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Outdoor Christmas light installation advice

kfh

The Parish Council want to light up a tree that is on the village green for Christmas, I have been given the short straw  on designing the installation.

I have a quote from SPEN to install a unmetered TNCS 0.1 KVA supply to a box on the green and I would appreciate some advice on the bit that will go from the box to the tree and the lights. This will be approx  8 M underground from the supply box with the probability of sandstone a few  inches under the green for part of the route. A small box by the tree may have to be acceptable. The tree is approx 20 ft high and is climbable  from the ground. I would prefer not to have to excavate the sandstone to the normal underground cable depth. The main risks to disturbance would be from tent pegs if someone set up a gazebo for an event or someone decided to plant bulbs.

While I would prefer  ELV for this with the power supply and switching in the supply box most light sets appear to come with a transformer and controller as part of a prewired set unless they are the static always on type which may be acceptable.

If I have to go for a mains supply to the tree I would prefer to run the TNCS supply from the supply box to the tree, with 30mA RCD protection on the cable as nuisance tripping will not be an issue  and have any lighting ELV power supplies / controllers in box by the tree removing the need to TT the final box

Has anyone got words of advice which would help me design/install the above at low cost. While I have experience of  all the individual elements  I feel there may be some issues I am not aware of  in these particular circumstances.  Also I suspect I will be given  the short straw for the FOC installation with a team of volunteers doing the hard work. 

Many thanks 

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    Ideas that may not apply -I have not seen it, but could you bury a duct, at whatever  depth you can sensibly get in over the rock, and leave it empty or just with a draw-line when it is not Christmas? 
    Pull whatever cable you need through  for the duration of the event, and have the controls as near as poss to the unmetered supply, so it all goes dead when switched off. this ensures that at the worst the summer fayre tent  pegs hit an empty plastic tube....

    Our town's Xmas lights have a control box that padlocks into a thing in the ground looks like a parking bollard, but is then unbolted and taken away for  the rest of the year to a dry place free of folk who might do something silly to it at closing time.... all that remains visible is a plate about the size of a hydrant  cover, but not with the same markings. Ensures it  is not broken when the time comes to do it again.

    Mike.

    Edits,

    Apparently it really used to be a parking bollard of the removable kind, and then control box was then clamped to it  and a slot made for cables to be run down inside it so the wiring is not exposed until you uproot the thing, but since the town square has been redone with fancy paving there is now a convenient new power box that is used for other stuff as well. https://www.woodleynet.co.uk/xmas.htm shows the older version


    The twinkling ELV designs can be 'cut and shut' extended with multicore cable  within reason. However our one still had mains on the tree and the overhead festoons on was when I was last involved in any way - though to be fair that was before lock down.

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  • 0

    Ideas that may not apply -I have not seen it, but could you bury a duct, at whatever  depth you can sensibly get in over the rock, and leave it empty or just with a draw-line when it is not Christmas? 
    Pull whatever cable you need through  for the duration of the event, and have the controls as near as poss to the unmetered supply, so it all goes dead when switched off. this ensures that at the worst the summer fayre tent  pegs hit an empty plastic tube....

    Our town's Xmas lights have a control box that padlocks into a thing in the ground looks like a parking bollard, but is then unbolted and taken away for  the rest of the year to a dry place free of folk who might do something silly to it at closing time.... all that remains visible is a plate about the size of a hydrant  cover, but not with the same markings. Ensures it  is not broken when the time comes to do it again.

    Mike.

    Edits,

    Apparently it really used to be a parking bollard of the removable kind, and then control box was then clamped to it  and a slot made for cables to be run down inside it so the wiring is not exposed until you uproot the thing, but since the town square has been redone with fancy paving there is now a convenient new power box that is used for other stuff as well. https://www.woodleynet.co.uk/xmas.htm shows the older version


    The twinkling ELV designs can be 'cut and shut' extended with multicore cable  within reason. However our one still had mains on the tree and the overhead festoons on was when I was last involved in any way - though to be fair that was before lock down.

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