LOR Boards, inside or outside?

[Guest guest]

I dont have a picture of it right now. I will try getting one today and posting it for you. As far as romex goes, I have seen some displays use it but I myself would shy away from it. The main reasons are that its solid wire and would be hard to work with because of it. Plus, depending on how cold it gets it can become very stiff and almost brittle and then trying to wrap up and store when done.

The attached drawing might help with visualizing my octopus.

Every line between the main controller box and an outlet box or between 2 outlet boxes has 1 neutral and 1 ground which is hooked up to the neutral and grounds of each outlet. All the neutrals are tied together right off the LOR board and then only a single neutral goes out to the yard but its hooked up to all the outelts. Then each hot is for the hot on each channel.


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[Guest guest]

I have priced the individual stranded wire and it runs about twice the price of the 16/3 100' extension cords you get for $9.44. 9.44 / 100 ft / 3 wires = .031 cents per ft. Locally I have priced the stranded 16 at 5-7 cents per ft. I have not looked to find it cheaper. The liquid tight connections can get pricey. Now in a comerical application that would be the direction I would go.

One possible solution at home that would seem to work fairly well. Cut off a foot of the male end of the extendsion cord and use it as a pigtail coming out of a junction box with either one or two gang outlet. With the three wires in the extension cord you can run two channels with a neutral. If you have a four gang box and need 4 channels then you would have two pig tails and two extension cords running to it. The other end of the cord would be hard wired to the LOR. Having the pig tail it allows the boxes to be stored separetly from the cords and does allow for many combinations depending on the year. This does reduce the number of long extension cords in half. Now you do need to remember that you can only run 10 amps through the cord for both channels since they share the neutral, but most of the time that is not a problem since you can only have 15 or 20 amps per 8 channels

[Guest guest]

cvyvial wrote:

I have priced the individual stranded wire and it runs about twice the price of the 16/3 100' extension cords you get for $9.44. 9.44 / 100 ft / 3 wires = .031 cents per ft. Locally I have priced the stranded 16 at 5-7 cents per ft. I have not looked to find it cheaper. The liquid tight connections can get pricey. Now in a comerical application that would be the direction I would go.

One possible solution at home that would seem to work fairly well. Cut off a foot of the male end of the extendsion cord and use it as a pigtail coming out of a junction box with either one or two gang outlet. With the three wires in the extension cord you can run two channels with a neutral. If you have a four gang box and need 4 channels then you would have two pig tails and two extension cords running to it. The other end of the cord would be hard wired to the LOR. Having the pig tail it allows the boxes to be stored separetly from the cords and does allow for many combinations depending on the year. This does reduce the number of long extension cords in half. Now you do need to remember that you can only run 10 amps through the cord for both channels since they share the neutral, but most of the time that is not a problem since you can only have 15 or 20 amps per 8 channels

You missed one of the keys I mentioned. It took a while but I kept watching for wire at ebay. I won several auctions where I got stranded wire for a little less than $.02 a foot including shipping. I picked up a couple of 2500 foot stranded 16 AWG wire spools for $20 a piece which works out to be 8/10 of a cent per foot. Shipping ran around $12 to $15 dollars so that put it around 1.4 cents per foot. At that it runs $4.20 for a 100 foot cord.

But on top of that doing it this way you can share the grounds and the neutrals so you dont have to have as much wire which ends up making it cheaper. I always set up my LOR boards so that if al the channels are on at one time I dont pull more than the card can handle which is 15 Amps. I can get by with smaller guage wire for the hots as long as my neutral can handle 15 Amps which saves money as well.

Its always going to be much much more expensive buying stranded wire locally then watching and buying it of of ebay. The liquid tight connectors are not that much and yes the outlets and boxes add up as well but in the end I do save money because of how I do my display. Each person's display is different and unique so others mileage may vary.

The key to mine is that I watched ebay starting about this time last year and watched for deals on wire, liquid tight, connectors etc. I bought things a little at a time throughout the year when I found a really good deal. The thing here is patience, timing and planning. If you know what you need and watch for it then you can usually find a great deal.

Again, to each his own, I was just trying to provide an alternative and is not as expensive as was suggested. Also if its going to be up for more than a month as indicated by Santas Helper then this is a really good option.

[Guest guest]

I Think I know what you mean see if I am right on the first Cord you use the ground as hot then black is 1 white is 2 then the next cord ground wire is 3 then black is 4 and white is 5 am i close or what do i need to change

[Guest guest]

If you can get wire for that price then I can see an advantage. I started pricing out the cost to run almost all 80 channels and the extra cost per foot added up to a couple hundred dollars. That did not include the box and outlets. As I said I had not look for alternatives suppliers since I was just looking at my alternatives at the time.

The stranded wire does not need to be run in conduit. It could be left exposed, but tape or zip ties would be needed to keep it as a bundle. I think someone mentioned using an old water hose to hide wires.

[Guest guest]

skipper69 wrote:

I Think I know what you mean see if I am right on the first Cord you use the ground as hot then black is 1 white is 2 then the next cord ground wire is 3 then black is 4 and white is 5 am i close or what do i need to change

Basically the Black is channel 1, Green is Channel 2, White is the neutral for both.

If that is wired to a single outlet then you break the hot tab on the one side of the outlet and the neutral is shared. Hope that makes more sense.

[Guest guest]

skipper69 wrote:

I Think I know what you mean see if I am right on the first Cord you use the ground as hot then black is 1 white is 2 then the next cord ground wire is 3 then black is 4 and white is 5 am i close or what do i need to change

I thought about and was seriously considering doing something like that but decided against that just as a personal preference. I figured that murphy would rear his head and I would mess up one of those connections at one point either putting together or if I had to do some maintenance and I would short things out or damage a card or something like that. Also if you have wires going into outlet boxes then you have to worry about water getting in there as well. You could get those compression type sealing connectors that has a rubber insert that you push the wire through then when you tighten the connection down it seals the rubber against the cord.

And also yes, if you wanted to use water hoses to consolidate and protect the wires you could but you would need a way of sealing them up so that water does not get inside the hose or the outlet boxes. A hose would probably be a little more flexible than liquid tight. Has anyone ever tried to put a liquid tight connector onto a rubber hose? I wonder if it would work. It might as long as you get the right size ID hose to match the couplers.

[Guest guest]

I would be worried about the water hose cracking if someone accidently stepped on it. With the cold weather we get here in Dec-Jan that could be pretty bad.