Burying landscape lighting wiring

drkelly

drkelly

Dipstick who put two vehicles on jack stands
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Location
Oak Ridge/Stokesdale, NC
We just got our driveway paved, and the wife is wanting to install some landscape lighting. If you are not familiar with this stuff, it just runs on 12v, so doesn't need to be buried 36" deep. I will need to run the wiring across my lawn in two different places. The first stretch is about 30 feet. the second stretch is about 50 feet. I want to bury it deep enough (4" minimum) so I don't cut it with my aerator. Other than digging a trench with a shovel, anybody have any recommendations?

I have thought about renting a trencher like one of these:
http://www.sunbeltrentals.com/equipment/category.aspx?id=s527


Thanks,
Danny
 
Ya id rent the tool. I watched them rerun the cable line for a neighbor a few years back and it did it fast and clean. Hardly tell it had been done 2 days later. I guess you could do it with an edging tool, sorta like a flat shovel/blade but that would take a long while..

maybe rig up something on a yard tractor also ?
 
mbalbritton said:
solar lights FTW!.... other than that, I got nuthin'
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She bought about two dozen of them last summer, but that wasn't good enough, LOL.
 
rent a trencher for sure for 80'

If it is a short distance an axe, maul or mattock works quickly...but youd hate yourself after 80'..(not that I have hand trenched much farther in my grunt days)
 
I'd get two people, water the lawn pretty heavily so the soil is soft, grab a flat shovel, and have one person dig while the other stuffs wire. Stomp the shovel into the ground, push it forward, pull it out and have the person on the ground stuff the wire down in the crevice with a plastic trowel or something to make sure it goes all the way down. That way you don't have to actually remove the soil or re-plant the grass. It would only work on nice soil though. I think you could knock it out pretty quickly with this method.

That would probably put you right at the 4" mark. How difficult would it be to avoid a wire with your aerator if you know exactly where it is though?
 
Fart said:
I'd get two people, water the lawn pretty heavily so the soil is soft, grab a flat shovel, and have one person dig while the other stuffs wire. Stomp the shovel into the ground, push it forward, pull it out and have the person on the ground stuff the wire down in the crevice with a plastic trowel or something to make sure it goes all the way down. That way you don't have to actually remove the soil or re-plant the grass. It would only work on nice soil though. I think you could knock it out pretty quickly with this method.

That would probably put you right at the 4" mark. How difficult would it be to avoid a wire with your aerator if you know exactly where it is though?
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This. Don't dig a trench for one wire/cable.
 
13bullets said:
This. Don't dig a trench for one wire/cable.
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that's what I was thinking, but that is a long-ass way to do by hand.

I've used pipe pullers for sprinkler pipe, they still tear up the ground a little. If you hit a rock, you gotta hand dig the rock out, reset the pipe it makes a mess. Doing it with a machine still aint easy. And I'm not sure if you can pull the little 12V wire, might need a trencher.

Best course of action would be to convince her you don't need any more lights :lol:
 
RenegadeT said:
Best course of action would be to convince her you don't need any more lights :lol:
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LOL, too late for that, we already dropped about $400 I think it was on the stuff.
 
I got a gas powered edger...lower the blade all the way down and let it rip. Let me know if ya want to give it a try. We put in a large invisible fence with it a a buddies house.
 
that's what I was thinking, but that is a long-ass way to do by hand.
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Not really IMO. I did a ~40' run of coax and #4 copper wire against my house's foundation just a few weeks ago. The total time to dig a trench about 3" deep, stuff the wires in there, and fill in the trench was less than an hour and that was working 100% by myself. You could move pretty fast if you could start your trench with the shovel and have someone 10 minutes behind you stuffing the wire into the ground. You have to consider that it takes an hour just to hook up your trailer, go rent a trencher, get it home, and get the thing cranked. You really don't know until you start doing it I guess, but I think it's worth a try.

^ That's a good idea too.
 
got any scrap laying around? Build a manual sod cutter ( http://www.step-n-edge.com/ ) type thingy. Get some sheet the same width as the wire with two sides coming down the same width. (Think a channel for the wire to fit into). Fix the spool of wire to the handle and go to town.
 
I decided to try the flat shovel method, and picked one up at Northern Tool yesterday. The 50 foot long stretch of lawn is new dirt about 4-8" thick that was put down a little over a year ago, so it should be pretty easy to dig a shovel into. The 30 foot long stretch is establish old dirt, so I'll try and wait till after a good rain before doing that section. Thanks for the replies guys.
 
drkelly said:
I decided to try the flat shovel method, and picked one up at Northern Tool yesterday. The 50 foot long stretch of lawn is new dirt about 4-8" thick that was put down a little over a year ago, so it should be pretty easy to dig a shovel into. The 30 foot long stretch is establish old dirt, so I'll try and wait till after a good rain before doing that section. Thanks for the replies guys.
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When you get tired of digging give me a shout. A new blade for the edger is about $9.
 
BIGWOODY said:
When you get tired of digging give me a shout. A new blade for the edger is about $9.
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You think it can cut deep enough? I'm guess the tines on my Aerator are about 3-4" long.
 
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