Installation of fibre optic cabling at Stoke Newington is nearing completion, with two runs now installed in a tunnel running 5km from Stoke Newington Reservoir.

This new tunnel is part of a £90m improvement scheme for the Thames Water Ring Main and is designed to carry potable water from the reservoir to the New River Head pumping station in Finsbury. FSD were engaged by contractor Morgan Est.

We pulled two 36 core fibre cables, each of which are encapsulated in an individual 27mm OD duct; these are communication cables, and will be patched into the existing TWUL communications systems.

The ducts that hold the fibre optics are a continuous length, thus allowing the installation within the tunnel liner. The ducts are clipped to the inside of the concrete tunnel at a pitch of 1.5 meters and there are 4000 clips, which were bespoke-made for the project and installed into pre-drilled holes (excluding the steel liner in the end sections).

The two ducts were installed in record time with the whole install, including the clipping of the ducts, taking just 8 days.

The exercise of running them up the shafts is still to be carried out.