How to Run Wire Under a Sidewalk for Landscape Lighting

Hi Folks welcome back Tim for volt lighting. Today We want to talk about how to get wiring underneath sidewalks. When you're in the course of installing wiring for your lighting You're invariably going to run across situations where you have sidewalks or patios are going to be in your way. So the question is how do I get my wiring across it if you see behind us here We do have a spot sidewalk And we're going to show you a couple simple ways you can get your wiring underneath that. Let's get started. Before digging under your sidewalks inspect your site and see if you already have a large gap in a control joint of your sidewalk. This is often an ideal placed to cross if you can get the wire deep enough. Deepen and clean out the gap with an old screwdriver and add a piece of spacer back in once your cable has been installed. Four-Foot, sidewalks like this one are pretty typical on most properties. The first crossing method. I'll show you is using a long flexible drill, bit now This is an easy method if you only need a single wire to cross the walk. To begin our crossing we need to excavate a small opening on one side of the sidewalk. On the other side of the sidewalk cut out a strip that's about one foot long by four to five inches wide. Remove the rock and soil until you can clearly see the bottom edge of the sidewalk. With the bottom Edge of the concrete exposed Slip your drill bit right underneath that edge and put a little bit of flex in the bit. This will help keep the bits straight as it advances underneath the concrete. If you've kept your bit straight and level coming underneath the concrete it will come right out underneath the other side. These long bits have a small hole in the end of the tip that are designed for pulling your wire back through. To attach your wire clip one end of your wire lead off and strip the other end. Be sure to strip at least a good two to three inches off that wire. With your cable end stripped off, now insert the wire into the small hole in the end of the bit Once it's securely attached, now you can begin pulling the wire back through. You may have to use a back-And-forth motion with the drill to get it to come back from underneath the concrete. Again, this is a simple and easy way to get underneath the sidewalk if you only need to use one cable. Should you find that you need multiple cables to cross the sidewalk I recommend using a piece of EMT conduit. This is a metal rigid conduit you can pick up for pretty much any home improvement Center. I like to measure out about a six inch overhang on each side and then go ahead and cut my pipe with either a sawzall Hacksaw or even a grinder. To keep the pipe from filling up a dirt when we pass it underneath the sidewalk We're first going to need to pound down the ends to flatten it out. This will pinch the ends together to keep the dirt out as we pass it under the walk. We'll also make a nice wedge so it's easy to drive. When we drive our pipe under the walk. It's important to make sure that we keep it level. To keep the pipe level as we drive it across we have to remove the grass so that the pipe will sit down below the Bottom Edge of the concrete. Make room for the pipe by ticking your spade and begin digging out a section of grass Just about six inches longer than the pipe itself. This will give us plenty of room for driving the pipe underneath the walk with our hammer. Take a trenching shovel or a small spade and clean out the Debris at the bottom of the Trench. Now take your conduit with a pinch to end and begin to stick it under the bottom edge of the concrete. Now you're going to want to make sure that the pipe sets level down on this Trench and is parallel with the top of the concrete. A small to medium sized sledgehammer will give you enough force to push it through. Once you've driven the pipe through and is visible on the other side. Take your sawzall and go ahead and cut the end of that pipe off. Getting your cable underneath this walkway is now just as simple as sliding the end of the cable all the way through the pipe and out the other side. With your cable in place you can now put your sod back in the Trench and compact it into place. Getting your cable under walkways doesn't have to be an overwhelming challenge. Once your cable or sleeve is in place. It will allow you to maximize your lighting on a single transformer. We hope that this tutorial was a help to you, if you have any further questions please give us a call or visit VOLTlighting.com

Channel: VOLT Lighting

Views: 328,033

Keywords: wire under sidewalk, How to Run Wire Under a Sidewalk, run wire under sidewalk, how to install wire under a sidewalk, landscape lighting, landscape lighting installation, low voltage landscape lighting installation, how to install landscape lighting, how to install low voltage landscape lighting, low voltage wiring installation, outdoor lighting, outdoor lighting wiring, landscape lighting wiring, low voltage landscape lighting, diy, How to, getting wire under sidewalk

Id: PzJ4Pmumxdw

Length: 4min 16sec (256 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 21 2014