I am going to have an in ground pool installed next month and I will be doing the wiring with some help from my brother in law who is an electrician. The pool company wants me to use their electrician so they are giving me little information and no help. I have seen pools that have a panel with breakers, timer, outlet, etc. in them. Do they make a panel that come with everything in it, or do I have to get a waterproof box and install each thing myself? My other question is about a light pipe? The pool company said the will supply light pipes with water in it and the electrician will need to extend it and may have to bend it with the water in it. What exactly is a light pipe and how do you bend it with the water in it? Any info would be greatly appreciated.
wiring my pool
- Thread starter tonygnz
- Start date
Welcome to TFP!
There are many different ways of doing it. You can have a sub-panel out near the pool, or not. That sub-panel can have nearly everything in it, or there can be several boxes with various functions. It depends a great deal on what you are hooking up now, what you want to make allowances for in the future, and what your budget is.
The "light pipe" might mean the conduit coming out of the lighting niche. That doesn't exactly fit what you said, but it is the closest to making sense I can get from what you said. Those conduits are normally full of water when the pool is full. Presumably they will be mounting the niche and running the conduit through the pool wall, and you will need to extend the conduit to a junction box that meets code. Presumably this will be done before the pool is filled, so they won't actually be full of water just yet.
There are lots of special code requirements for electrical work done around swimming pools. If you want to be safe, and/or have electrical inspections that needs to be passed, you are going to need to do a great deal of research and reading before you are able to complete the electrical install.
There are many different ways of doing it. You can have a sub-panel out near the pool, or not. That sub-panel can have nearly everything in it, or there can be several boxes with various functions. It depends a great deal on what you are hooking up now, what you want to make allowances for in the future, and what your budget is.
The "light pipe" might mean the conduit coming out of the lighting niche. That doesn't exactly fit what you said, but it is the closest to making sense I can get from what you said. Those conduits are normally full of water when the pool is full. Presumably they will be mounting the niche and running the conduit through the pool wall, and you will need to extend the conduit to a junction box that meets code. Presumably this will be done before the pool is filled, so they won't actually be full of water just yet.
There are lots of special code requirements for electrical work done around swimming pools. If you want to be safe, and/or have electrical inspections that needs to be passed, you are going to need to do a great deal of research and reading before you are able to complete the electrical install.
Talk to your electrician friend and among other things, ask him if he understands how bonding is different from grounding. If he doesn't, it might be better to let the PB do most of the electrical.
I had a friend that was an electrician also that I wanted to work on my pool, but he didn't really understand many of the nuances of pool electrical work with bonding and didn't even know what the light lighting was all about when he saw it. If you do it, as Jason and Bama said, spend some time making sure you do it right.
My brother-in-law who is an electrician doesn't know what the light pipe is. He thinks it might be the conduit feeding the lights, but the pool company keeps referring to it as a "light pipe that will have water in it". He has never wired a pool. He does mostly commercial work, residential on the side. He says he understands bonding, but I know pools are basically a specialty, and there are a lot of grounding and bonding requirements. I tried to read up on pool grounding and bonding in the code book but it's a little confusing. I better make sure my brother-in-law understands it before we take on this project.
Is it going to have to be inspected? The reason I asked is that if there's an inspector, that's a good resource for what will be required and it usually goes a long way toward making a good relationship if you'll go talk to the inspector and ask before you start building. However, whether it's inspected or not the same rules should be followed. It's all about safety, not inspections.
As you go through it post back and some of us will be able to guide you toward the right direction.
As you go through it post back and some of us will be able to guide you toward the right direction.
