Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Running power back to my pond

You'd have to check with your local power company to see what length of service they will put in for free. The length may vary with the size of service you get, not necessarily in ways that are intuitively obvious. The power company provided the service for our farm, which runs about 800 feet from the main line to the last big pole with the transformer and then to a slightly smaller pole (my installation) with the main switch , fuses, and electric meter. If we had gotten a 200 Amp service, we would have had to pay for the length in excess of 400 or 500 feet. But the power company put in a 400 Amp service this long for free.

TG: I emailed you a copy of the original file. As you can see, it is only a simple chart with just numbers, no formulas. The "1000 feet" column/reference is wrt the resistance (number of ohms) in that length of each wire size and is to the best of my knowledge not directly related to the current capacity (number of amperes) columns. I found the chart somewhere on line while researching very small size wire info (38-40 Gauge) for work and snagged the info in excel at that time (while I am an EE, my specially is not Power Engineering and I could be accurately described as at best a "shade tree electrician", good or gutsy enough to handle my own power distribution but of questionable value for figuring different situations out). IME, I have run 50 Amps through 6 Gauge for about 190 feet; as I attempted to show with the calculations above, it is much less capable of handling currents that large (while providing a useful voltage at distances at or in excess of 1000 feet.

BW: Take a look in the aeration topics; there has been a good amount of discussion on burying air lines there. Here is one pertinent thread: Aeration Distance