Iron Pipe with Red and White Wire in the Yard...........

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SFLman

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Hello,

I want to plant a tree near our front door and I have encountered an old pipe with a red and white wire in it.

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Not sure what it operates. Maybe there was some sort of night lamp next to the driveway? Anyhow, I did a real good job on the pipe, which is brittle.

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The green funny is part of the sprinkler system. The brown pipe with the wires in it is angled toward the stone bench on the porch, and otherwise heads out into the yard. There is a water meter way out near the curb, otherwise I have no idea what the wires do, if anything.

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Any ideas anyone?
 
There are any number of these available; https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-non-contact-voltage-tester/
which will tell you if there is voltage present, now, without further damage to the conduit.

If you are interested in abandoning the conduit, and if there is voltage present, you'll need to shut breakers off to determine the source, and from there decide if you want to abandon it all together, or accent light the tree.
 
You need to find out where they go and if they are live or not.
Find the breaker and open that receptacle under the bench and see if the wires go into it.
 
Thanks Snoonyb. If there is no power, and I cut the pipe and the wires, should I worry about sealing off the pipe?

JoeD - I verified that the wall plug has power. I will check out more tomorrow.
 
No, the important part is finding where the conductor originate from, and is what JOE D was alluding to and that's opening the recep. box to see if they originate there, abandoning by removing them which removes further confusion, for subsequent owners.

There are a couple of possibilities for the source of and the intent of the original installation; Generally, a yard light fixture is switched, via a standard wall switch or a timer in the garage, however, it could have been hard wired and the fixture operated from a photo-cell.
 
The line did have power, and I know it did tap into the wall plug because I found that circuit breaker and turned off the power. I cut the pipe with a pipe cutter and removed long enough a section to make room for the tree. The tree planting crew was experienced with securing lines under ground (so I was told!). The pipe was cleaned, as best as possible, with a wet rag and dried. The wires were thoroughly wrapped both individually and then together with lots of electrical tape, and then bent back and wrapped, and then bent again to the outside of conduit and wrapped to the conduit. Over half of the roll of tape was used up to wrap the wires and pipes. I would be curious to hear if the crew handled this like an electrician would have.

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No, that is not the way any electrician would "safe-off" an elec. circuit.
 
Hmm! Well it looks like I will be calling my electrical guy this upcoming week!

If I'm lucky I can do the work myself.
 
Just go into the wall plug where it is picking up power and disconnect it there. Then the whole line out of the garage and under ground will be dead.


No way do you want taped up hot wires underground.
 
Remove the wires from the wall box that go outside (unscrew them from the receptacle or whatever the wires are attached to)
 
After you have killed the wires at the outlet. Put a note at the breaker box to explain what those wire are and why they are dead and where they could be found it the yard.
 
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