduit as the power conductors.

Now, as to whether the "low voltage" game rules prohibit the sharing, I have no facts to offer. Perhaps someone with experience in that area (I have none) can chime in.

I think it is largely my general practice to keep control, low voltage, communications separate, but I may have to concede on this one. I always think 'what if'... and if somehow power made it on that 2 wire switching cable, it would blow up the access control unit. Basically that 2 wire just gets closed when commanded from the access control and that signal is relayed to the gate opener to open.

 

[charlie b]

. . . and if somehow power made it on that 2 wire switching cable. . . .

That is why all conductors sharing a conduit must have an insulation system rated at least as high as the highest voltage conductor in the set. That makes this an unnecessary what if.

 

[ModbusMan]

My worry on having them all inside the same conduit would be induced voltages caused by the long parallel run. Waaaay back before I took up residence in the low voltage (Modbus/BACnet/SNMP) world, I worked at a motor shop that did VFD installation and repair. We got called out to a factory where a 400HP VFD was physically isolated, with the breaker literally racked out, yet it would keep powering up with the display screen coming online and acting as if it were ready to rock. Of course, as soon as you tried to make the motor move, the thing would fall on its face, but it wasn't until one of the maintenance guys pulled out their prints and we saw it sharing a couple hundred feet of tray with two other drives that the light bulbs went 'ping!'