Wiring
For wiring I bought a 500' roll of
12/2 direct burial cable from VOLT. They offer
several gauges and spool lengths. I think they say 12/2 is good for a single run up to 150ft in length.
Where possible, I ordered my fixtures with optional 25' lead wires (standard is 4'). There is an up-charge for this on most of the light fixtures, but it made wiring everything up in a hub configuration very easy, and with less connections.
For the wiring connections I used VOLT's
8-Way Pro Macro-Junction,
5-Way Pro Micro-Junction and
3-Way Pro Nano-Junction direct burial connectors. This style hub is not the best option if you plan on adding/removing lights later on, but I was pretty confident in my design and I like that these have a strong mechanical connection and are silicone-filled to ensure the hub remains watertight.
https://youtu.be/zgEhJMbrMnU
I ended up with 5 zones in my system, and I color coded several locations on each run with different colored electrical tape.
Most of my wiring was inside mulched beds, so I just raked the mulch back and laid the wire down. To keep things tidy I used some
landscape fabric pins from Lowe's to hold the cables in place.
I did have to cross the lawn in a couple places. To do this I waited until after a good soaking rain and used a
garden spade to slice a small trench in the ground. I rocked the shovel back and forth to open it up wide enough to poke the 12/2 cable down about 6". Since the ground was really soft, I was then able to just walk everything back in place.
At each location where I crossed under my steel landscape edging I slipped the wire through a ~6" piece of
1/2" SCH 40 PVC electrical conduit to help prevent any future damage.
