Supply feed to holiday home

[Spoon]

Easy, tie one end to the Combine Harvester, put the reel end on the forks of the Tractor and pull. ?

Think you might want some rollers over that 300 meters, unless you want your cable to be 400 meters long. ?

 

[timhoward]

Something I’ve long wondered - can this amazing toy also lay cable or would it end up too near the surface?

 

[brianmoooore]

300m of 95mm2 2C SWA should weigh about 1000Kg, so no big problem at all for the type of gear found on a farm. I used a small trailer with the reel threaded onto a length of steel bar tied across the top of the trailer sides.
95mm2 SWA isn't as big as some of you are thinking.

 

[brianmoooore]

Something I’ve long wondered - can this amazing toy also lay cable or would it end up too near the surface?

Never used one, but the required depth for laying pipe is every bit as much as for cable, so the answer is yes. The warning tape would be the problem.
We have a 400m long service pipe to our property, which sprung an expensive leak about three years ago. The pipe is 60 years old, so I was looking at these machines with a view to replacing it, but in the end the leak was easily found, along with the reason for it, so it was just repaired.

 

[brianmoooore]

It looks like the design of the shepherd's hut is the problem, if they think they need a 63A supply. Too many instantaneous water heaters with no allowable diversity I suspect.
I have a as yet unused (and possibly never to be used) site for a shepherd's hut to complement my holiday cottages, but I did some design work on it, and it's possible to be all electric and run on a supply of 6kW.

 

[sclarkin]

It looks like the design of the shepherd's hut is the problem, if they think they need a 63A supply. Too many instantaneous water heaters with no allowable diversity I suspect.
I have a as yet unused (and possibly never to be used) site for a shepherd's hut to complement my holiday cottages, but I did some design work on it, and it's possible to be all electric and run on a supply of 6kW.

Yeah I think 63 is too much but they have spec 9kw shower, heating, range style cooker

 

[brianmoooore]

Loose the instantaneous shower, and fit a 3kW pressurised storage cylinder. Feeds the sink and basin as well, and gives a far better shower than any instantaneous one. Arrange cooker to load shed both the water heater an the room heating when in use. Water heating off for a while won't matter, and if a cooker is pumping 6kW of heat into the hut, they won't mis the heating either.
2kW should be more than enough fixed heating for an insulated hut, but a 2kW portable heater can be provided as well for exceptionally cold weather, and just plug into the socket circuit.

 

[sclarkin]

Loose the instantaneous shower, and fit a 3kW pressurised storage cylinder. Feeds the sink and basin as well, and gives a far better shower than any instantaneous one. Arrange cooker to load shed both the water heater an the room heating when in use. Water heating off for a while won't matter, and if a cooker is pumping 6kW of heat into the hut, they won't mis the heating either.
2kW should be more than enough fixed heating for an insulated hut, but a 2kW portable heater can be provided as well for exceptionally cold weather, and just plug into the socket circuit.

Thanks the customer has obviously outsourced the hut to a specialist company but saying that they are a new start up so will pass on some ideas for her to forward on to them. May even become their recommended installer ?

 

[pc1966]

Good luck for the project, hopefully you get it and can let us know how it all pans out.

One aspect to consider carefully is the supply access, and if this holiday home would ever be used while the main home owners are away. As it is TT, the SWA will need a 100mA or 300mA delay RCD before it (as well as a fused-switch or similar for OCPD, more to protect the home main fuse and assuming it is 100A otherwise no usable selectivity).

To make sure that delay-RCD is very unlikely to trip you should plan on using a CU that has double-pole RCD on all circuits. Even cheap dual-RCD boards do that. But given the overall cost already and the benefits of easier fault isolation, etc, I would suggest an all-RCBO CU, but then look for the RCBO that are neutral-switching so you don't end up with a N-E fault taking out everything. The recent compact RCBO from Fusebox, Wylex, and Crabtree all seems to be DP switching and are reasonably priced.

Don't forget to include SPD. I think some of the CUs come pre-fitted anyway, such as this:

Wylex NM906FLEXS 100a Main switch+Type 2 SPD 9 Way Consumer Unit

Buy Online Wylex NM906FLEXS 100a Main switch+Type 2 SPD 9 Way Consumer Unit from Edwardes Brothers, 24 Hour UK next day delivery

www.edwardes.co.uk

If the main home is feed from overhead lines it might be worth checking it already has SPD, or maybe making the recommendation that they should consider adding some.

 

[JD6400]

Never used one, but the required depth for laying pipe is every bit as much as for cable, so the answer is yes. The warning tape would be the problem.
We have a 400m long service pipe to our property, which sprung an expensive leak about three years ago. The pipe is 60 years old, so I was looking at these machines with a view to replacing it, but in the end the leak was easily found, along with the reason for it, so it was just repaired.

They are quite good , but that particular one would probably only manage a depth of around 400mm and not the required 1000mm
Across productive agriculture land.
But even with a more substantial mole and blade along with a machine somewhere in the region of 10 times the horse power of the one in the picture , unless you can 100% guarantee no stones or sharps in what you are moleing , I would not want to put my name and liability to the job.

As a company we generally install 3 or 4 runs like this a year , the largest we have done from memory was around 780m.
It is all about having correct kit , and at a push can be carried out single handed , but is a obviously a lot quicker and more straight forward with a 2 or 3 people.
What ever you do , always lay and never pull a cable of this length.