Barn rewire

Back when my uncles and aunts visited me in early June, they helped me re-wire my barn.  Earlier this Spring I discovered that the power from the barn to the outlet for my water trough pump had little power.  The electric line from the barn to the outlet was buried underground.  The electric wire was so old I thought the insulation had deteriorated and was leaking electricity.

My uncle Larry has had some experience wiring and re-wiring a number of projects and he offered to do the barn re-wiring after we looked at the wiring inside the barn.  The wiring was very old.  The wires were wrapped in cloth and not enclosed in plastic as is done now.

So, from just replacing the wiring between the barn and the outlet outside, the project morphed to rewiring the entire barn.  In doing so we moved and simplified stuff.  For example, the barn had an outside light socket on the south side near the peak. There was no light bulb in the socket.  I never used the light and I don't remember my dad doing so.  I usually access the barn via the large barn door on the north side and rarely use the small door on the south side.  I got rid of the light socket and the switch that controlled the light, and indirectly another inside electric outlet.  That simplified the wiring.

I also moved the light inside the barn over to the center of the barn.  The light switch that controls that light was inside the barn near the door on the south side.  When I store hay in the barn this switch often gets covered.  I had Larry move the switch closer to the barn door on the north side.  I also had him add an outlet there also.

While Larry worked on the wiring, my uncle Curt and I dug up the old outside wiring and then dug a new trench for the new wire.  From the crooked trench line you can tell I dug this trench.

Even though this trench was inside the corral, and near where the old wiring lay, I still came across old tree roots.

We placed the underground wire inside PVC pipe to protect it from the soil and water. Here Curt is putting the wire through a section of the pipe.

How the pipe looks in the hole.  We buried the pipe and wire about 2 ft deep.

Several cattle inspecting the work after the trench was filled in with dirt.  Even though we shared the corral with the cattle, they were relaxed and for the most part stayed away and in another part of the corral.

Inside the barn Larry worked long and hard.  It took all day to do the re-wire.  By the end he was tired and his feet were killing him.  He did a great job though.

When going over the barn wiring before we started, Curt noticed that one of the two feeder lines attached to the barn was not connected.  By the way, the wire going to the left is to the old light socket.

The day we planned and prepared for the work I had a circuit breaker on my house turn off.  I had my uncle's motor home plugged into my house, and between their electrical usage and mine, a circuit breaker tripped.  At the time we didn't know exactly what the problem was and I had to call an electrician. By the time he arrived around 6 pm, the breaker had cooled off and could be reset completely on.  These circuit breakers are different in that they don't flip all the way off when tripped; they just are not 100% on.   The other odd thing was that the breaker was just for the entryway and refrigerator.  When the breaker tripped I lost power to half my house even though the breakers for those areas were 100% on.

Anyway... when the electrician was here I had him test the barn and he found I only had half power.  Makes sense when one of two lines are not connected.

So we replaced the electrical wire between the overhead wires attached to the barn and the fuse box inside the barn.  I made sure to attach both wires.  Because the old wires were not colored - both were black - we were not sure how to attached the black and red wires.  We had a 50-50 chance of correctly attaching the wires and for once we beat the odds and got it right the first time.

I also talked to the electrician about how the wires from the house were attached to the garage.  I've had the garage light act flaky where sometimes it would work and other times it would not.  The reason I had my uncle's motor home attached to my house for electricity was that when hooked up through the tool shed (who gets its power from the garage) was that the garage ground wire glowed from the electrical current.  The electrician told me how to better ground the wiring to the garage to solve these problems.

Here is the old way the garage received power.

It is good my barn is now up to date with its wiring. This should greatly reduce the chance of an electrical fire.