The year-round power supply for your garden lighting is safe and reliable with the help of underground cables. Heavy insulation protects the cords from the elements and doesn't pose a tripping hazard like seasonal extension cords. These instructions explain step by step how to properly lay a power cable in the garden.
The cables should be about 60cm deep in the garden
Material, tools and preparatory work
Detailed planning ensures that power connections for your garden lighting are later in the right places. We recommend laying the cables in conduits for more security. In addition, you can easily pull in additional cables here at a later date. The following materials and tools will be required:
- Underground cable NYY-J 3-wire or 5-wire
- Empty pipes, for example made of PVC
- Fish tape or fish tape
- Alternative cable hoods
- Warning tapes in yellow or red and white
- sand
- spade
- string and wooden sticks
Important: Before installation, please check whether you have observed all safety regulations. All components for laying the cables should be assigned protection class IP 44 or higher.
Instructions for laying the cable
Mark the course of the cable in advance with cords that you stretch between wooden sticks. Ideally, you should check the specific positions of the garden lamps on site before you start the earthwork. How to proceed professionally:
- Dig a ditch 60 cm deep
- Remove all stones and roots
- Spread a 10 cm thick layer of sand on the sole
- Lay out the empty pipes on top of that
- Pull in the underground cables using the pull-in aid
First cover the underground cable in the empty pipe with another 10 cm thick layer of sand. Embedded in the protective tube and the layer of sand, the cable is perfectly protected against the effects of the weather and earth movements. If you are not using conduit, instead cover the underground cable with cable hoods before pouring in the sand. Spread some of the excavation over the layer of sand to create a level surface.
Finally, mark the position of the power cable with narrow warning tape. This safety measure can be vital when doing earthworks in the garden.
tips
Is it uneconomical to lay the cable in a distant corner of the garden? Then make your garden lighting independent of a power supply from the mains without further ado. This can be done easily and inexpensively with solar lights, lanterns or battery-powered fairy lights.