underground utilities

[Italics Mine]

I like this 25-year old MH park because the electric, phone, and cable wires are underground. There's nothing uglier than telephone poles with wires all over the place.
But what kind of maintenance problems usually happen with underground wiring?

[DCDiva]

Nothing,unless you forget to call before you dig, we ran ours underground but put it into conduit first,that way if we need to add a wire in the future it will be easy,plus we could not dig as deep as needed due to big rocks.

[joedirt63]

under ground is great ,untill you have a problem,power lead to my home had an open in it and because it was from the meter to the house it was my responsibility. dug up 35 ft to find conduit and found break in it. caused by dum dum contractor with his bobcat trying to remove a nearby fence post. I didn't know it was there , he said. funny cause he's the one who laid the pipe and ran the line when the m/h was put on the lot. because it seems that my lot is a central connection for utilies for 5 homes ,i can't even dig a garden bed. but instead i made a collection of above ground garden boxes.

[Greg]

If everything was installed correctly there should be no problems. BUT if things were installed as they were in our park (almost 50 years ago) then there will be some problems. Our cables, Elec & phone were direct buried 6-12" deep. over the years water has gotten into the cables causing problems.

Greg

[DaveyB]

Then again, you have to remember people like the Cox Cable contracted installers. They came to lay in a new cable to my home from the cable junction which is directly behind the home. Total run length is about 8 feet, and they buried just the cable (no conduit) at a depth of 2-3" - they moved the gravel to hide it basically!

The trenching tool used was a claw hammer and hands, the guy didn't even have a shovel in his truck! This works fine for me since I know where the cable is, but someone in the future is going to have problems with it!

[Greg]

They buried yours? Our cable company installers just leave it on the ground, They will be be back later to "Finish".

Greg

[DaveyB]

In this case, buried = camouflaged! The junction box they installed wont even close properly. That goes on the to-do list to go back and fix, but it's a long way down that list!!