How To Install A Light Post In The Ground

Let in that location be light - at least enough for people to see what treacherous terrain might prevarication underfoot as they approach your home. Illuminate the topography with a lamppost, which volition light the style for weary travelers and homebound housemates alike. Installing 1 is simpler than yous might call up. A pigsty filled with concrete keeps the post straight, and a narrow trench from the firm carries the wiring - you could do that all in a 24-hour interval, as This Sometime House technical editor Mark Powers shows here.

Hooking upward the wiring to the main box and calculation a switch - for that, yous should hire a licensed electrician, merely at that place's no reason you tin can't install the post and run the wiring yourself. In that location's fifty-fifty some added satisfaction for your try: Your guests will thank you for your hospitality that much more when they can actually encounter their way to your front end door.

Step i: Lamppost Overview

You don't desire a lamp that leans similar a prizefighter in the twelfth circular—it must stand alpine and straight. Unfortunately, the ground won't always cooperate in supporting the post because rains and frosts and even droughts can shift the soil. So you need to set information technology in a stable basis to go along it aligned. About 16 inches of concrete will practise the play a trick on, with the post set 12 inches into it. Y'all tin too add to the stability of the lamp by digging a deeper hole and lining it with nearly 6 inches of gravel, says This Old House general contractor Tom Silva. Though manufacturers don't require this step, Tom recommends it to help with drainage and minimize frost heaves in colder climates.

To bring the wiring from the breaker box in the house out to the post, yous'll need to bury it. The wire we recommend yous use is rated for directly burial, but in physical, information technology needs the protection of PVC conduit. For a double measure of safety, we suggest y'all protect the wire with conduit for its unabridged run. That volition avoid any nasty surprises should someone dig also shut later. The lamp post is hollow to allow the wires to run without the conduit from the base to the lantern meridian.

When you run the wire, make sure to exit enough of extra about the house and so there'south enough to snake through the wall and accomplish the excursion-breaker console inside the house. Then take a licensed electrician check your work, brand the connection to the breaker, and install the switch for the light.

Pace 2: Dig the posthole

Using a posthole digger or round shovel, brand a hole at the post location 12 inches in diameter and 22 inches deep. Make full the bottom of the posthole with half dozen inches of gravel. And so, employ a trenching spade to create a narrow, 18-inch-deep

Pace 3: Course the trench

When digging the posthole and trench, identify the soil on acme of a plastic tarp. That way, you lot won't bury the surrounding grass or plants, and the tarp will brand it a whole lot easier to scrape the soil dorsum into the hole and trench when it comes fourth dimension to backfill.

Step iv: Install the PVC conduit

Dry fit PVC conduit to reach from the house to the posthole. Where necessary, cut the pieces with a hacksaw. Adhere elbows to bring the conduit away from the house and down into the trench, then up from the trench at the post. Add conduit to the elbow in the mail¬hole long enough to protrude 6 inches above the ground.

Connect the conduit pieces with PVC cement, making sure that all the elbows are oriented correctly. Side by side, thread 12-gauge UF-rated wire through the pipe. Leave nine anxiety extra at the post location and enough extra at the house to achieve through the walls and to the breaker box. Lay the pipe, with the wiring inside, in the trench, then backfill with soil.

Stride five: Fill the posthole with physical

Mix a batch of concrete in a trough or wheelbarrow, i bag at a fourth dimension. Proceed the mix stiff (not too much water) to help support the mail and shorten the prepare fourth dimension. The concrete should concord its shape, but jiggle a little when jostled.

Shovel the concrete into the posthole atop the gravel, being careful not to go whatever into the conduit or on the wires. Fill the pigsty to grade or just below information technology, leaving about 6 inches of conduit exposed. Using a concrete float or a slice of scrap wood, smooth the top of the ground.

Tip: Use your shovel to chop gently at the concrete as yous fill the hole, which will help eliminate air pockets.

Step 6: Set the post into the concrete footing

Working advisedly but apace, lay the postal service next to the hole and pull the wires through it from bottom to elevation. With the concrete yet wet, slide the shaft of the post over the conduit and 12 inches into the concrete, making sure the wires however protrude from the height of the post. Twist the mail as you put down pressure on it to piece of work information technology into the concrete.

Tip: Before setting the post, marker it with a pencil 12 inches up from its bottom so yous'll know how deep to plant information technology in the concrete.

Stride 7: Install the lamppost

Wrap two or iii straps or ropes effectually the postal service and stake them into the ground a few feet away, which volition brace the post by pulling it in opposing directions. Hold a level vertically confronting the mail service in several spots effectually its circumference to bank check it for plumb.

Step 8: Caryatid lamppost perfectly plumb

Adjust the straps attached to the lamppost, as necessary, to deeply agree the postal service in position. Allow the concrete to harden completely before removing the straps—at least four hours.

Step 9: Make the wire connections

In one case the concrete is difficult enough to hold the mail without straps, employ a utility knife to advisedly peel away 3 inches of the gray insulation from the UF cable coming out of the mail to reveal the 3 wires encased in it: white, black, and a bare copper (or light-green) ground. These correspond to like-colored wires on the lantern.

Use wire strippers to expose ½ inch of bare copper on all the colored wires from the post and lantern. Pair the wires from the lantern to those from the post, matching white to white, black to black, and bare copper to bare copper (or green). Twist on wire basics to concur the pairs together.

Slide the lantern onto the post and tighten its set screws to secure it. Accept a licensed electrician connect the wires to the billow box and install a switch in a convenient location.