Quote:
Originally Posted by Othen
I have done some research on this Dave.
Unfortunately the minimum height for a catenery would be 3 m (table D2 of the OSG) - and that would be inside a steel conduit. The garage's gable end is above that height, but it would make the span about 3 m (rather than 3' to the eves, at 2.2 m) - so I think it would look a little bit daft. That is a pity - I'd convinced myself it would be worth doing the work to change to a 4mm^2 cable (and if I ran it through conduit instead of SWA I would get 32A to the garage).
Many thanks for the idea - it was very close to working :-)
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Thanks for the update Alan, i've just looked into this as well and it seems the IEE (the people that brought various wiring/installation regs such as 16th Edition) have joined forces with IIE (who i hadn't heard of) and become IET and we're now on 18th Edition for wiring regs.
It seems they've over-complicated things and assume everyone will be riding a horse round their property - height of someone sat on an average horse with an outstretched arm and finger is ~3m - but have ignored the practicalities of running such an installation.
You mentioned before about burying it, that might be a more sensible option, especially with paving slabs over it to further protect it. Check the regs out on that as i've rarely been involved with buried cables so my knowledge is a bit hazy.
I do remember running catenary wires supporting SWA at a certain west London football club to power floodlights about 20 years ago and i'm fairly sure they weren't 3m or higher, more like 2.5m if that. That said they were in an area that wouldn't normally have had pedestrian access or any other form of access. Things change constantly, especially with te wiring regs so there's every chance that while that would have been fine at time of install, some time later it wouldn't. It's like one reg of the IEE regs outlawed metl cased fuseboxes, insisting all new installs had to be plastic. A few years later, plastic fuseboxes/consumer units were outlawed in favour of metal ones! Work that one out!
