While digging in my yard, I unearthed a strange cable. It’s actually two separate wires, each approximately 10 gauge, one brown and one black. They are configured as a twisted pair. It was only a few inches underground. My first thought was that it’s the invisible dog fence, but then I figured an invisible dog fence couldn’t be a twisted pair. I’m believe it should be something communication-related, so maybe an old telephone wire? There is a more modern telephone cable that enters the home above ground from the pole, though. Does this sound like how phone lines were ran 60 years ago when the house was built? I can’t find any pictures online. I reburied it. But if necessary, I can go back outside and get pictures of the wires. As I said, it’s only a few inches down.
Going to need some more information. What type of insulation? Any markings on the insulation? Pictures would be nice! Is the gauge you mention that of the wire or the insulation covering? 10 gauge is pretty thick.
I would expect anything communication related to be in conduit.
Phone or landscape wiring?
Did you check any voltages? My house was built in 1927 and had a 2-conductor phone wire that came into the house, from a pole in an alley, to a little aluminium box on the side of the house marked “Bell”, and from there it went off into the twisted pairs, etc. inside.
Total thickness was around 10 gauge. Maybe it’s 12. The wires were fairly flexible–not stiff. The insulation seems to be standard PVC sheathing. There is no conduit protecting them. It’s just these two wires.
Yea, I was hoping it would be something immediately obvious to someone. I will get pictures and more accurate information tomorrow to aid in the chase. I am going to look around the current phone egress point and see if there’s any evidence of these wires around there. The phone jacks in this house are all still the 4-prong style if you can believe it. And there was never cable tv installed. Presently, there is a single coax running into this house, and it feeds to a single room through the ceiling, not even to an actual wall jack. It was installed by the previous owner so they could have internet. They owned the house for less than 2 years. Prior to them, the house had one owner since back in the 60s.
ETA: I’m not sure who installed the invisible dog fence or how long that’s been here.
There should be something that connects the main cable to the utility, if it’s phone or … a utility.
Does it (or did it) provide power to an outbuilding of some sort?
I remember when my Dad and I buried a cable to provide power to the outhouse at our place up north. It was no more than 12 inches down, but at least we now had a light in the outhouse, and floodlights to cover the path there. No more getting lost without a flashlight, and being able to aim (men will know what I mean) correctly.
I will admit that I had never heard of such a thing as an invisible dog fence. So a quick search and now I am slightly educated as to what one is. It seems that the connection from the control box to the perimeter ring is made with a twisted pair. Which is how you stop that part of the run radiating and creating an unwanted additional fence segment. The actual fence needs to complete the circuit and do so as a single wire.
So, if it is running in a line from the controller towards the perimeter, that could be the answer.
Sending any sort of real power down an unprotected run like that is a seriously bad idea. The only other thing I can think of is an irrigation system, and this is running to a solenoid valve. I have seen haphazard installations with wires just slightly buried. But still a bad idea as it eventually gets damaged.
Total thickness. So two skinnier wires? Flexible, so probably stranded wire. Do you have an in ground sprinkler system? Valves are useually ganged on a manifold. So more likely to be 5-9 wires. But that could be for an odd lone valve.
As a former Invisible Fence owner I concur. The wire will be a twisted pair from the controller to the perimeter of the fence, at which point one wire of the pair will run clockwise along the perimeter and the other will run counterclockwise until they meet and form a loop. Needs to be shallow since the RF signal carried on the wire is very weak. Easy to accidentally cut the wire when doing things like aerating a lawn; a real PITA to locate a cut.
Can you see wires connected to the invisible fence control box? Should be a twisted pair leading from the box. Trace those until they leave the house (our controller was in the garage, easy to trace to the point where the wires went through the wall).
That’s what I was wondering, too. Landscape lighting, a small water pump for a waterfall, birdbath heater, etc. I think some of those things use a “low voltage” wiring system, where a transformer is used to knock down the voltage.
If they were laid sixty-some-odd years ago, it’s be a crap shoot as to whether they’d be in a conduit.
It’s still unlikely they were for an old telephone wire, as it’s just a twisted pair (not two), and 10 gauge is pretty thick for a residential line.
AT&T buried fiber in my backyard unprotected and only about 4 inches down. I’m not thrilled with the process, but they say they aren’t required to come back out to redo it.
Presuming these were done to code, maybe a quick peek at the code (or a summary of it) will help you narrow it down:
Specifically:
Does low-voltage wiring need to be in a conduit?: Whether or not you need a conduit for your low-voltage wiring depends on what types of wires and lights you are using. Direct burial low-voltage landscape wires in 12V and 24V that are connected to a transformer do not need to be in a conduit as long as you bury them 6 inches deep.
So … lighting, invisible fence, or landscape irrigation controllers could all work. Are there any remnants of any of that kind of stuff still extant in the house where you could compare the wiring to a controller with the newly-discovered yard wiring?
There’s no twist with fiber. They do make copper wiring for communication which can be buried without conduit, but 10 gauge is much thicker than what is typical. As someone else mentioned, a pic would help.
I haven’t checked on them recently, but when I bought my house there were two cables running along the space between my duplex and the next one over, right along the property line. They look like the same type of cables that run through my house for my cable TV service. I have no idea what they could be for, but I wasn’t about to try to pull them up or cut them. They’re not in my way, since I never use that space for anything.
I used to have phone/DSL from my phone company and they buried the wire without conduit this way.
The cable ran from the phone company’s street junction box to my house (built in 2005).
The wire certainly wasn’t 10 guage, though.
I learned of them as a kid, late 80s. The dog would come tearing toward the alley where we were walking home from school, quite scary, a bit of a rite of passage. But it would stop short (usually!) and we figured out its big collar thing had a sensor system.
Similar perimeter systems are used to control shopping cart leakage.