Thanks for all your replies to my post "Garden cabling / electricity" which I have included below. After further study and consideration of replies to my original post subjected above I have a couple more questions. These can be found below also. Thanks.
- My original post insinuated that 240v from the mains would be carried around the cable. If you read through the thread and posts so far the general consus is that this cabling is not sufficient for this purpose. I definately agree this cabling (it is by the way twin and earth looping around) is not sufficient or safe by a long way if I spur
it directly off a mains - i.e. carrying 240v. However I've done some further studies and if I spur off a mains, hook it up to a 5A fuse box then through a transformer down to 12v would this be acceptable? i.e. the twin and earth that has simply been laid underneath the turf around
the garden would only carry 12v - sufficient enough to power garden lighting? Please correct me where I'm wrong, I'm still learning about all this stuff, but as I understand it you can buy garden lighting that
are already connected with thin wire and the plug has a built in transformer converting 240v down to 12v for the lighting. This thin wire is usually laid above ground. So again I'm assuming that twin and
earth wire laid a couple inches below ground also carrying 12v should be safe also?
- The second question I had related to the water feature our gardener has installed. The cable to the pump is separate to that cable I explain above, but it too has also been laid under the new turf, so again only a couple inches below ground at most. I have inspected the pump and the cable in to the pump is underwater (along with the pump). Is this normal? The cable looks like it was already connected to the pump, it looks again like twin and earth. I wasn't around when the gardener installed this but he suggested to my wife that a plug can be attached to the end of the cable so it can be plugged in to the mains just to test the pump. So my wife did that. We have only ever plugged
the water feature in for a few minutes at most. But obviously this would mean that 240v is going through this cable, through what looks like twin and earth, just two inches below ground. I am concerned about that. So the questions I have about this then are 1. why is cable
in the pump under water, 2. can I do something similar to the lights and run 12v to the pump instead of 240 and that way I can also use the existing cable the way it is? If not I'll definately lay armoured cable 18 inches below ground with warning tape above it etc..
Many thanks for your patience and help!
--- ORIG> I contracted a landscape gardner to do a lot of work on our rear garden