ᐅ Preparing Garden Lighting and Electrical Supply

Created on: 13 Nov 2022 15:06
D
DASI90
Hello everyone,

Besides irrigation, we are currently focusing on electrical work and lighting in the garden. The outdoor lighting on the house itself has already been planned. We are quite well set up there. Therefore, we don’t want to overdo it in the rest of the garden. However, we want to keep the option open to add accent lighting in certain areas, such as flower beds or on standard trees or shrubs. At the moment, we still need to add around 50 cm (20 inches) of soil. This is a good time to lay the empty conduits underground. These have not been finalized yet. Still, I should create the basic structure soon so we have electricity available at the possible points. What is the best way to plan this, how should the cables branch out, where do the endpoints need to be, and especially in what form, so I remain flexible and it will be manageable to work on later? Our electrician is a good man but rather pragmatic and not the best for discussing such plans extensively in advance.

To avoid unnecessary work, I want to at least lay the empty conduits and install the junction boxes. He will then check and complete the final connections.

We have one cable in front of the house with a 13 mm (0.5 inch) cross-section and 5 cores, and another behind the house with a 10 mm (0.4 inch) cross-section and 3 cores. The latter is intended exclusively for 3 to 6 LED lamps in the garden, which can also be connected together. The cable in front of the house should be branched right in front of the house to provide power for a courtyard gate. But this is only preparation. Otherwise, power should run through an empty conduit over 50 m (164 feet) to the back and supply the pool equipment separately. According to the pool builder, the total power consumption when everything runs together is 3.2 kW. Is all of this okay so far? Do you have any recommended resources to at least estimate whether the power and distance are feasible, etc.? Also, how should the branching points or endpoints for the future devices be designed?
DASI901 Dec 2022 22:39
Okay. So, that means it can also tolerate some soil? Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an instruction manual for it. Therefore, I didn’t know if it can be buried as well.
i_b_n_a_n1 Dec 2022 23:17
I would like to point out once again in the lighting design that poor lighting planning can mean certain death for many insects.

However, there are many guidelines on how to make outdoor lighting significantly more insect-friendly.