Running DC power across a garden

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Running DC power across a garden

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raytaylor

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#3055627 27-Mar-2023 22:25

- Run POE. Or at least run three cat5e cables. One for data, one for positive and one for negative. Cat6 if you have the space as the wires are slightly thicker.

- Use lengths of straight conduit. Flexihose is incredibly expensive and you need the outdoor solar UV rated stuff - not the indoor plain stuff. If you use the straight lengths of conduit then you can make large wide sweeping bends in your trench and it will bend round.

- Bunnings have cheap electrical fittings.

- If you want to buy something at Ideal Electrical, send me a PM and I'll let you know how to use our customer cash account for a trade pricing discount. We send price-sensitive handyman customers into our local branch for cable when they want to do it themselves. But the discounts can be accessed nationwide. You do need to pay in the store before taking the items though.

- Many security systems, including the cheap-mid tier ones, now have a 4 or 8 port POE switch on the back of the DVR so you just plug the camera directly into it. It runs a separate network for the cameras vs the LAN port which you plug into your home network. This means you just run a single cat5e/6 cable up to 100m directly to the camera. No extra fiddly wiring required other than just crimping the plugs on.

- If you really want to go with flexiduct, stretch it out as straight as possible with two people pulling on both ends. One end is sealed and goes into a vacuum cleaner. The other end someone inserts a 10x10cm square of old plastic supermarket shopping bag tied to some fishing nylon and it will suck through in about 5 seconds if the pipe is straight.
Once the nylon is through, a third person uses it to pull though the data cables while the 1st and 2nd people pull and continue to keep tension on the flexiduct so it is as straight as possible.

- Marley has a range of junction boxes - you will want the 25mm duct and connectors. If you go with the straight pipe then its super easy to tap in to in the future. Just dig down to it, cut it with a pvc pipe cutter, use the existing cables as pull wires and insert a T junction box.

Ideal electrical have a nice stand in each of their branches with all the 25mm marley fittings that go with the straight conduit or flexiduct. You will instantly understand what to do once you are standing in front of the marley display - it will all make sense.

Ray Taylor

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raytaylor

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#3055628 27-Mar-2023 22:28

neb: Casa de Cowboy did, they just threw TPS cable across the ground and scraped soil over it, I don't know how much of that stuff we've pulled up as we've discovered it while planting or digging somewhere.

If your in hawkes bay and know where the end of a cable is i am happy to come out with my underground cable locator and find where it goes. Its a bit of a hobby.

Ray Taylor

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neb

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#3056138 29-Mar-2023 11:09

raytaylor:
If your in hawkes bay and know where the end of a cable is i am happy to come out with my underground cable locator and find where it goes. Its a bit of a hobby.

Oh, thanks for the offer but we're in Orkland, and during the rebuild disconnected all the random wiring under/outside the house that the previous owners had added. There's still at least one, and possibly two, runs of TPS cable across the garden but it's been safely disconnected and cut back until it went under a retaining wall or something similar where it wasn't worth trying to dig more of it out.

Since one of the retaining walls, which isn't actually a real retaining wall but more a clay bank with rotting half-rounds stapled to it, will need to be replaced in the near future I expect we'll get that lot pulled up at some point when it's replaced with a wall that actually retains something.

neb

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#3056150 29-Mar-2023 11:22

raytaylor:
...

Thanks! Yep, already doing most of that, Bunnings have all the 25mm solid conduit that's needed with "Deta" on it rather than "Marley" so it's around one-fifth the price. By not trying to run it via the most direct route I can take it in a straight line to the boundary fence and then down that which saves a lot of digging and chopping through roots even if there's several more corners/bends involved. Since it's going down an area that's almost permanently shaded it won't get much UV exposure, and for the short sunlight-exposed runs it'll be buried. I've got a 25mm bending spring on order from Aliexpress which is cheaper than the two pieces of 45-degree-bend conduit that I can only get from Marley so I've got a fair bit of flexibility in terms of adding custom angles to the conduit.

I'm also planning to assemble it in segments, so instead of trying to draw the cable through the entire 20-25m length of conduit with bends at various locations I'll assemble it in segments and draw it through to the next join or corner, plastic-weld on the next segment, and repeat, that means the longest run I need to get it all through is a 4m length.

MikeAqua

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#3056155 29-Mar-2023 11:27

If the conduit is simply for some physical protection, can you use the split kind? It would be much easier to get the wire inside the conduit.

Or you can get cable designed for low voltage AC and direct burial (e.g. garden lighting cable). An issue with DC over a 40m run, may be voltage drop.

Personally I'd drop the midpoint junction box. The fewer connections the better.

If it was me I'd be using 24v AC and converting to 12v Dc near to the camera

AC/DC - DC Converter 24 - 12VDC 1A | Jaycar Electronics New Zealand

Mike

neb

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#3056157 29-Mar-2023 11:31

MikeAqua:
Personally I'd drop the midpoint junction box. The fewer connections the better.

It won't be a connection, it'll be a future tap point, I'll coil up some extra cable in there before continuing the run so if in the future there's a need to run a branch line I don't need to run a second lot of conduit/cable.

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