Trenching direct bury wire for streetside post lamp

Wires, breakers, outlets, switches - be careful
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Trenching direct bury wire for streetside post lamp

Post by kevm14 »

One of the last steps (maybe THE last) before I can actually have the driveway done, is to run this wire under my driveway. I bought 250 feet of exterior/direct bury wire. Right now it is just coiled and stowed in my front yard. The immediate goal was to get it ~2 feet under the driveway, so no chance of the driveway job disturbing the wire. I estimated the total length with a tape measure a few weeks ago and I came to 170 feet or so. 250 should buy me enough slack even if I take a circuitous route back to the junction point, which is the post lamp next to my front steps.

Amazingly, I dug right where the old wire was. I had to swap over to the trenching bucket on the excavator, which took me probably 15 minutes to figure out.
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It's actually deeper than 2 feet in sections, which is fine.
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The coiled end that I need to trench and bury (manually).
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I ended up with extra dirt since the driveway was pretty compacted over the years. This is more than adequate considering I expect to have a driveway done soon.
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