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Wires, Ditches, and How to Make It Work

I had a realization on Monday. In three weeks - I have to power at least 5 strings of x-mas lights, 4 star lights, and a massive stereo system in my backyard. The problem with that, of course, is that my garage currently operates on extention cord power. With one outlet extender.

The garage has been wired for power for months - but the necessary wire to power it all up, UF 8-3 or 8-something is $2.99 per foot and it's 80ft to the garage from the breaker box in the house. That works out to around $250 plus breakers and the outlets themselves. (Outlet boxes and all other wiring is in already.) So, about $300. Ouch. I haven't wanted to spend it.

But this backyard wedding affair is forcing me to spend the dough. Mike's pleased as pie. He's wanted power out there since day 1. So we went to the home depot on Monday night and bought everything. And yesterday, Mike dug the 4ft deep, 1ft wide trench necessary to bury the wire. All 80ft of it. No small task, for sure.

Of course, now the side yard is a mess again after we just got finished cleaning it up. Tonight hopefully Mike can run the machine over the whole thing to smooth it out. And then we've got to hook up the wire to the breaker box in the house and the one in the garage. I'm not sure Mike knows exactly what he's doing... but as long as he's confident and doesn't kill himself in the process, I'm fine with that.

With power to the garage active - I'll have all the juice I need to run all those lights, the stereo, and more.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are there any pictures? Did not see any links for them. Keep up the good work!!