How to Lay Electrical Cable Underground | This Old House
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- Heath Eastman lays cable underground at the Cape Ann house.
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The Cape Ann homeowners don’t want to see electric cables coming across their back yard. Kevin O'Connor helps Heath Eastman lay cable in a trench out back.
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How to Lay Electrical Cable Underground | This Old House
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Finally some cost of a project. Thanks TOH !
All they gave was the cost of the copper. Something you could find online. Still useless....
They spent a lot of money. An overhead is less expensive, using aluminum is also less expensive by about 1/2 vs copper.
DIY’ing (parts of) a project reduces the price by a tenfold. Currently i have to redo my sewer. A company wanted multiple thousands of $ for it. I went to the hardware market and bought 70$ of sewer pipes, some elbow grease... job almost done. Though that may not apply to all projects. I guess sewer companies can ask a ton of money because no one wants to DIY with shitpipes.
Sharky's ... would have been nice if they included a day for the machine ($1,000) cost of conduit ($300) a day for the electricians ($1600) and how many yards of sand? (10 yards at $30 each?) We can do the math but those factors will vary quite a bit across the country.
@@RadDadisRad This is also clearly a renovation being paid for by people who have the guap to spend.
remember to call your city or power company before to you do this, they might want to see the trench before you fill it back in. nothing worse that doing it twice, I know.
Power company will tell you what size conduit to run.. I seen people pay to have a separate meter for a sign. That only needed 10 amps. So they ran a 1/2" and 12" wire.... They made them run 4" Rigged regardless of how many amps it used.....
Most places require an inspection, which a permit must be pulled by a competent person aka a master electrician.
@@MasterChief-sl9ro
"They made them run 4" Rigged regardless of how many amps it used"
That's a safety specification to insure that the wire does not end up grounding and sending 120 volts up the ground and into someone foot or hand as they pass over.
Remember, it's always better to be over engineered than being what you think is good enough.
Back in the 40's or 50's a bridge collapsed and killed people as a result of the engineer taking the "that's good enough" approach with newer technology. A bridge similar to the one that collapsed, is still in use today as a result of the abundance of caution by it's engineer and older technology. It makes me wonder why people are always speeking down the "latest and greatest craze" lane.
@@scotttovey Had nothing to do with it...I asked the Utility Company..
Simple Answer...We don't care if it draws1 amp.. It ties into the distribution side of that Transformer. It will be in 4" rigged... Then to the Meter. Then to the Service panel.
And how the hell would 120 volts get into someones foot. In a 24" deep trench..In Conduit. As the service is Bonded and Grounded at the Service panel. Any short to ground or phase to phase would trip the over current protect ie the Breaker....As the way a short is cleared. It looks for the easiest path back to the source. ie The Transformer feeding it...
And yes I have an Electrical Engineering degree..
@@MasterChief-sl9ro
I'm not talking about what happens inside the building but what can happen outside the building if the wire in the ground shorts.
Years ago I heard stories where people walking down the sidewalk in certain cities would get shocked as a result of the ground wire deteriorating. The current would migrate to nearby hydrants or metal poles so all one needed to do was just happen to touch the hot device.
This is what those specifications are designed to protect against.
The classes you took for your electrical engineering degree obviously left out pertinent information necessary for a complete understanding of what electricity can and will do under certain circumstances.
Not that electricity has any choice in the matter.
Great video, now I’m ready to hit the Home Depot and try doing this at my place tomorrow. Tired of cramming all those pennies in the fuse box.
If your air conditioner keeps blowing fuses just wrap some wire around the right size of tree stick and jam it in where the fuses go. Problem solved! 😏
100 to 400 !! That a big change !!
Sweet! Greenlee heat box to bend the pipe and a Greenlee Tugger. This electrician uses quality tools !!
That is standard equipment for electrical contractor!
Роберт Фиэлдьс RRFIELDS65 not always....
Excellent work, good afternoon from Mexico City !!!
I’m loving that JLG boom lift in the background. Shippensburg PA folks where ya at?
1:48 Kevin trying to help 😆
How do you ground the house with underground electricity?
No expansion fitting coming out of the ground?
I would like to know if builders are putting underground cables in the new houses in Decatur GA,and if IT'S safer .
What happened to Scott Caron the master electrician?
The only thing they didn't cover (that I can see) is lack of a slip joint on the conduit for frost, unless this was shot in the south where it's not required.
And wasn't the conduit above grade to the meter box suppose to be sch 80, not 40 ?
@@duckthis17 Well, it should be, but I can't always tell from a video and my memory doesn't go back 3 years.
dang This Old House is big money pulling in copper. Most customers go for Aluminum feeders paralleled
Not even paralleled and direct bury instead of conduit.
