Power Supply to Garage

SWA. You could use a catenary to look neater.

I've no idea of the legality, but that's what I've done.

My detached garage is separated from the house by a similar (slightly smaller) gap filled by a wooden side gate/door[1] mounted in a frame with two uprights and a top rail but no bottom rail. Both sides of the frame are clad with 3" bull-nosed skirting board used as architrave, with the bits at the top extending up beyond the top rail by about an inch, forming a channel. I drilled a cable hole through the garage wall in line with the channel.

I have laid an SWG cable in that channel to convey power to the garage, and then laid a strip of rigid plastic sheet over the top, closing the channel. The cable is completely invisible on the garage side and over the gap. On the house side, the cable comes down the wall from just below the gutter, and is pretty much hidden behind a down-pipe.

When I spanned a similar gap to my shed, I fed T&E through a length of hosepipe and hung it from a catenary wire.

If you take up adjacent floorboards inside your house, is the void below perhaps lower than the path outside? Could you drill and get SWA out through the wall and then under the path?

I'd have said SWA is OTT, the stiff round stuff with a very tough plastic coating is designed for this sort of job. Wickes used to stock it, but ATM I can only spot the cable clips on their web site.

Probably Hituff - not easy to get now, although TLC have some offcuts in some sizes.

NYY-J may be another option:

Failing that, SWA is cheap and readily available.

Would you clip the catenary to the beam?

Is that not going to need a 1.22m long drill bit?

Yup, and will require mucho upheaval of furniture, carpet, floorboards and damage to passing drains, possibly introduce a new course for water to ingress, and cause worry as to where the cat has gone after the works.

Not one of my greatest ideas...

It's your house, you do what you like. Many people just hang some twin and earth across without much support. If it's got a fuse on the house end, it's no problem.

Well we can forget that suggestion.

Funny how it works for everyone.

I've avoided SWA until now (never having needed really good mechanical protection) because it involves rather more work. Has Hituff been withdrawn because it is deprecated? I still have a small stock of 1.5 and 2.5.

Hituf.

You're spending too much time with your apprentices.

Why would you add an extra visible ugly catenary when you can almost completely hide the wiring on a beam ?

A catenary is less obtrusive than a beam. And doesn't warp and need painting.

but the caternary won't help to hold the gate in place. The beam between my house and garage, gets an occasional coat of timber preservative.

Missed the gate bit. ;-)