Who here has run standard Cat6 UTP Cable outside?

[rufunky]

Asking for a friend. Who here has run standard Cat6 UTP Cable outside without conduit? How long did it last? To me this sounds like a horrible idea but I have no experience in doing this therefore its hard for me to say.

to be specific its about a 4 ft section of: 23AWG Cat6 500MHz UTP Solid, Riser Rated (CMR), Bulk Ethernet Bare Copper Cable

 

[c hris527]

I have seen it before on certain jobs I was on but it was not exposed to sun or direct rain, still working, However i would not do it unless you like doing things twice.

 

[fenderman]

Asking for a friend. Who here has run standard Cat6 UTP Cable outside without conduit? How long did it last? To me this sounds like a horrible idea but I have no experience in doing this therefore its hard for me to say.

to be specific its about a 4 ft section of: 23AWG Cat6 500MHz UTP Solid, Riser Rated (CMR), Bulk Ethernet Bare Copper Cable

I ran standard monoprice 5e cable outdoors 10-11 years ago. Still working great...runs from the basement to the attic, it does ride along a gutter downspout...your 4ft section should be fine...

 

[mat200]

Asking for a friend. Who here has run standard Cat6 UTP Cable outside without conduit? How long did it last? To me this sounds like a horrible idea but I have no experience in doing this therefore its hard for me to say.

to be specific its about a 4 ft section of: 23AWG Cat6 500MHz UTP Solid, Riser Rated (CMR), Bulk Ethernet Bare Copper Cable

Hi Rufunky,

I've run it outside, and direct UV exposure will eventually kill it.
If not exposed to direct UV it will last fairly long.

 

[DavidDavid]

I ran standard cat5e along the ground for 6 weeks maybe because I was lazy and it took me a while to finish running it thru the wall. Worked great til some animal chewed through it.

 

[Kawboy12R]

It's not always as bad as it sounds but it depends on brand of cable (some brands of indoor cable are probably a lot more UV resistant than others), luck, routing and individual circumstances. Get a crack or a nick or water ingress at the end of the cable and water can travel inside the housing, sometimes traveling UPHILL past your drip loop (everybody installs drip loops, right?) and inside into your server/NVR/switch. Burial grade cable is filled with gel to help avoid this in addition to having physically tougher and UV resistant housing.

 

[Silas]

Also depends on where in the world you live

If I ran any cable that was in any way open to the elements, it would get destroyed during the summer, temps in excess of 40'C will do that

Unless you're in the UK and then it just rots with the damp and drizzle and cold and wind and that's why I moved down under

 

[rufunky]

Thanks for the responses. This is white Monoprice cable so its decent quality and not black so it shouldn't attract sun as much.. This 4 ft section goes across a small roof most of it is tucked under the ridge vent. Because I thought this sounded like a bad idea I convinced him to leave at least 8 ft of slack on the inside wall just in case the cable degrades he can pull fresh cable through without rerunning the whole thing.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Tell him to paint the exposed bits. That'll help.

 

[mlapaglia]

Is he going from inside the house, to outside, back to inside? If you run some emt conduit all way through the walls you would be better protected.

Or better, if you could pull the ridge vent off you could probably get enough access underneath it to run the wire under the roof?

 

[mat200]

Thanks for the responses. This is white Monoprice cable so its decent quality and not black so it shouldn't attract sun as much.. This 4 ft section goes across a small roof most of it is tucked under the ridge vent. Because I thought this sounded like a bad idea I convinced him to leave at least 8 ft of slack on the inside wall just in case the cable degrades he can pull fresh cable through without rerunning the whole thing.

View attachment 22180

Hi Rufunky,

The exposed UTP wire will eventually die in that location.

It is a good time to think about preventative work here.

Sooner or later you will also need to re-roof. Perhaps now is a good time to think about what happens then.

 

[rufunky]

Is he going from inside the house, to outside, back to inside? If you run some emt conduit all way through the walls you would be better protected.

Or better, if you could pull the ridge vent off you could probably get enough access underneath it to run the wire under the roof?

He could use conduit all the way through on the left side (goes into an attic space) The right side is a finished area with a vaulted ceiling. Good idea about pulling the ridge vent but in this case he wanted the camera high on the wall and for what ever reason, that wall has so much wood in it there is no way to snake cable that is why he chose to go right through the wall. Even when I flush mounted the camera, I had to make a cutout in the wood just so I could have a pocket to coil the cables weatherproof coupling.

 

[mlapaglia]

I've got some direct burial cat5 if you want I'll send you a few feet lol. You can get short runs on Amazon, is he dead set on using regular cat6?

 

[rufunky]

I've got some direct burial cat5 if you want I'll send you a few feet lol. You can get short runs on Amazon, is he dead set on using regular cat6?

Well, the whole cable run is about 30ft but only about 4ft is outside.

The original plan was to run the cable under the roof of that passthrough but there ended up being next to no room along with some electrical wiring that I had no way of telling where it was tacked down. It just was a risk that wasn't worth taking. The only other logical option is to pull the camera, cut the end, pull it back through and run conduit.

I think at this point we will see what the weather does to it and if need be we can pull the slack cable we left inside the attic through and install the conduit.

 

[rufunky]

@drunkpenguin any idea how long that stuff was outside?