When wire needs to be outdoor / direct burial rated
 

HI;

I have a lamp post in my front yard, There is a LB on the side of the house where the cable exits and goes in the ground. In the house the cable ran all the way back to the switch box, where it gets power and is switched.

I had to cut the cable back a couple months ago when working on my floor, and had to junction it in 2 spots to extend it. It is sloppy and I am going to fix it.

At the time, everything was frozen up, and I could not get the LB open. Now that I got it open, I see that they made a junction inside of the LB. Both the cable coming into the LB and the cable going into the ground are the direct burial style of romex.

Is there any reason I need to use the direct burial style of romex back to the switch, if it junctions just outside of the house in that LB? In other words, can regular romex still be used if it only exits the house for a few inches inside of a LB then junctions to direct burial style romex?

Thanks
Jamie

you cannot make a splice in an LB. Change the LB to a waterproof bell box. Then run Rmx to this box, and UF to the light. Could even run 3 wire to the panel and have an extra outside plug. (gfi of course)

No need for a plug here, thought I would have considered one on the lamp post if there was a 3 wire feed going out there.

I will have to figure out how I can change this LB out to a box without damaging the wire to the lamp post. The wire to the lamp post runs under the driveway and would require concrete to be removed to replace it, so I am not very interested in doing that.

Maybe I will just have to leave the old work alone and live with the splice inside.

Jamie

If the splice is already in the LB, then just unscrew the wirenuts and then remove the LB. Not sure what I am missing here.

I am pretty sure you can splice in a condulet.

Just run romex from the switch to the LB and call it done.

The LB is attached to the conduit in the ground that sleeves the romex with a crimp on connector. So I think I will have to cut the conduit just below the LB. If I did that, I could easily attach a new weatherproof box. But how do I remove that LB or cut the conduit just below it without damaging the romex that is buried? There is no slack or play in the romex that goes into the ground. Maybe I have to dig this all up and then put in a new piece of conduit. and slip the old wire up into while I have it all dug up.

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Jamie

This is what I thought, I thought as long as it was a UL listed LB and it had the required CU IN that it was fine to splice in it.

I just don't see any other remotely easy way to deal with this other than just running romex again and making the splice in the LB the way it has been for the past 50 years.

Thanks
Jamie

Agreed.. splice in the LB and be done with it. In general I would not make splices in an. LB code does allow it only if the conduit body was a listed cubic inch volume. And these are the larger sizes.

Just to pick a nit, that's actually an LL, not and LB:jester:

inphase277, 1) you're right on the LL, 2) correct me if I'm wrong (and that will be twice now :)) that splice would not be legal in the LL in GA. Thanks, David

It would be legal if the cubic inch volume were stamped on the LL and it was sufficient for the number of conductors.

I'd just run a new piece of wire & splice it in the same place
I can't see digging up conduit

Must be a local code, because it is not in the state code amendments.

Lamp Post Problem Solved...
 

Well the old LL only stuck into the ground about 10 inches sleeving the romex. I found a new LB made out of AL for just a couple bucks, and it had the cuin printed on it. I put a compression fitting on it to a stick of EMT, on the other side that is in the house, I screwed in a ENT fitting and ran EMT to the switch box, then pulled THHN. Made nice little splices in the LL.

Now when we redo the driveway in a couple years and we can bury conduit, it will be easy to just connect a a piece of schd 80 to this LL.

I didn't bond the ground to the LL, which maybe I should have done. Think I should have drilled and tapped a hole for a green 10-32? I have no even remotely easy way to GFCI this line. :(



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Jamie

I wouldn't lose any sleep over the grounding issue right now. But I would try to get a GFCI on that feed somehow. Perhaps a separate box with a dead face GFCI? And is that EMT going into the earth? And still picking a nit, that IS an LB:laughing: