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I accidentally cut through a 4 core fibre data cable

Earlier this year, I cabled the engineers garage and main buildings together here at Hawklaw. Given the 170m cable run, standard ethernet was out of the question. So, I hurriedly installed a 170m pre-terminated armoured fibre cable. I haven’t yet gotten around to burying the cable, a task that’s been on my to-do list.

Last weekend, while tidying up the area around our chickens, I had an unfortunate mishap. My expensive cable made an unfortunate connection with my scrub cutter. I was faced with replacing the whole run or finding someone who could splice a fibre cable.

Initially, I considered purchasing a fusion splicer to fix it myself. However, with a price tag of £6000, there was no way I could justify the investment for a one-time repair. Hiring one was another option, but that would have taken too long and I didn’t want to be without data between the two buildings for that long.

Luckily, if you live in Fife, you’re only 2 degrees of separation from anyone and this was no exception, luckily, I “kent a boy that kens a boy” (well, it was a girl actually) who had a fusion splicer. This friend of a friend came to the rescue, and with his expertise and the magic of the splicer, he managed to repair the cable. It was a tense moment, but thanks to our helpful community, we were back online in no time!

Lesson learned—I won’t make that mistake again. Stay tuned for more updates from Hawklaw!

Now all I need to do is get round to hiring a mini-digger and getting this cable safely underground, where it should be!

We were granted full planning permission for the site in October 2016.  Since then, Claire has been spending her time working on the preparations to get building under way.  The expectation was that we could begin the redevelopment around March 2017.  Realistically, we are likely to start in March 2017.  As of today’s date (7th September 2017) we are still waiting for written confirmation from Scottish Water that we can connect in to the sewer (although we have been given verbal permission).  Following that, we still need sign off from building control.  We would expect tenders for the groundworks and replacement fence to go out late 2017, early 2018.  Fingers crossed the first phase of the development (the erection of the chalet on the east side) will be complete around September 2018.

For anyone interested, here is a link to our design statement, which gives more information on the building, at the bottom of this post.

George and Claire