Resistance test on cores of buried cable (Ed.)

[forumscout]

Okay, so here is my situation. I am pulling a 20 amp circuit from my garage, 150' to pillars at the end of my driveway. A buddy had 4 runs of 150' of 8 gauge wire he had pulled from underground, because he needed more amperage to his workshop. Like an idiot, because I was looking at today's problem, not tomorrow's, I ran 1.25" PVC for the run, 24" underground (per code here), pulled three wires through, and buried it. Unfortunately, work (real job) interfered, and it was 2 weeks before I could get back to the project and run my connections. Because I am slow and an amateur, it didn't occur to me to check continuity on my lines until this morning. Still haven't attached any of the 3 wires that are underground, but used 4th wire connected to each in sequence to check resistance. Each wire showed ~ 0.1 ohm resistance over the full run (300') which should be about right, as I should be getting 0.18 ohms resistance for this length of 8 gauge. The problem is that I accidentally tested known good to one of the unconnected wires, and instead of OL (open line), my ohm meter showed 2 M ohms resistance... from my reading and very basic university level physics, I get that I may show some resistance because of magnetic induction in the unconnected wire, but, before I connect these wire to the home power, I wanted to ask some experts if this is indicative of a short underground, or if this is perfectly normal.

In order to anticipate the info you may need, I am using a 400a 600V Kobalt DT-9180A digital multi-meter and it is multi-strand copper wire 8 gauge, run through 1.25" PVC. Any other info you may need to help me out, let me know. As of now, I still haven't attached either end of the wires, either to the house power or to a plug at the gate pillar.

Best regards,
Dan

 

[forumscout]

Ooops, while to me it is self-evident (simply because I grew up with it) I suppose I should mention that this is a 110V line, not 220/240... not sure if this needed saying or if it is relevant at this time, but wanted to give all data I could think of.