Pole Barn:Electric and H2O

[Bird]

Bill, most propane companies used copper lines and may be going to some form of plastic now. I used to do gas leakage surveys for natural gas companies and the pipe used has changed over the years. I think all the old wooden pipe (Bois 'd Arc) is gone now, but I found cast iron pipe, black pipe, galvanized pipe, coated pipe, copper (which ain't recommended for natural gas anymore), etc. And now they're all going to the yellow "plastic" pipe. With the metal pipes, you could connect a sending unit and trace exactly where the pipe was. Now with the plastic pipe, that doesn't work, so I think all the gas companies are learning to wrap it with a "trace" wire so you can find it later.

Bird

 

[PBMAX]

Bill,I don't know what you do or don't know so I'll just keep it simple.If you are only looking for 30-40 at a 100ft you should be fine especialy if you are running Copper wire,assuming you are.(for ex. 10 gauge(COPPER) wire is rated for 100 ft at 30 amps in conduit.I would consider a 60 or 100 amp panel my self for future use.Plus like some one mentioned the disconnect is also nice at times.Course you can feed in to a 2 pole breaker instead of the top luggs and use it as a disconnect.But some places the inspectors frown on that.Plus it uses up a breaker.Good luck.Me I'm still trying to figure out the cheapest wat to dig through rock.Living on a mountain give you a great view but the rock sure is shallow. I put my barn on hold mostly for this reason.The soil is any were from 8" to 4' deep in any give direction.Gonna have to rent one of those monster dithc witch's

Lil' Paul
Proud new owner of TC21D
Laziness is the Father of invention.../w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[DaveM]

Bill- I had a propane co. run about 125' of propane pipe (black PVC looking) last fall. They dug the trench (rock city!) and ran a ribbon of metal tape on top of the pipe from the tank to the house before back filling. They would use a metal detector to find it again in the future.

Dave

 

[RobS]

Bill, I'll be living with Propane when we join you in Michigan next year (hopefully). Could you have a second propane tank for the barn and not have to run that off the house?

 

[Bill_in_MI]

Bird, Thanks for that info. Makes sense to me. Speaking of tracing or finding things. I have some plastic corregated drain pipes which carry eaves trough runoff from the house down to the pond. I know generally where they are, but they were installed years ago (did not have Richard's advice then!) and landscaped over. I believe the lawn irrigation pipe -pulling kid crushed one (years ago, now) cause it won't drain anymore...just fills and overflows. I am guessing the blockage is about 40 to 50 feet out into the line. My question: Is there a way for me to pinpoint the trouble area so I can do a minimally invasive surgical procedure? Shove some kind of signal generating device used with a sensor? I think the drain is only several inches down. And, I think the line is a reasonably straight shot from the entry point of the downspout. There is at least one branch that joins it however...somewhere out there. Appreciate any ideas, but especially any cheap ideas.

 

[GlueGuy]

Bill,

You might want to run an electrician's snake down the hole until it won't go anymore, then use a tracer to figure out where it stops. My snake is about 100' long, so that would pprobably do the trick.

The GlueGuy

 

[GlueGuy]

Richard,

Amerigas is the same company that sells us our propane. They have been nice people. All of the homeowners in this area have gone together to form a "propane users group". In exchange for getting "scheduled delivery" of propane, Amerigas gives us a substantial discount on the cost of propane; they key the price to wholesale cost (a published figure) plus a fixed markup. This last winter, it was saving us almost 50 cents per gallon.

The GlueGuy

 

[Bird]

Bill, I don't know of any way to solve that problem other than what GlueGuy has already said.

Bird

 

[cowboydoc]

Bill,
Actually I had the same problem awhile back. I actually probably got a little lucky too. Anyway what I did was after it had rained really hard I went out with a rod and started poking in the ground along where I knew the pipe was. I just kept going along hitting the pipe, rather drain tile. I eventually got to a point where the ground was really soft and dug it up and there was my problem.

 

[Tdog]

Bill,

My pole barn is about the same distance from the house as yours. I buried a 10 gage wire for electricity & ran a one inch pvc pipe for water. I also ran a 2nd electric line in order to connect the barn lights [the outside flood lights, anyway] to a three-way switch. That way,we don't have to walk out in darkness on early winter mornings. Also ran a phone line & that's sure come in handy. I'm in the gulf south area so my water line is not very deep. I chose to run the water on one side, & the electric on the other side of my drive up to the barn apron. As long as I had the trench open, I also ran a coaxial cable so that we could use a camcorder for watching my wife's horse if she were ever pregnant or ill - - so far, I haven't even tested it to see if it works, but there's no reason it shouldn't.