I wouldn’t put anything in the ground with being in pipe. I’ve had to find/repair direct bury aluminum feeders that got damaged by a little rock rubbed a hole into the insulation. Happened twice, same house several months apart.
@@MrSleepProductionsInc Hmm, do I understand in that instance the cable wasn't armoured?
You doing 400 amp service, that copper wire is the way to go for no voltage drop and heat sinkage!
As an electrician, I have always used copper when I can. It’s a better job.
Personally, I would have lubed up those cables with some polymer before pulling. It greatly reduces stresses, and avoids issues.
They have this coating on them called Superslick that works a treat. But I would have too!
I’ve only been on one job where that tugger acted like it was under load. I’ve seen tuggers pull whole runs of pipe down, pull forklifts over. Those things have some pulling power!
If we can't make 500mm down to the conduit top - we can put the conduit into concrete and use SWA.
Hi from London
What size wire were you all pulling
You know it's two years ago when the copper was ONLY about 24 hundred
#1
Hello from chihuahua mexico, thank you for the video, GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.
I just upgraded my latest rental property from 100 amp to 200 amp. I also moved it from overhead to underground. Not sure how it's done in other states, but in northern Utah if I would have left it feeding overhead into the home the cost would have been nothing from the electric company. However, since I went underground I was charged about $1800.00 for the upgrade; that's just to the electric company. Note that I had to bury 3" conduit in the ground at my expense and stub it to within 6" of the pole. The inspection is the same as you heard in the video.
Sounds about right.
Correct. The utility company is required to feed the premises with least expensive means. Overhead will always be cheaper. If you go overhead you’re only required to have a meter socket a mast with weather head and 2’-3’ of wire hanging out of the weather head.
Wow this video was short
400amps is a lot of power for a residential
If a home is got over 3000 square feet it's not much.
If you heat with electric or you got EV charger...
I once watched Comcast run a business line to our server room... took about 10 guys pulling. Looked like tug o war..
Question for any knowledgable people out there. Any idea if there is a service interruption during this process and how long the customers may be without power?
There most likely was a service interruption on the order of a couple days. At a guess, the power utility probably disconnected the house before work started to change over the feeder, then won't turn it back on until a city inspector signs off on the completed job
That has to be some house that needs a 400 amp service.
Yep, plus add a couple electric/electrified cars and it’ll def be necessary.
S N Yep dual electrical cars, A/C, hot water heater, oven, etc. 400 amp service will be more common going forward.
That house has probably 3 - 5 ton A/C Heat pump units as big as it looks!
That house looked like it had 7,000 sq...
400 amp service is going to start being the standard eventually. The amount of circuits a house requires now is becoming more and more, making a 400 amp service necessary.
Need help leveling my house all I got is a crawl space
That pipe is schedule 80 not 40.
What's in that house that draws 400A???
Too short the video :(
Is the wire in the ground or underneath the ground I’m confused
Under the ground in a pipe they layed down. Sorry for the year wait for your question lmao
Interesting method. Am curious as to why three separate conductors pulled through an unarmoured conduit. Seems a bit of overkill unless your code demands that method rather than using "proper" armoured cable suitable for burying in ground.
On the moorings I use the owner simply dug a trench and buried around half mile of armoured cable to an onsite distro. Armoured cables to the individual stanchions for boats.
The yard sparky made the connections to underground box for connection to supply. Entire onsite Installation was signed off by independent contractor.
Electrical supply company further tested the circuits for their records and then connected their incomer from external transformer to yard circuits.
Owner paid around £7000 for cable, plus distro kit. Labour by boat yard staff on his payroll.
Should add incomer was 3 phase and split in distro.
Standard procedure in North America, two hots and a neutral.
@@MrSleepProductionsInc Two hots and a neutral. How do you handle earth or ground?
@@t1n4444 : ground rod and service plumbing!
@@rrfields65 We can't use service pipes for earth return anymore on newer properties as service pipes are all plastic. (Blue for water, yellow for gas for easy ID in a trench, say.)
Hence our use of PME ( Protective Multiple Earth).
Earth (via ground spike at property) is bonded to neutral to ensure low resistance and high current for tripping isolators.
Ross Kneebone - not to interesting, a very common practice in the states, overseas maybe not
Consumer's energy in michigan buried power line for 6$ a foot.
No lube???
That's what she said.
Just jam it in there!
Since when did they start making SCH 40 in grey?
um, the white is for potable (cold) water, green is for sewage water, and grey is for electrical? i think the sch is just describing the thickness of the wall, but i could be wrong on both parts, its not my job to know, thats why i follow toh
Electrical and plumbing pvc is grey, DB2 conduit is dark grey
@@Nick-bh1fy nope. Plumbing pvc is white
JCtechwizard seen plenty of grey plumbing pvc where I work in Canada at least 🤷♂️
Pulled copper. Very good. Mostbsparkys would have pulled Al through.
