External cabling for various uses

[dnb]

I need to make provision for external garden lighting etc before too much longer. The snag is that the garden is nowhere near designed so I have no hope of guessing what SWMBO will want in 18 months time. Being wrong is not a good option here. It might involve swimming with sharks.

 

My guess for outside electricity is as follows (goes from "definitely required" at the top to "requirement TBD" at the bottom:

SWA to treatment plant

SWA to rainwater capture tank pump (assuming I use a submersible pump)

some cat5 to each of these for sensors/condition monitoring etc - in separate ducting of course!

Outside lights on walls at doors and corners (connected to house DMX lighting)

Double socket on north wall of house at driveway end for car hoovering, pressure washer etc.

Double socket on wall near rear decked area

 

Bollard lighting in driveway, activated by sensors of some kind (advantage if this is in the DMX system)

Deck lighting. (advantage if this is in the DMX system)

Garden lighting.  (advantage if this is in the DMX system)

 

My first crackpot idea to avoid the sharks is to fit a recessed meter box (or similar - but meter boxes are common and cheap!) on the back and side walls and use these to install appropriate circuits from the consumer unit such that I can put in a DMX demux unit (or two) and then not worry about the lighting design further until the house can be occupied, accepting that I would need to put in appropriate cables from the lights to the "external" demux unit and tell the house software it has a new light to play with. The idea also provides a place to terminate the SWA for the treatment plant so I don't have to fight SWA into the house because in a fit of stupidity I didn't put in enough ducting under the ring beam last year. I can't find anything in the blue book immediately preventing this idea.

 

I would also hope to use one of these boxes as somewhere to put the submain that will eventually go to my garage - I am told SSEN won't be happy with me terminating an SWA cable to a switched fuse inside "their" meter box, but they will tolerate Henley blocks to get a second set of tails out.  This is a little annoying because it would be the simpler solution. (Connecting the garage through the house consumer unit would make holes in the house that just don't need to be there.)

 

I would like the plan to be simpler, but not involve more sharks. If I don't plan for it now it all gets much more difficult for anyone to implement later when there is much reduced access to the insides of things. I'm open to suggestions. (I did say the idea was crackpot, and I may have had a bit of sloe gin...)
 

 

 

[Dave Jones]

i wouldnt put more meter boxes in. Have you not got a plant room/cupboard inside you can use ?

 

I used 110mm drainage pipe as ducting for everything electric outside with a nice fat foam stopper to keep the cold out, the black ribbed ducting is terrible stuff for pulling through always catches on the ribs if the runs arent dead straight.

[joth]

Recessed meter boxes can be a pain for thermal bridges/breaking insulation and airtightness.

I've just laid a duct into the garden from the garage that I can pull cable through in future, and put a few basic lights and plenty of sockets on the back of the house. Generally I'm avoiding wireless lighting control but for outside feature lighting I'm happy to make this compromise.

 

Fwiw long dmx runs can become flaky and hard to debug, I'm using a DMX amplifier/splitter to keep zones separate and trying to keep most of the decoders nearby in the main electrical cupboard

[dnb]

1 hour ago, Dave Jones said:

Have you not got a plant room/cupboard inside you can use

Not in the right place and it is going to be tight for space in there. Want to avoid taking cables round 2 sides of the house outside ideally. A picture would help so I will do something tonight.

 

I do like the 110mm pipe idea though because the black stuff is always awkward.

 

1 hour ago, joth said:

I'm using a DMX amplifier/splitter

I intend to do similar. Robust signalling is important to not visiting the local aquarium!

 

1 hour ago, joth said:

Recessed meter boxes can be a pain for thermal bridges/breaking insulation and airtightness.

Shouldn't be too much of a worry to me with a sips build. I would not be cutting in to the panels themselves. The only hole would be the cables exiting and they have to go through somewhere... I can't use the garage because it won't be there for ages yet.

[TonyT]

I would take 2x100mm ducts  from the electrical area, and add a drawpit, then future garden ducts can radiate from this central location.

 

this will allow for future cabling.