Garden lighting - Prep work ?

[lucky1313]

Hi Guys

I recently renovated my garden and still arn't sure what I want to put in light wise, I have installed 24 meters of sleepers which has a gap behind it 20cm's wide and over .6 meters deep. To try and pre-empt any future lights I wanted to install some cabling that could be tapped into later without having to redig out the whole 24 meters in one go.

Currently I have some 2" conduit piping going from my house accross and under 1.5meters of patio which then comes out behind the middle mark of the sleepers, so for example I have 12 meters of sleepers running off to the left and 12 meters running off 12 meters to the right.

I'd like to drop the cable in now for any future work but did not want to make it live at this stage, I would off course later pay a qualified electrical engineer to come in and install the lights professionaly but I didn't want him to spend his time redigging a 24meter trench .5meters deep.

Would it be as simple as just running two SWA 1.5cm armoured core cableing in both directions from the house wall through the conduit 12 meters off to the left and then another 12 meters off to the right ?

We only want low wattage lights installed into the garden just behind the sleepers, I'd imagine no more then 20 x 10watts ...it's not a big garden and no extra power points or anything else would be required.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

You need to leave it until you have chosen your lights.

The work is notifiable, and it is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect an electrician to just take responsibility for something you have installed and then covered up.

Installing SWA is not simple - how will you get the cables through the house wall and connected to the circuit supplying the lights, properly terminated?

Few, if any, lights are designed to be supplied by SWA, so how and where will the cables for the lights be joined to it? Underground joints are notoriously difficult to get right. And if you backfill the trench the electrician will have to dig 20 holes big enough to work in.

Find your lights - get an electrician involved, (he may be able to advise on lights anyway), and let him install things as appropriate.

 

[lucky1313]

thanks ban all sheds ( like the name and agree )

I was thinking of these low voltage ones from B&Q

http://www.diy.com/nav/decor/lighti...logen-Spotlight-Kit-Black-20w-4-Pack-12067706

They seem like good value very well built in the hand and come with a 105va transformer, looking at the wiring description on the packaging and the transformer details ( see photo link below ) could I extend any of this cabling from inside the house so it's low voltage all the way out and avoid using high voltage wiring...I currently have 1 meter 2" conduit going from inside the house ( next to a plug ) then 1.5meters under the patio ( through 2" conduit ) to the sleepers...do you think if I extended the supplied low voltage cabling by 5 meters that I would run into issues with loss of power from the transformer ?

//www.diynot.com/network/lucky1313/albums/13139

I wouldn't plug the lights in all the time only when we have guests over, so a couple of times a month

 

[SUNRAY]

thanks ban all sheds ( like the name and agree )

I was thinking of these low voltage ones from B&Q

http://www.diy.com/nav/decor/lighti...logen-Spotlight-Kit-Black-20w-4-Pack-12067706

They seem like good value very well built in the hand and come with a 105va transformer, looking at the wiring description on the packaging and the transformer details ( see photo link below ) could I extend any of this cabling from inside the house so it's low voltage all the way out and avoid using high voltage wiring...I currently have 1 meter 2" conduit going from inside the house ( next to a plug ) then 1.5meters under the patio ( through 2" conduit ) to the sleepers...do you think if I extended the supplied low voltage cabling by 5 meters that I would run into issues with loss of power from the transformer ?

//www.diynot.com/network/lucky1313/albums/13139

I wouldn't plug the lights in all the time only when we have guests over, so a couple of times a month

Its good to see the sheds are selling ELV lights again and not just the solar carp

 

[lucky1313]

hehe not sure they are really, these ones look like they have been there quite a while and there are barely any left, so it looks like a potentially discontinued item...

Anyone know if I can extend the low voltage section of this cabling by an extra 5 meters without causing issues ? I've included all the transformer and wiring pics specification details in my album above

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I was thinking of these low voltage ones

//www.diynot.com/wiki/electrics:voltage-bands

from B&Q

But that's a shed....

could I extend any of this cabling from inside the house so it's low voltage all the way out and avoid using high voltage wiring

It's not meant to be extended - how and where would you join it? How would you ensure that the joint was waterproof if it's going to be outside? And it would make it notifiable....

do you think if I extended the supplied low voltage cabling by 5 meters that I would run into issues with loss of power from the transformer ?

Yes - it's hard to be sure from the photo with the diagram, but it looks as though you've got 3-4m of cable before the first light and you want to extend it to 8-9m. The whole cable would probably need to be 6mm².

In fact, I'd be surprised if the kit as supplied didn't suffer from the last light being noticeably dimmer and a different colour to the first.

I wouldn't plug the lights in all the time only when we have guests over, so a couple of times a month

Irrelevant.