What you should know about installing garden pond electrics

All of the possible accessories and features, even if they hadn't crossed your mind to have, should have been catered for in the installation; pool heater, a pump for an inpool fountain, filter and filter pump, u/v lamp, waterfall, rockery lights, underwater lights and squirting frog. Certain late additions to the system are either disruptive to install or their performance is compromised by bad positioning or too many fittings, or they look bolted-on and an unsubtle eyesore.

Even if the hobby doesn't grab you and take over your life, you will find other people think water garden orientated Christmas and Birthday presents are just what you need and so once you have a pond you acquire these unexpected things whether you like it not.

There needs to be least 13 amps worth of mains supply out there so that all contingencies are catered for (unless you are really going to show off on the pump/white water waterfall side of things - then you should be thinking of 3 PHASE electricity.)

The cable should be of the correct grade of armoured cable, which should run, where possible, at a minimum of 18ins/600mm depth set in 6ins/150mm of gravel with a plastic warning strip laid on top. These specifications could change at any time so check them out with a qualified electrician.

Many electricians are content to run ordinary weatherproof cable through alcathene water main pipe to protect it. If you leave 'draw cord' in the pipe then you have the future option of pulling extra wires through for additional circuits. If you have run armoured cable out to the water garden then it might seem as though you are stuck with having to switch items off and on where the mains terminates at poolside. If the cable was 'three core', an electrician used to use the 'armour' of the cable as an earth wire and use two of the wires as separate 'live wires' and the remaining one as a combined 'neutral'. That combined neutral trick is not so clever now in case you mix up the ohms, that is you may have different units running with different resistances. That may have worked with old-fashioned fuse box, but it will cause an efficient RCD to trip. Really '4core' cable is the only option for creating 2 circuits, individually controllable from the house.

Pool pumps, lights, u/v lamps etc, must be on an outdoor circuit, completely divorced from the house ring main, fitted with the latest technology in circuit breakers. Just plugging them into the back of an old lawnmower RCD on the house ring main is an inadequate compromise because there will always come a day when that gets left out, having been used elsewhere and lost for some reason. If you can afford it, have a separate circuit breaker for each individual electrical item, filter pump, waterfall, u/v etc., or at least keep lighting separate from everything else as lights tend to be the most temperamental items in regard to earth leakages.

All electrics and electrical items need to be installed to the correct National standards. If you dont have them installed by a fully qualified electrician, at least have them checked by one.