Burned out electric service line

Sounds like you nicked the line with a shovel, to me.

Get some conduit and run a new feed to the barn yourself. Just leave the conduit on the ground. It's a temporary fix, and you probably won't be bothered about the code violation if it's in conduit.

CJ

Karl Townsend wrote:

I ran my underground lines to the shop thru a length of that knarley black plastic waterline. If there becomes a problem I should be able to pull the wires back out without digging.

You have left out a whole bunch of information here. Was the line replaced when it previously "burned out" or merely repaired? The age of the cable alone could make failures easy to explain. Did your cable failures happen in the winter (frost) or summer (water or lightning)? Was there any other digging going on around the cables? Did you have an unusually cold winter recently that could have made the frost go deep?

In any case, you should consider installing conduit for both your power and communications circuits. When you make that trench, think of everything; water, air, gas, communications, spare conduits, etc. etc. etc. Trenches are expensive, pvc is cheap.

Vaughn

20 year old cable, digging nearby, repairs to the cable, heavier frost this year in MN than usual, cable goes under a driveway that will have more frost than the ground on either side, and you ask why it is going bad?? LOL! You got a nick or flex, the insulation got weak and burnout time. You can actually have a flaw in the isulation for years, you get a tiny current leak that does not bother you unless you have that line on a GFI. After a while the current gets bigger, you start getting heating, insulation degrades, and you get a nice burn spot.

I helped a friend with a 200' run to the barn on a small hobby farm. 10-3wg UF cable to run the pump and lights. Horses cut an

18" deep trench near the barn door and the service entrence, gophers got the line about 30' away. The double fix caused a lot of extra aggrevation, fixed one and it still didn't work.

Replace it with some extra large PVC pipe or conduit, bury it deep (code is 18" or 24" depending on the line, I'd suggest 36". Bury a spare for phone and data next to it once you dig the line.

You can run the l> For the third time in six months, the underground electric line between the

Now that you've had repeated failures by doning the job wrong, do it the right way this time. Instead of burying the cable in the ground and letting the rocks and so forth work away at it and erode the insulation, put in a piece of pipe and run the cable through that. By the time that the pipe gets eroded, you will be long passed on and not worried about such things. Use the large formed corners that conduit type pipe has rather than elbows and so forth and it will be easy to pull through.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works every time it is tried!

Plenty of time to shop around for a backhoe (or fix up the one you have) and get a good deal on a pile of 2" to 4" PVC Schedule 40 Conduit, and the sweep ells you need at both ends. Go way big, and put in a few extra 2" runs for phone, data, CATV, etc. - someday you may want to feed a second barn from the first. Pipe is a whole lot cheaper than the time it takes to bury it properly.

Go at least 24" deep, or as called for by local codes. And call for an underground utility lookup three days to a week before you touch a shovel to the dirt - if you hit an unmarked utility line it's your (very expensive) problem - but if you call for a lookup and they mis-mark the lines, you don't have to pay if something gets cut.

If it's going over 250', pick up a handhole for a pulling point at the middle of the run (two if you are running the communications pipes like you should, they can share a large one but Power needs to be separate). And paint up a couple pressure-treated 4X4 'witness posts' to mark the pullbox location, so you don't crush it with a tractor.

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Our code requires a burried line to be installed as follows: Conductors run in 3" rigid PVC conduit. Bury in a trench with 18" depth (pedestrian traffic only) or 24" under roadways. Depth is measured to *top of conduit*. In rocky soil, there should be a 3" thick layer of sand below and above the conduit. A 2x6 plank should be placed on top of the conduit and sand.

Your code may differ but the above is sure a good arrangement.

Ted

Pressure treated!!

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Do you have an RCB between the meter and the line? If not, Why not?

Mark Rand (in the UK, so different codes) RTFM

Heck, if you want to do it right, put the pipe in the trench and cover with 6" of sand. Then call up the local ready-mix yard and have them bring out a truckload or two of "one-sack sand slurry" with red coloring added, enough to pour it 6" to a foot thick over the conduits

- instant sandstone ledge, guaranteed backhoe resistant.

In other words, if the backhoe operator is stupid enough to hit that layer of hard red slurry (a sign that's hard to miss) and keeps on digging through it to hit the pipes, he's shown enough gross negligence to pay to fix it...

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when I was a kid my father and I ran direct burial wires between the meter pole and our workshop. He placed hedge posts on top of the direct buries wires. 25 years later my brother is digging and wonders what the hell hedge posts are doing in the ground and it dawns on him why they were there. Saved the wires and they are still working

30 years later.

chuck

Karl didn't say what caused the problem in the first place. We lost the line to the well last year because the neighbor we shared the well with nicked it with a shovel. He had to replace the valve on the pipe going to his house.

However, in Central Oregon, we have a real problem with pocket gophers chewing the wire insulation. Only really deep burial, hard in lava rock, or metal conduit will deter them. They go right through plastic conduit.

So, Karl. How deep was the wire buried and what did the break look like when dug up?

Paul in Redmond, Oregon

My folks next door neighbor put in a fence. Every posthole up came some shreaded wire. Every single hole hit their phone line.

Joel. phx

Yep, still there,... wonder if it runs to that post there yander.