Microtrenching Fiber Optic Cable - The fast, clean, and cost savings process.
As a Florida Microtrenching fiber optic contractor, we provide our clients with the most innovative and unobtrusive process for installing fiber optic cable and microduct in asphalt and concrete surfaces without the property destruction that traditional trenching and boring requires and leaves behind. Whether you need microtrenching fiber optic cable laid across hundreds or thousands of feet of parking space, down a street or sidewalk, through your interior building spaces, or anywhere that you wish to not have extensive tear-outs, backfills, patching, and traffic delays, NDC’s microtrenching fiber optic service can assist cleanly, effectively, and at a cost reduction of up to 5x.
The speed at which microtrenching fiber optic cable can be achieved is astonishing compared to traditional methods, where boring just a single traditional run would take about the same time to do as 50 runs of equal lengths with the microtrenching process, all with less labor, destruction, and downtime to the end user. In short, microtrenching fiber optic cable is the process of digging a narrow trench in asphalt or cement concrete as small as 5/8 of an inch up to several inches wide at depths as shallow as needed for laying microduct, conduit, or direct burial cable. Microtrenching fiber optic cable involves much less destruction of property then traditional trenching and boring where that technique usually requires trenching wide cuts that are deep, while digging holes of 3 to 5 feet in depth to side bore beneath and under a surface. Traditional drilling and boring also comes with significantly higher labor costs, locating services, traffic disturbances due to the wide cuts needed, large machinery, and it adds the danger of hitting other utilities buried at standard depths, whereas, microtrenching fiber optic cable can be delivered at depths just below the medium, or even between the medium with compact equipment, little to no traffic disturbance, lower costs, and much faster installation time as mentioned.
How to perform Microtrenching fiber optic cable service:
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Depending on the project and where it is located there may be restrictions from the municipality regarding the depths at which microtrenching fiber optic cable can be installed, or regulations that may disallow any microtrenching on public property. NDC shall first check the regulations if on public domain, or with the property owner if on private domain.
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We fully design our microtrench layout, and properly field mark the pathways to allow proper bend radiuses, and while not always necessary in every situation, a utilities check may be warranted to ensure your microtrench isn’t going to affect other utilities, or cables laid near the surface.
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Once our microtrench is complete to spec, we inspect every inch of the cut to ensure it is free from debris and sharp objects that may puncture the micro duct with any movement through temperature change or above pressure such as vehicle traffic. An additional one-inch bedding layer of sand may be applied to course base surfaces for insulation.
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We use crush and high temperature resistant microduct with tracer wire that can withstand hot polymer resin reinstatement infill if used, along with anchors to hold the duct to the bottom, or we use a cold liquid reinstatement resin to restore the surface, along with anchors to embed the microduct securely before pouring bedding sand and compacting.
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In areas where future digging may occur, and on cuts deep enough to warrant, a layer of fill resin dyed to a high contrast orange can be applied to fill just above the duct to signal buried cable, followed by a second layer dyed to match the existing surface color.Concrete grout and asphalt fill may also be used. Each install requires a thorough consideration of environmental conditions to achieve proper bonding and sealing of the infill reinstatement material.
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The fiber can now be installed into the microduct, and after some weathering the applied reinstatement infill will blend near seamlessly with the existing surface, as will other reinstatement infills.
Microtreching is a method that has been around for a while, though very much still an unknown option for many clients looking to install an underground network for fiber optic cables, or other cabling, conduit, etc., and should seriously be considered in both public and private domains. As businesses expand their footprint, interconnecting between buildings becomes a critical and necessary expansion that often frustrates those looking to do so, particularly for those that have to transverse either public domain hard surfaces, or their own hard surfaces such as parking lots and slab foundations. There have been basically three options that contractors present to clients; aerial fiber optic, point-to-point wireless, and traditional trenching and bore methods, all of which come with their own inherent issues and much higher costs.
Consider microtrenching as your newly found savior, as it is fast from conception to completion, more cost friendly then traditional methods, and having a wired network is more reliable than wireless. Today’s consumers demand a fiber connection for instant data in their personal and professional lives, and while current infrastructures lag behind today’s 5G world that promises autonomous vehicles and instant electronic information, the need for fiber networks will only increase, and by deploying microtrenching to achieve new pathways of connectivity at lower construction costs will encourage more small, medium, and large businesses, as well as major cities to rapidly deploy such networks in the most economical constructing methods.