Day 54 - Telephone, TV and Data & Site Chaos

I think back to October last year when I started talking to Metricon about installing Fibre to our home through the company recommended to us by the estate. I had 4 months of them being completely obvlivious to my request regardless of the conversations I was having with them. Then in February it was escalated and after I received some advice from Building Concilliation & Advice Victoria (BCAV). In the final week before signing my contract they finally gave me permission to go onsite and told me I was on my own and I'd have to ensure everything happened at the right time.

Today the data cables, telephone cables, tv cables, hub cables etc...were all installed by Opticomm's contracted company Techlife. The engineer was really friendly and accomodating. Over the last 3 months I have done my best to ensure that techlife were onsite after the electrical company but because they electrician's didn't attend the site last week they ended up being there at exactly the same time.

I had to drop in before work to meet techlife to ensure everything was going to the right place. When I arrived onsite you could say it was somewhat chaotic. There were about 6-8 electricians onsite, 2 carpenters, 4 brickies and 1 techlife engineer. Techlife were reluctant to lay the cables for fear of getting in the electrician's way but they seem to have worked it all out.

I ended up removing a phone point from my original quote and relocating it in a different room. I considered where to put the wireless router but I ended up having to put in 2 additional data cables to where the router will sit so that I can then hook back into the switch in the hills hub. The electricians very reluctantly listened to my request to put the power points in a corner between 2 studs.

Anyway the moto of the story is that now all of our electricals have been done, the data cabling etc ended up proceeding without too much grief and I managed to get it in before plaster which was great.

The lock-up inspection is booked in for later this week, however we will have the son of our inspector because ours has gone on holidays.

This is the photo I took today. You can see the bricks are pretty much finished at the front, the garage is now bricked in and apparently the garage door was meant to be measured this week.


On a side note, I also found out that Metricon didn't install a 32mm conduit when they put in the electrical box. Now I need to pay another $660 to have a backhoe come in and dig the hole for the conduit to be laid for the fibre. Normally the fibre would just be installed after handover but I need to get the conduit laid before Metricon put my driveway down. I also need to buy an extra switch for the hills hub.

I will put together another blog entry on the opticomm installation and the how it all happens for those people that might have to do it at some point in the future.