Odd Electrical Question

[sroxberg]

The picture below is of my Horse Waterer. It has a direct burial romex line in it that provides power to a heater to keep it from freezing in the winter.

I need to access that power from outside the concrete and am curious how others would do this.

You can see the fence in the back ground and I would like to place an outdoor outlet on the fence face.

My thought was to drill a hole and feed a 1/2" flexible water proof conduit through and seal the gap with epoxy and/or chaulk.

The flexible conduit would then run over to the fence and up into the outlet box.

Any better suggestions? It needs to be horse proof and the circuit is a on a GFCI breaker so I'm not worried about shocking the horse but metal may be a better option but don't know how to get in and out of the concreate colvert which is stood vertically to get below the frost line.

[K. L. McReynolds]

so, you are simply tapping the supply in the case for an external receptacle?

I'd use rigid conduit(pipe would be better) since bored horses crib and tug at odd things. if they can get their mouths on the flex conduit, they can tear it loose.

And, if they get shocked, they will never come near that waterer again.

[sroxberg]

I could possibly do it at ground level so that I could add some dirt and cover the small exposed section.

I agree that horses are curious animals, I also thought about protecting the flexible conduit with some boards to encase it.

Thanks for the thought, by Rigid do you mean Regular EMT?

[TDKPE]

sroxberg said:

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Thanks for the thought, by Rigid do you mean Regular EMT?

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Rigid metal conduit (RMC) is essentially galvanized pipe, with threaded ends. It's much heavier than EMT, which is pretty thin stuff, especially when it comes to large animals. And it's what I would have suggested, too. The big box stores stock it.

[blackhat]

Dig down about a foot on the fence side of the culvert. Drill your hole and fish in a piece of direct burial wire. Seal it with silicone caulk. Bring it up at the desired fence post and sleeve it with a short piece of conduit. Better if its on the non horse side of the fence for the reasons Mac gave. If that's not an option, I would bend a few pieces of 1/8 strap iron into U shaped guards and screw them to the post to prevent a horse getting his teeth on the conduit or box.

[crokett™]

Is there a reason the feed to the outlet can't be buried until it gets to the post and then run up the fence post on the non-horse side?

[sroxberg]

crokett™ said:

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Is there a reason the feed to the outlet can't be buried until it gets to the post and then run up the fence post on the non-horse side?

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The only problem with direct burial is that I have to get to the hole / line from inside the water which has a heater and other obstructions in the way, not impossible but I'm probably being lazy.

I'm starting to lean the burial route and make it look cleaner and I would bring it up on the yard side of a post and so that the horses couldn't get to it. I'll just have to fish the cable down and through the hole.

Thanks for the push to do it correctly.

[Cooler]

In my town you are supposed to bury 110 volt wires 2 feet underground to meet code.

Since you were able to pour concrete for the bowl I would pour a 6" or 8" diameter post with the wire set in the post. You can snake the wire to one side and attach a waterproof junction box to that.

They do make low voltage DC water heaters. They sound safer to me.