John wrote in message
...
I have a pond about 1000ft. from the house that I'd like to run an
underground wire to for an aerator. Is this too long a distance? If
not what gauge wire should I use?

Thanks. John


John,

Your problem is going to be voltage drop. VD increases with distance
and amperage. It also means that the power is being lost somewhere (in this
case, your 1000ft wire) although the utility will still be billing you for
it. Somewhere on your pump there should be a label or metal plate that
tells you how many amps it draws, you're going to need this in order to
determine how large the wire should be.

What you need is a wire gauge length table, incidentally a yahoo search
for "Wire gauge length tables" turns up a few hits, one of which even
includes a calculator (http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm). Keep in
mind that there will always be some voltage drop, but it should not be any
more than a few volts.

One option is to make the line out to the pond 240V, and then step it
down to 120V with a transformer. This will half the amperage across the
1000ft, and as thus reduce the size of the wire needed. In fact, this is
what the utility does and is why the voltage at the top of the hydro poles
is 28,000+ volts.

At 1000ft your biggest cost is going to be digging the trench, in my
locale it has to be 3ft deep. If you're going to all the effort you might
want to consider extra capacity in case you want lights, or a fountain, etc
out at the pond later.

-- Steve