Most sparkies don’t run service wire. It’s usually done by the power company
@@electricaf365 where I live .from the point of connection
The home owner is responsible for this. They hire sparky companies for this. Other places might differ. Just the way it is here.
@@zerosparky9510 what do you mean by point of connection?
@@electricaf365 say from the meter up to the roof line . The wiring out the weather head. Is the connections done. Or from a underground splice box close to a pole . The connections from that point to the house .the home owner is responsible here in KY.
Out at my mom and dad's house. Outside of Durango. Colo. They had a house built many years ago. The Utility company pulled the wiring from the pole under ground to the meter at the house. Here the utility company has you do it to the splice box at the pole if underground.
Dunno why they used copper wire for something like that. Aluminum is better for services and cheaper
I'm so glad I'm not making that wire anymore. Pain in the butt to get good wire with crap equipment.
$2400. Must be nice 10 months ago😂. It's probably $8000 by now.
Since 2020, copper has only gone up ~80% in price. So maybe $4,000 now. Everyone is so overly dramatic with inflation complaints. Be accurate if you are going to complain.
Iappe
400 Amps at a voltage of 120 = 48000w wow thats a lots of watts hehe 😂👍 normal House have 100 A ore 200 at The most!
Joe Kinchicken Joe Kinchicken my friend to make it simple for you lets say, you have a truck with a 6 liter engine. And from that 6 liter The engine produces 250 horse power. Now are we gonna mention The 6 liters ore The 250 horse power. Effect is the load the device needs to function so stop talking about amps all the time. My advice to you.
Joe Kinchicken well buddy I am living in Europe we have 240v all day long, plus I am a electrician so I understand your concern. Anyways you take care buddy 👍
400 amp @ 240... So 96 kW!
I pulled a tooth like that one time
Copper? Why not alu
I guess the days of DIY is over.
Not really. If you want direct bury and can’t do a hot box for conduit just get direct burial rated cable.
You can dig the ditch. Why pay me, the electrician, to dig a hole. Also, I would always use conduit, direct bury always seems to get damaged some how some way. Conduit is cheap.
Just use a weed burner, don’t need a hot box.
@@MrSleepProductionsInc, I agree. Conduit for everything. The only way direct burial should be allowed is in sand all around, but at that point, just use conduit.
An N if you scorch the conduit thats a code violation. It’ll fail inspection.
2 short
wtf u doin using sched 40 for service feeders yah jerky
400 amps?!! How many people live in that house?
I don’t think the amount of people matters much. It’s not like everyone is running their own clothes dryer. A light bulb/smartphone/tv doesn’t need a 100 amps. I guess it’s just overkill service required by code that it should keep up with having max load on every single powerpoint. Which there will never be.
Read the other comments
@@Engineer9736 ... These days the larger service is about dedicated circuits and the number of slots in a panel. It's easy to see where a 12 room home can suck up half a panel in general lighting / outlets, with the rest going to appliances. As a side note, I was at an older motel in NJ last year and we popped the breaker for our room. I walked to the end of the row where I saw the electric and noticed our entire section of 24 rooms was on a 200 amp single phase feed. The balance of the slots (40 total) were outside lights and misc. Each room had a window AC, coffee pot, TV and mini fridge. Talk about a FULL panel! (and loaded to the max)
Always use copper for long runs like these. Aluminum shouldn't be an option anymore its 2020....
STEVIEC MUSIC - just run extension cords, it’s cheaper
400 amps lol.. New England houses are so wasteful! "Hey honey, look at how many amp hours we used this month! I just love paying this electrical bill... good thing we have a 400 amp system so we can really crank it up!". Out here in California we have the reverse thinking, lower energy consumption. Energy auditing, conservation, low watt requirements etc..
Yeah, y'all also have wildfires...
personalfunfest - really? Your state is burning to the ground and your electric grid sucks, I’m assuming you were joking in your post? California has nothing good to share
“Out here” in CA, they can’t even keep the power on all day during the summer because their infrastructure couldn’t handle it. That’s the real reason they’re pushing all these “auditing/conservation measures” on us, because they couldn’t put up with regular demand even if they tried.
Oh no this old house you have opened a huge can of worms, this thread will be inundated with hundreds of posts from wannabe master electricians, the wrath is coming, just a hint posters nobody listens to CZcams posters on advice on anything unless you have severe issues of common sense.
As an electrician this should be funny
Seeing how the follow all local codes, whatever you say has no value.
Yea, I’m always looking for mistakes, but didn’t see anything here. 👍🏽
I didn’t see a slip meter riser, but could of just missed it or they don’t require them we’re they are at yet.
I didn’t see any mistakes but some money must’ve been burning a hole in their pockets.
S N lol, your opinion has no value.