Under ground utility colour coded pipes.

leaky5

leaky5

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Richard
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I know Gas use yellow pipes and water use blue.

Does anyone know what black is used for ?
 
Depends how old it is too I expect, plastic piping has been colour coded for a few years but before that I don't know.
 
There is a stack of black pipes by the road near me.

I was hoping Virgin media might be running fibre into my area.
 
Black is electric
Green is cable tv
Grey Telecom

Update, it depends on who is doing the contract, I have known them using what ever ducting they have in the yard to save buying other stuff, but if it is for the council they would probably be using the correct stuff. Most black ducting is used for electric ie street lighting or traffic lights and crossings, heavy duty electric cable would normally be laid in a bed of sand as it conducts to much heat when inclosed in a duct.
 
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You can always tell the cable tv duct, its the one that's just under the flagstones or has broken through the other utilities duct in the process of laying it
Oh and its green as posted above
 
Polyethelene water pipe is blue but the old imperial version was black.


Steve.
 
blue ducting for street lighting ,or purple in some cases is used for road crossings ,Gas is yellow with a black stripe for LP & MP mains ,and orange for IP mains ,water-mains blue ,or if it's ductile iron blue/black and it's concrete lined :thumbs:
 
leaky5 said:
There is a stack of black pipes by the road near me.

I was hoping Virgin media might be running fibre into my area.
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you can hope , i dont think this is happening anywhere in the country though :(
 
leaky5 said:
Does anyone know what black is used for ?
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Pretty much anything, partly due to the fact there wasnt colour coding to the way there is now, and partly due to contractors that work for all utilities so end up using what ever at times. Also depends where you find it layed.

These days we use a black ribbed duck for electric cables, and lay a thivk plastic marker tape stating its electric. For smaller service cable its a rigid black plastic tube, which normally has Electricity printed in white, which does fade off.

But the vast majority of electrical mains cables are laid striaght in the ground.

From experiance i have black ducks to be electrical, BT (who normally use grey, or orangey red clay ducts) water (normal Blue these days) more often then not for drainage and even gas (normally yellow) so best advice be very very very carefull if you open it up.


u8myufo said:
heavy duty electric cable would normally be laid in a bed of sand as it conducts to much heat when inclosed in a duct.
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Really where did you hear that from :thinking:

More like cost then anything!

Cables and all ducts should be sanded before being stoned, and topped of with what ever they need it concrete, tarmac, top soil. Unless using a particurly type of tarmac that can be filled striahgt on top.

Mains cables are armoured and dont need ducting normally but are normally ducted accross road crossing to save digging up roads, or leadig upto the meter positions if you need to get a new cable in.

Infact locally theres some upgrades being done, all the cable is being laid in large black plastic ducting.
 
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