sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Telco NID bonding

Existing client has a tower site in the country, that's never had telco service. It was needed, so the telco buried 3000 feet of cable from the SLIC, along the road through the farmer's field and to the building.

Nice shiny new NID. I noticed there was no attempt to bond the NID to the building ground...the cable shield was attached to the ground terminal in the NID, but that's all.

Do you guys see this often?

I might give the guy a break because it's a thermobond building, and as it turns out, the main ground bar is at the far side of the building.

I went ahead and bonded it properly, because I didn't want to leave that hanging unbonded next to a 400' tall lightning rod.

What's a thermobond building? How did you "properly" bond the NID?

-Hal

One of the brands of prefab concrete buildings used by cell companies.

A 6AWG wire through the wall to an existing (and unused) 2AWG ground cable that runs to the other end of the building and ties to the main ground bar.

It is a company [Thermo Bond] they makes small out buildings and outdoor cabinets such as you see for smaller Data Centers, Cell Tower equipment storage, et cetera. They can be made out of wood, metal, concrete... If you saw one you'd say "Oh, one of those".

I assume you are talking about a copper fed service, and not fiber? Around here, almost every tower company we've worked with only wants fiber and they state that no metallic components of our cable are to enter the building. We end up pulling a di-electric fiber drop and pull a tracer wire with it and leave the tracer outside of the building.

Oh yeah, one of those!

I would say you did OK with the ground, though I have to echo what @ffej010 said. I'm surprised that they did this with copper.

-Hal

I was, also, since in downtown office building rehabs, CL is pulling out the copper and installing fiber. This tower site is owned by the radio station, so they didn't have a problem with copper coming in.

CL did run fiber and sprinkle the roadsides with new SLICs a year or so ago, presumably preparing for the conversion of this part of the county from farmland to urban sprawl, which is well in progress a mile north of the tower.