Some shots from this evening.
The lights and the fountain are controlled by four switches behind the lounge curtains.
"We rarely turn them on as the neighbours complain that the street lights go dim if we do."

Just beautiful! I would be sitting outside there every evening, keeping 'arry company.

Your house, your garden, your enjoyment. I say turn them on when you want. It's not like they're blazing neon signs, just beautiful garden lights. Geez, people can be so picky. My entire porch is strung with clear LEDS because out street light glow doesn't reach the surface of my porch. It's very dark. I bought 2 32.5ft sets of lights and wrapped the porch with them. the light goes all the way round and I added an extra string to cover the front. Now I can see when I put my key in the lock.

I just called the fire department. Your yard is on fire.

I love the look of it. Job very well done!

Sorry everyone.
"The street lights dim" was supposed to be a joke.
Nobody says anything, as they are rarely on.


For those who might be interested in the technical side... "otherwise look away now...."

It's a safe set-up.
I laid an armoured cable between the house and the garage in 1976, under the concrete raft on which our patio sits. I had no idea what I was going to do with it at the time. Then later started installing lights in the garden.
It's a four-core cable plus earth, which gives me one live and three common.
So I can have three functions from these switches behind the lounge curtains. The fourth switch is for a coachlight on the back wall of the house. The power for this is from a dedicated socket in the lounge next to the radiator screen.
To connect it all up I had to go under the floor. Fortunately, our houses are built on concrete rafts so there's an eighteen inch void under the floor accessed by a trap door in the cupboard under the stairs.



The cable comes up in the border and enters the garage through the wall.



The supply to the garage is via a sixty year-old pyro cable under the drive from a dedicated mini-breaker in a new consumer unit in the house. It supplies a similarly old mechanical 15amp breaker "with real fuse wire" in the corner of the garage. It's never failed or been turned off for thirty odd years, so no need to touch it. The supply then passes from it by a new cable to this up-rated RCCB. I installed once I was "messing with water and electrics" with the koi.



From here the power splits to two supplies in conduit, one for the garage and what was the old koi pool filter room with its multitude of power sockets, the other for the shed and tea-house.

I updated the garage electrics two years ago from a couple of double-pole switches to this consumer unit.

"Mission control."




There's mini breakers for:-

The water heater over the sink, in the old koi pool filter room, now the freezer room,

Power for the garage sockets and for the freezer room.

Garage and freezer room lighting, plus some PIR security lights

Garden lights and fountain.
A live feed goes down the armoured cable to the switches in the lounge and the neutrals come back.

All in numbered conduit so I know "what's what."



The three sockets are for everything outside in the garden.
There's four mains coach lights with LED lamps and a 15w fluorecent on the ceiling behind the doors of the tea-house. The fountain and it's 30w low voltage spotlight on the pergola and all the fairy lights. There's another 30w low voltage spotlight behind the pagoda. The transformers either side of the box are for the fountain and its spotlight.
I have 5amp fuses in all plugs.
I'd never put any real load on this mini-breaker.

The shed and tea-house have their own mini-breaker in the shed.



Power to the tea-house is through cables passed through some alkathene pipe buried a foot down in the border between it and the shed. There's a double pole switch in the tea-house to isolate the supply if necessary. There's sockets on the ceiling for two sets of fairy lights and the transformer for the low voltage 30w spotlight behind the pagoda. all low voltage cables are attached to the concrete base panels of the fences. They pass through bits of garden hose to the two Japanese lanterns to stop the squirrels chewing them.

There's fewer sockets in the "freezer room" (there's two freezers in there) since it was a filter room. I'm down to four doubles plus a double pole switch for the old Santon water heater. I've had it since 1986. I bought it from my firm's works department for £2. It came out of closed shop. The Budweiser fridge is back in the tea-house.



I flip the test switch on the RRCB periodically, but I've never had a problem with the electrics. There are no exposed mains cables outside of the buildings, it's all low voltage.
and there's practically no maintanance other than changing a bulb now and then!

EXCELLENT! Good work and a job well done with attention to safety and details. Your garden at night is simply magical, Riley. Lucky hedgehog who calls this space his 'ome.

Very nice garden. I wish I had a space like this. You must burn up a lot of electricity running all of those lights. Whats your energy bill like?

AmberLeaf said: Very nice garden. I wish I had a space like this. You must burn up a lot of electricity running all of those lights. Whats your energy bill like?

As I said earlier I don't often turn them on. Most are low voltage the mains ones have LED bulbs.
Our electricity bill is horrendous because the tumble dryer, as is the washing machine is often in use, as with her disability, my wife can't use a washing line and I'd rather pay the bill than hang out washing myself.

Electric dryers are energy hogs. I don't know why. When I used one{in a rented house years ago} our electric bill was high. It was not the most efficient appliance..I use gas now and find that it works much better and isn't as costly as the electric dryers although gas dryers are more expensive to buy and install. That being said-it's cheaper for me to run 2 A/C units all summer with separate zones -one for me upstairs and one for the first floor-than it is for me to heat the house all winter with gas. My Dad always said-"if it pulls or pushes or heats and cools it's gonna use energy and be costly." He was correct.

We've not a lot of choice. This dryer must be ten years old, it wasn't expensive and is on every day for a few hours.
My electricity and gas charges are estimated to be around £3,900 this year. That's about $4,800.

"But we won't be cold, dirty, or hungry."

clever using garden hose as conduit, so flexible.

But you have to use alkathene pipe, if it's a mains cable, as you'd be hard pushed to put a spade through it. It's flexible but very strong.

It can be made to describe a perfect arc.

in 2020, I had to replace the door in the fence between the house and the garage. The original had a curved top but I was unable to get one with this shape. So I bought a rectangular one and used a bit of alkethene pipe secured with a few nails, so I could draw the right diameter curve with a pencil.



Then cut it out with a jigsaw.



Job done!


,

Great job!