I’ll be having power installed to the summer house (aka bike workshop 🙂 ) soon, but was going to get some network cable run down at the same time. I’ve been told I won’t be able to run cat5e network cable next to the power cable (6mm armoured… but might go smaller) in a conduit due to interference from the power, so what would you say the best thing to do is? (without being ridiculously expensive!)
Distance is about 20-25m, the network cable will be going from the router in the house straight into another router in the shed.
Will shielded cat5e be shielded well enough for 20ish meters next to power cable?

Use CAT6, which is shielded. The cable is cheap enough to give it a go and if it doesn’t give a good reliable connection to investigate using a directional wi-fi antenna on a wifi repeater (or something similar).
Possibly you could just use powerline adaptors instead though.
The speed might not be great if they’re on a different mains ring to the main router though.

Why not use two AV2 spec homeplugs?

cheaper, and makes the rest of your household power line networked.

Go for shielded Cat5e or Cat6 and you should be fine at that. Have had to run a good 20m next to a non armoured 240v supply and it worked ok even with standard cat5 cable. I was expecting to end up using the cat5 as a draw wire for some shielded cable 😀

stoner wins IMO – why bugger about with ehternet cable unless you’re on fibreoptic superfast broadband and playing online games out there ?

CAT-5 and 6 are twisted pairs which means they have exceptionally good resistance to interference and are designed to be laid next to other cables.

I’d be very surprised if there was any issue with running it next to a mains cable in a domestic setting.

Why not use two AV2 spec homeplugs?

That was what I tried, but each time I switched on the lathe, the plugs would screw up and not gracefully recover.

I’ve got the plugs like Stoner suggests. They are ace :O)

That was what I tried, but each time I switched on the lathe, the plugs would screw up and not gracefully recover.

Electric motors are great at generating noise, if not properly suppressed. Sounds like the plugs aren’t very well designed to cope with high levels of noise. You could try adding a filtered plug block to run the lathe off – would suppress a fair bit of noise.

Years ago I worked on a powerline project for Norweb, developing a system to provide internet to residential customers over the 415v LV distribution network (back when powerline comms was bleeding edge stuff). Biggest issue was when all the street lights switched on, with bulbs arcing – took out the whole network for a few minutes whilst they all settled up.

Never “good practice” to run any data cables next to power cables footflaps!

Doesn’t mean it won’t be fine……

After all those power line comms things are running comms on the powerline, which is even worse as they have to rely on filtering. Twisted pair cables have natural immunity as they take the difference between the core pairs and any nearby EM filed will generate a virtually equal potential on each core, so the noise cancels itself out.

This isn’t good practice, but for 25m, just use the shielded stuff, or even if you’re feeling brave normal cat5e or cat6. Yes the data rate will not be what it’s supposed to be, but you’ll get enough to surf STW, watch iplayer or listen to internet radio.

HTH
SM

The data rate on the cable is never the limiting factor. You’ll be running GE on the cable, so that’s 1000 Mbit/s. Not many broadband links come close to that. So you can afford to drop a few packets and TCP will just cover it all up, you’ll not even notice.

Are you meaning you will be running the SWA and the data cable in the same conduit? I would just run another conduit/kopex for data, I have some nice 32mm armaflex if you would like it free of charge if you live anywhere near Central Scotland!

Dave- I’d had a quick look at the homeplugs, I wasnt sure if they would work as the power in the summer house will be a spur from the house consumer unit, and the homeplug in the house would be plugged into one of the rings on the house rather than the spur. (Would it work?)
Scaredypants- The internet is 40-ish mb, so wouldnt a cat6 cable be a bit overkill- cat5e would do the job just as well? It will be just as much an office for me as a workshop by the way!
Footflaps- i didnt understand a word of that! I’ll google around to see if I can figure that out 😆
Giant – The SWA dosnt need to be in a conduit (but correct me if i’m wrong) so I would just have the network cable in a conduit with the SWA alongside it.

25m is nothing. I’ve been on installations approaching 100m where data and power have run in the same conduit with no adverse effects.

Use Cat 6 if you’re really worried. You should use that anyway.

The homeplugs don’t really care where you plug them in eg on Spurs, rings etc.

As for running CAT-5 and Mains in the same conduit, no problem unless you’re running a machine shop or welding in the shed, in which case you might have some intermittent problems. Either way I wouldn’t be worried at all.

homeplug will work on any circuit in the same phase within a few hundred metres.

Thanks for the help guys, think i’ll just go with the shielded cat5/6 cable for now and see how it goes- just saves having any more unsightly plugs poking out from the homeplugs.
If it doesn’t work then i’ll try the homeplugs, and only be a few pounds out of pocket

In thay case just stick the data cable in a metal flexible conduit and it’ll be fine, also gives you the option of pulling more cables through at a later date.