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Need help, recommendations on electrical line
- Thread starter Mike8623
- Start date
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2017
- Messages
- 2,138
Responding in a hypothetical sense only. . . Electrical "advice" given remotely goes from bad to worse. What I will do is describe what I would have done in a similar situation. My back yard is only a hundred or so feet deep. It's 70 odd feet from the shop to the barn. My feed is arial, feeding a pretty heavy load.
First of all, I don't like the looks of your exterior plug. It needs a watertight enclosure with a watertight cover. And with something (anything) plugged into it continuously, a protective hood. And mounted high enough that blown snow won't reach it. It doesn't snow here, but rains enough to make up for it. And blows, seldom falling straight down. Such a hood is available at HD and Lowe's fairly inexpensively.
If I were installing a light, low voltage device remotely I would run a "lawn lighting" circuit the whole distance from the house or shop or whatever. That would keep the line voltage inside, protected from all but a severe hurricane or tornado. Home Depot and Lowe's both carry a direct burial 2 conductor cable that is made specifically for what you are doing. Rolls up to 500 ft. and shorter lengths. Splices can be made, but they should be well made and waterproofed.
I believe it is AWG14 stranded, may be smaller, though for the distance I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than AWG16. You can use THHN single strand, (doubled) but any cable should be buried at least a foot or two. THHN is waterproof, TFFN is not. Nor many of the other insulations. I use THHN for just about everything. BTW, Romex is THHN but by the roll stranded costs less.
If the camera has its' own power supply, use it. If it doesn't, just about any "wall wart" whose output matches the load will work. Just watch polarity. . . A switching supply would be preferable, but isn't really necessary. And costs considerablely more(5-20X) than a "big blue box" supply. Voltage will vary withcheap budget supplies. Read the nameplate (cast near the power plug) of the camera and stay with that range, 6, 9, 12, whatever. At low load, they read a little high but usually it's not a problem.
Twelve volts puts you below the NEC (24V to ground) but does not absolve you of decent workmanship. If you do it right the first time, you won't need to do it over. For 40+ years here. . . Bury the wire deep and lay a tracer strip about halfway to the surface. You never know when Rover might bury a dead squirrel. Deep. . .
That's how I would approach the problem, as a steel mill electrician. It's your project so however you do the solution just remember that poor workmanship will come back to bite, at the most inconvient time.
.
First of all, I don't like the looks of your exterior plug. It needs a watertight enclosure with a watertight cover. And with something (anything) plugged into it continuously, a protective hood. And mounted high enough that blown snow won't reach it. It doesn't snow here, but rains enough to make up for it. And blows, seldom falling straight down. Such a hood is available at HD and Lowe's fairly inexpensively.
If I were installing a light, low voltage device remotely I would run a "lawn lighting" circuit the whole distance from the house or shop or whatever. That would keep the line voltage inside, protected from all but a severe hurricane or tornado. Home Depot and Lowe's both carry a direct burial 2 conductor cable that is made specifically for what you are doing. Rolls up to 500 ft. and shorter lengths. Splices can be made, but they should be well made and waterproofed.
I believe it is AWG14 stranded, may be smaller, though for the distance I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than AWG16. You can use THHN single strand, (doubled) but any cable should be buried at least a foot or two. THHN is waterproof, TFFN is not. Nor many of the other insulations. I use THHN for just about everything. BTW, Romex is THHN but by the roll stranded costs less.
If the camera has its' own power supply, use it. If it doesn't, just about any "wall wart" whose output matches the load will work. Just watch polarity. . . A switching supply would be preferable, but isn't really necessary. And costs considerablely more(5-20X) than a "big blue box" supply. Voltage will vary with
Twelve volts puts you below the NEC (24V to ground) but does not absolve you of decent workmanship. If you do it right the first time, you won't need to do it over. For 40+ years here. . . Bury the wire deep and lay a tracer strip about halfway to the surface. You never know when Rover might bury a dead squirrel. Deep. . .
That's how I would approach the problem, as a steel mill electrician. It's your project so however you do the solution just remember that poor workmanship will come back to bite, at the most inconvient time.
.
My experience is with automotive electrical systems. 12v, use solder and heat shrink tube, the kind with the glue inside. We had low voltage lights around the house, previous owner, that used wire nuts to splice with. All the connections were junk and failed after a couple of years. I’m assuming 12v just doesn’t have the umph to keep the connection live, where 110ac would arc and clean and weld the joint. Keep the water out and you have a shot.
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2017
- Messages
- 743
I'd think of using telephone-style 48V connecting wiring, A 48VDC converter at the AC-plug end, in
a weatherproof enclosure, they aren't terribly expensive- Outdoor electric box
Then at the camera end, you just need a downconverter that accepts 48V and massages it
to charge-the-battery input specifications. Whatever wire you already have installed, will probably work fine.
Regular old telephone wiring includes burial-grade options, or (if you don't mind installing a ground system)
you could try poles-and-wires like Ma Bell used to do.
18ga wire is overkill; your AC adapter is good for 800 mA if I read the label correctly,
so 200 feet of cable (about 2.5 ohms) delivers about 10V to the end; if you use 48V
to drive 200 ft of 24ga telephone wire, it gets about 10 ohms, but the same 10W output
as the other power adapter only needs 200 mA, so you lose the same circa 2V in
transmission. That's with ONE 24 ga pair. The downconverter from 48V to 12V will
usually tolerate 36-72V input range.
Ok folks, got all my stuff to fix the line to my cam. Just waiting for a nice day to reinstall everything. I really appreciate all of you helping me along.....soooooo thanks so much to each of you who offered your opinions....such a great site.