Electricians & landscaping advice please?

Snapdragon

Warning lone female with big plans, attempting to landscape the back garden, please be tolerant of any lack of know-how! :eek:

The plan is to put in a patio & rockery with large water feature & some lighting.

I bought some armoured cabling from the electrician who did my conservatory & its been sat waiting for me to get round to this project. My question is regards laying it.

I've been told by one person that I need to dig a two foot deep trench and lay it on sand. A 2nd person says this only applies to cables on a public highway, not my back garden!

I don't want to be breaking any regulations. Can anyone tell me what I should be doing?

I was hoping to get the cable in position, this week while I'm getting the patio footings dug out, and assuming I just leave spare cable at both ends and get an electrician in when the water feature etc is all in place and we just need the power supply. Is this ok? Is there anything else I should be aware of?

Would appreciate any advice. Well maybe not, "get someone else to do it all"! Can't afford that option. I'm not afraid of hard work, so am doing what I can myself and getting people in when I can't.

Thanks
Snapdragon

weekendwarrior

I am not sure exactly of the depth but 600mm sticks in my mind, which is about 2 feet! You should dig the trench, lay the cable,half fill the trench in and then lay warning tape similar to this -

http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?id=10422

Then fill the trench in completely. This is so that anyone digging up your garden will find the warning tape before chopping through the cable with a spade

charlesh

One crucial question: Is your water pump & lights from a set where it says "low voltage" anywhere on the box? Or to put in another way, is there a transformer (heavy black box) as part of the kit? This would indicate that your pump & lights are of the low voltage variety. In this case, certainly for lights at any rate, you do not need to sink the cable at all, although it looks tidier if you do so. I'm not sure your armoured cable will be suitable though... I've recently installed a lighting kit which was low voltage (and I did run it through plastic conduit which is underneath the membrane & gravel) and there is a limit to how many lights and how long the circuit can be. Likewise, the type of cable will have an affect on how long the circuit can be.

The kit I bought was from B&Q and made by Ring. You can buy the lights, cabling, switches and transformer separately but there is clear advice about how they all combine together.

You may want to post your question here: http://www.diynot.com/

Hope this helps.

Snapdragon

I haven't bought the water feature, pump, or lights yet, though I have seen the water feature, and the water pump I was recommended for it, was the titan 3000 litre pump from hozelock and when I google this, it says 40w/240v. The power is needed about 60feet down the garden.

Snapdragon

Have hired a mini-digger for the day, any last minute advice before we start digging?

nelly05

Just good luck i guess.

Let us know how the mini digger goes please - i need to hire one for my back garden - photos would be good

Regards

Mandles

my other half is an electrician.I have listened to him(hes not here to ask at the mo) It really needs to be pretty deep (deep enough so that you are never going to splice it with a shovel etc) and if you ever move i would tell the people where it is laid. Im very impressed with you. Can you come and do mine?!

Snapdragon

Oh boy am I cream-crackered!

Thanks for your advice folks.
The digger was definately worthwhile, but has only done half so far so have had to extend to a second day. The builders skip I hired (8 to 10 tons) was full by 2:30 so had to get them to take it away and bring another.
Wheelbarrowing that lot from the back to the skip at the front was hard-work on my own - everything aches!
Will be doing the trench for the electric cable in the morning. Hopefully that will give my muscles a chance to recover before filling the second skip.

Nelly, the digger is a JCB micro-digger to get thru gate to rear which only has 33" gap. Let me know if you need any info, sorry but wouldn't have a clue where to start re-uploading piccies.