daiking

Hope you're wearing your steel toe caps. As load balancers go, we've seen better

Bricklaying is too much like hard work, it’s M&E that’s money for old rope . I hardly think 6 lights is champagne taste, it’s not exactly a Jean Michael Jarre installation. There’s clearly room for a designed solution here, maybe a light fitting that can more easily accommodate the swa termination given the bend radius. Ditto, I don’t think this needs an IP68 solution, the lights are only 65 themselves and these boxes will not be buried, just housed in a not well sealed cavity. is there not an underground mechanical protection conduit option available to use a more flexible cable? Allowing slightly easier termination and some slack due to flexibility?

I had realised that it’s not something that can be pulled through and left till later to terminate. Needs terminating now. as I posted before, £100 of lights becomes a £500 job which makes the absolute fortune that wall cost me look reasonable. I’m close to ditching the whole lot again for some f**king 240v festoons plugged directly into the socket. Light 17 jb 5 2x swa 20s glands 5 3 x wagos plus flex plus flex gland and Earth bits 5 6 lights = 192 switch + fuse + gland(s) 20 cable 35 cleat and other bits 15 262 labour - min 13 swa to terminate plus 6 flex plus boxes fitting and wiring. That’s 200 a day + vat round here. that all buys a lot of f**king candles.

I didn’t think he could afford hols.

And having looked at terminating swa it looks like it would be hard to do through a brick sized letter box, ergo that bit needs to be done early not later and posted through the back of the wall into the letterbox

FWIW the little brass fittings on the lights have a M12 thread so the hole through the middle is a lot smaller.

Thanks for your efforts it’s appreciated, shouldn’t you be finishing your bathroom? Im amazed I can’t find some guidance to how to do this online. I just want to know how to do the donkey work now with the cables so the hard bit can by done later by someone SQEP’d. @ProDave a pukka domestic electrician is ignoring me, any advice? Just want to bury the cable so the lights can be connected later.

You would need to ‘point’ the lights with mortar but I don’t consider them inaccessible . If they break/don’t work, just pull them out. Only 200mm or so deep, it’s not a cavity wall.

Step 2 once the ground is back filled with stone and compacted and sorted, chase out the rear block, the sheet material stopping the stone falling in the hole. I’m assuming that after compaction there won’t be a large amount of pressure to burst through this skin, it should hold. Then you have more room to terminate the swa into a JB.

Step 1 adhere some reasonably strong, reasonably durable with water sheet material to the rear face and drill through sheet and block to put conduit or swa through, reasonably long tail. Using long radius curves against rear of wall for cable/conduit.

Do they need to be ip68? There will be a patio on top so no water soaking through the ground when it rains and they’re significantly higher than the grass level let alone any water table. And sheltered from the usual prevailing wind. I expect these holes to stay dry. Got an idea anyway.

That’s the nub of it, leaving enough room to work. Taking out the equivalent of the 2nd rear brick might help.

Now the dog can see the rabbit. 6 holes for 6 lights, cables need to come through rear block work.

You know that’s not how it works for muggles? Every job for us costs at least a days work plus materials. And day rates for us are 33-50% higher than you think.

I’m not giving a blank cheque to someone, neither am I taking @Onoff‘s lead in fettling the lights losing me what little comeback I have with them. I would just like to do the bit that anyone can do so I only have to pay for the bits that need doing properly. Is that too much to ask?

Yes

No that bit with the details and sticker goes inside the bigger part. Just showing them separate as the smaller part is the interesting bit. Not sure on the thread. I’m away now till Sunday

The micro-brewery though will have to start in the utility room, not the shed. She doesn’t know that yet...

I think I posted this just before Xmas but one night our internet stop working but the phone seemed to work. Short story is that someone in a van had come out, fiddled with the phone lines and swapped my phone line with a neighbours. You called my number they answered, you calle their number, we answered. Despite this being something we checked and proved was happening the man in a van who came to fix it disnt believe us. Until he climbed the pole and checked it whatever and discovered that had actually happened. and another thing, buildhub should be funded via the equivalent of a swear jar for the inappropriate use of the term engineer. This thread alone would pay the hosting bill for a few months

Done. Of sorts.

Better photos of my lights. The face is a few mm smaller all round than a brick. The depth is only 60mm or so, not 100mm. The female thread the brass fitting goes into has some sort of thin/flexible membrane across it, presumably to slit for the cable and provide a ‘seal’ after. Can’t see there’s any way the swa is going to terminate that small. Despite the website listing as ip68 these are only ip65 on the paperwork. Should be ok in this use though. I’m now wondering if the only way to do this is lay 20mm flex duct now, complete the patio and then try to pull that more flexible outdoor cable through the duct after there is no longer any more potential to damage the cable? What do you think?

Thanks

When you realise that you’ve bricked up you garden so in the future you’ll have to excavate your garden room founds by hand...

Who needs lights? No accessories purchased as I’m not working up. I was making an educated guess that hardware would cost £250. as it stands, the cheapest solution would be some sort of star distribution with a single long cable to each light from a central above ground location near the exisitng power socket. As even SWA cable is cheaper than fittings. One BFO 6 into 1 cable, wall mounted JB.

Pratley jinction boxes cost more than the lights I might just send everything back. 6 lights and cables and jbs £250 Sparky to wire them up £250 Total £500 So, @Moira Niedzwiecka tell me more about your solar lights...