Hello All,
long time follower of this forum.....first time poster!
We are doing the owner builder thing in the Perth hills on a 4 acre block. We are currently having out power put in on the block, with our electrician putting in new underground power supply from front gate to the shed. I was given the go ahead Thursday last week to fill in the trench.
Today i though i would pull some of the rock out of the trench in readiness for the bobcat guy to fill it in tomorrow. I found the following while walking along the trench.
Little or no glue on some joins
Glued on an angle
I would expect an electrician to do the job RIGHT the first time around for the amount of money he is charging!. As mentioned he gave me the go ahead to fill this trench in.
Could someone clarify that the conduits (telephone and power) should be at either side of the tench? Also the length of the power run is 135m he recommended putting in an 80 amp supply, he has run 2 lengths of :
APEC 2013 X-90 ELECTRICAL CABLE 0.6/1kv 35 SQ mm CU
Is this cable what i was quoted for?
The electrician doesn't come across as overly confident in what he was doing... and i am not really happy with the job he has done.....any advice much appreciated!
Cheers,
Tism
Hi
Get them back to fix it
That is serious a problem and not acceptable
Ok, so some reality to the issue, instead of a blanket "serious" problem statement...
Conduits are only used for "mechanical" protection, i.e. to help prevent a shovel directly hitting a cable!
Having said that, the joints shouldn't be seperated like they are, especially after being glued! The sparky shouldn't have left it like it is thats for sure, but in terms of complying with standards, it's borderline...
Glueing on the corners/bends is fine also...
As for the power and telephone conduits in the trench together, that's fine because they are both in conduits, so the standards consider this as seperation/spacing!
As for "filling" in the trench, did he give you any "marker tape" to install? It should be installed at 1/2 the depth of the trench...
In terms of the cable installed, 2 parallel lengths of 35mm2 cable for the 135m is sized right for an 80Amp feed.. I assume it's single phase supply, so in the conduit you should have 5 cables... 2 "red" (Active), 2 "black" (Neutral), and 1 green/yellow (Earth)?
I agree with chuth77 above.
The conduit is only there to protect the cables nothing more. Yes they should have joined it better but as long as the end of the conduit is firmly into the next one then it is no big deal.
What they haven't used is any primer before they glued them up. Put that on and there is no way you will separate them. It would be easy for you to retro-glue the pipes to form a good connection. Do it yourself rather than let this clown do it ( which he'd probably charge you for ).
Stewie
Ok, so some reality to the issue, instead of a blanket "serious" problem statement...
Conduits are only used for "mechanical" protection, i.e. to help prevent a shovel directly hitting a cable!
Having said that, the joints shouldn't be seperated like they are, especially after being glued! The sparky shouldn't have left it like it is thats for sure, but in terms of complying with standards, it's borderline...
Glueing on the corners/bends is fine also...
As for the power and telephone conduits in the trench together, that's fine because they are both in conduits, so the standards consider this as seperation/spacing!
As for "filling" in the trench, did he give you any "marker tape" to install? It should be installed at 1/2 the depth of the trench...
In terms of the cable installed, 2 parallel lengths of 35mm2 cable for the 135m is sized right for an 80Amp feed.. I assume it's single phase supply, so in the conduit you should have 5 cables... 2 "red" (Active), 2 "black" (Neutral), and 1 green/yellow (Earth)?
Thanks for the reply
The joins were pointed out to the electrician and rectified.
Marker tape was supplied and laid in the trench @ 1/2 way
It is a single phase install, In the conduit are only the 2 x 35mm2 cables 1 x positive 1 x negative no earth. We have the main board at the boundary with an earth spike and a sub board at the shed with an earth spike.....sound right?
Cheers,
Tism
Cabling sounds a bit light to be honest... 35mm2 @ 80 Amps with a 5% voltage drop can be run for a maximum of 128 meters...
Looks it's not too bad... Just means if when you are fully loaded i.e. drawing the full 80 Amps which won't be very often as you'll be lucky to draw 40 most of the time, then the lights will be slightly dimmer as you'll have around 225 Volts...
An earth wire in the conduit is a preference that I have, but everyone is different...