Question about electrical wires outside of new house..

mhp8982

My husband and I just bought a house... and we had the sellers tear out an old pool that was in there.. .and now we have to deal with filling in and seeding the area where the pool was.. which is fine... BUT... there are electrical wires sticking out of the ground where the pool was and more sticking out of the deck.. where the deck connected to the deck that went up the pool. We just left this small part of the deck for a back patio. What on earth do we do with these wires? I haven't brought my dog over yet, because I'm afraid he will chew on the wires.. how do we know if they are dead or not? How can we get rid of them? I especially don't know what to do if they are burried in the ground running to the house.... We would greatly appreciate any advice or help!!

Thanks so much!

Michael Thomas

This is a DIY site, but in this case IMO it's best to have a qualified electrician permanently decommission these circuits. (The underground portions of the wiring can be left in place if they are permanently disconnected at the end supplying the power).

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mhp8982

Yeah.. I just wasn't sure if there was a way we could go into the crawl space or something and find out if they are dead or not...if not we would have someone qualified do it. We may even talk to the seller of the house about it. I was just wondering.

Scuba_Dave

If they are not live I would reconnect them & install an outside box
Always nice to have power on a deck
A meter is a nice way to test the wires for power
Also look for any breaker turned off...and/or a sub-panel that fed this

My neighbor took his pool down
And left the outlet for the pool pump

mhp8982

I believe we already have an outlet out there..... Would it help anything.. if I took a picture of what we have to work with? I can when I get home later? Is it a fire hazard to have them there? I mean I'm sure we could do something temporary to protect them.. until we can get an electrician out there?? I don't know.. if not we'll just have to get someone out there.

mhp8982

I looked at the breaker box.. and there are not any that are labeled to the pool. We noticed over the weekend that the one coming from the deck was completely disconnected.. so that one was fine. So I'm actually assuming that the other one is probably dead too.. it goes under the ground though so we can't do anything with it.. don't know if we can just cut it down or what? My FIL said we could. We will ask the seller tomorrow if it's dead or not.. they would know. The house was a foreclosure that they bought and fixed up to flip. But they are suppose to be stopping by to pick up some stuff they left behind..

speedtree

I wouldn't take anybody's word on whether any particular wires are hot or not unless they were a knowledgeable electrician actually at your house. As was mentioned you can buy meters that can tell you whether the wires are hooked up and hot. I got one at the usual home center for 14 bucks that will tell you if a wire is hot just by holding it near a particular wire. If it's dead you have a little time to investigate whether there's a switch somewhere before you dismantle it. If it's hot call an electrician to take care of it.

Scuba_Dave

If its on the same circuit you could get rid of it
If its on a different circuit I would keep it
Never hurts to have more power
And yes, if you are not sure of how to verify if it is live hire someone

mhp8982

Only problem with keeping it.. is that it's in the middle of the yard.. it's not anywhere that we could really make it into an outlet or anything. Not like the one on the deck.. but that one was completely disconnected. I'm just really concerned with the kids playing with it or the dog chewing on it or something.