The issue is not running cat6 in a conduit (per se).
Original poster was running cat6 in the same conduit as high voltage residential
Wiring.
That’s scary. The wires in cat6 can carry a surprising amount of current at 120v and wires get chafed or damaged sometimes.
It can be thermal cycling from load, or weather, or a gorilla yanked on them too hard during installation, or whatever.
That can result in 120v or 240v mains voltage at BIGAMPS (most HACR type breakers and residential panels can sustain 10k Amps for a tiny bit) until the wire vaporizes. That’s routine during things like AC compressor startup.
That can make that random ‘should be harmless’ RJ45 plug an immediate danger to anyone nearby. And since the wire won’t vaporize until there is a sufficiently low impedance path to ground, it can stay dangerous for awhile.
Also, different buildings somewhat often have different ground potentials, so running something low voltage and sensitive to voltage spikes and net current imbalance between buildings like Ethernet tends to not go well sometimes. It’s really hard to tell this is happening too, so it sucks to debug.
6 ft away? Probably not a problem if both buildings are grounded decently. Metal conduit helps with that as it acts as a supplemental ground path to reduce any potential differences.
Hundreds of feet? Can be a problem if you do it much.
Original poster was running cat6 in the same conduit as high voltage residential Wiring.
That’s scary. The wires in cat6 can carry a surprising amount of current at 120v and wires get chafed or damaged sometimes.
It can be thermal cycling from load, or weather, or a gorilla yanked on them too hard during installation, or whatever.
That can result in 120v or 240v mains voltage at BIGAMPS (most HACR type breakers and residential panels can sustain 10k Amps for a tiny bit) until the wire vaporizes. That’s routine during things like AC compressor startup.
That can make that random ‘should be harmless’ RJ45 plug an immediate danger to anyone nearby. And since the wire won’t vaporize until there is a sufficiently low impedance path to ground, it can stay dangerous for awhile.
Also, different buildings somewhat often have different ground potentials, so running something low voltage and sensitive to voltage spikes and net current imbalance between buildings like Ethernet tends to not go well sometimes. It’s really hard to tell this is happening too, so it sucks to debug.
6 ft away? Probably not a problem if both buildings are grounded decently. Metal conduit helps with that as it acts as a supplemental ground path to reduce any potential differences.
Hundreds of feet? Can be a problem if you do it much.