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I need to supply power to a couple of garden lights and a 13A socket in a longish garden.
The requirements I've been given so far are a bit vague - the socket needs to go at the end of the garden, the lights will probably go somewhere along the side of the garden, and I'm assuming that they will want to switch the lights on/off from the house. I don't know much more than that at the moment.
I plan to run SWA from the the consumer unit (a recent board with RCBO's) into the garden. The guy they've got landscaping their garden will dig the trench and bury the cable, they just want me to specify the cable at the moment.
I guess the easiest solution may be to run two separate cables, one for lights and one for power, i.e. two 3-core SWA cables. It would be nice to be able to use just one SWA cable if possible though, but I not sure how many cores I would need.
My first thought was 5-core SWA to give L+N for power, L+N for lights and a CPC common to both power and lights. But 5-core SWA doesn't seem to be that common - mostly I've seen 2, 3 or 4 core SWA.
Or possibly 4-core SWA to give L for power, switched L for lights (fused down as necessary), N & CPC common to both power and lights. I feel a bit uncomfortable about this though, I would rather have separate neutral cores, but if both lights and power come off the same RCBO then perhaps this is ok?
Or maybe 3-core SWA to supply both power and lights with some sort of remote wireless switching.
Any advise / suggestions?
I can easily work out voltage drop, etc, to size the cable, it's really just the number of cores I'm deliberating about at the moment.
The requirements I've been given so far are a bit vague - the socket needs to go at the end of the garden, the lights will probably go somewhere along the side of the garden, and I'm assuming that they will want to switch the lights on/off from the house. I don't know much more than that at the moment.
I plan to run SWA from the the consumer unit (a recent board with RCBO's) into the garden. The guy they've got landscaping their garden will dig the trench and bury the cable, they just want me to specify the cable at the moment.
I guess the easiest solution may be to run two separate cables, one for lights and one for power, i.e. two 3-core SWA cables. It would be nice to be able to use just one SWA cable if possible though, but I not sure how many cores I would need.
My first thought was 5-core SWA to give L+N for power, L+N for lights and a CPC common to both power and lights. But 5-core SWA doesn't seem to be that common - mostly I've seen 2, 3 or 4 core SWA.
Or possibly 4-core SWA to give L for power, switched L for lights (fused down as necessary), N & CPC common to both power and lights. I feel a bit uncomfortable about this though, I would rather have separate neutral cores, but if both lights and power come off the same RCBO then perhaps this is ok?
Or maybe 3-core SWA to supply both power and lights with some sort of remote wireless switching.
Any advise / suggestions?
I can easily work out voltage drop, etc, to size the cable, it's really just the number of cores I'm deliberating about at the moment.