1/2" Poly-Pipe as conduit?

Adam - Crossfire,

Welcome to the forum!

I have a roll of that poly pipe waiting to be used to run a cable to a cam that will be mounted on a post above some shrubs. The poly pipe will be used to protect the cable on the 20ft run from the corner of the garage, under a path, up a rock wall, and for 10ft under the laurels & shrubs.

No comments yet on how well it works....

For your conduit up trees, see the posts by caligirl, comments on tree swaying, versus setting posts, etc.

Fastb
 
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Most of my cameras are mounted in trees, between 4 and 12 feet off the ground. I learned quickly that they have to be on the main trunk to minimize the swaying. Even with a 1' diameter trunk there's swaying with the high winds. The swaying totally kills any usefulness of motion detection. Tripwire works pretty good with very few false positives due to sway. Most of my underground runs are in rigid PVC. I have a 100' run of 1 inch poly where I needed to make a bunch of gentle curves. The final runs to the trees are in something similar to the 1/2 inch poly.
it's generally called "funny pipe", used to connect sprinklers to a larger feed pipe. There are different wall thicknesses available. I'm using a fairly thick walled version that's a lot stronger than the poly pipe. Look up "funny pipe" on Home Depot for a few examples.

We have juniper trees, and the larger ones have mostly hollow trunks. I've run the funny pipe with wire up the inside of several of them, making the wire total unexposed from where it exits the foundation wall underground to where it exits the tree trunk 8 to 12 feet above ground. Getting underground access to the tree trunk and through obstructed areas can take a lot of time and tools. I spent several days on a couple of them. Another issue is how much the camera stands out. I've painted mine and try to have them mounted so they hug the trunk as close as possible. Every tree mount turns out to be a custom job.
 
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You can also get direct burial rated Cat6 cable and skip the conduit if you like.
( of course there then are issues if someone starts to dig on that spot again and hits the cable. )
 
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