Permanent Infrastructure

As I have recently had to dig a trench through the front yard to replace the main incoming waterline, I thought it would be a great idea to include other services in the same trench.
So now I have ...
Pipe for Water - this is good
1X conduit for NBN
1x conduit for mains power to centre of front yard and front fence
1x conduit for comms to front fence
1x conduit for Extra low voltage and comms to centre of yard and front fence

This means I can leave my Christmas lighting "Backbone cabling" inplace from year to year reducing setup/breakup time and reduce the amount of cables snaking around the yard being a trip hazard.
I am also hoping that this will reduce Faults on comms cables from setup/breakup storage and seasonal use.

It is cheap to put conduit in the ground if you need to have a trench for another purpose - just be aware that there are regulations for service separation so be sure to consult your local expert / tradie

Always good to plan ahead. Now you just have to hope Tassie doesn't run out of power altogether or Christmas lights might be banned this year.

Haha Bundy that may be true yet.
My 2014 show was fully battery backed and had a whole view of the city but unfortunatly no power outage!

If I were doing it again, i would install at least a 90mm pipe, so it's easy to rewire/change in the future. You'll also want big sweeping conduit elbows so there's no sharp corners.


Having said that, my front garden/letterbox has underground (gell-filled) CAT5e & a 4mm figure 8. No where near enough for my Xmas requirements which weren't factored back then.


To do it properly too, mains/water/data service conduit need to have minimum separation distances between them as well.

Always a good thing to add infrastructure for your lighting when opportunity arises.

I hope you put a draw wire into each conduit