# Wiring question for manifolds far apart



## Amosjdg (Jul 28, 2019)

Hey guys. Wondering what everyone does for wiring valves that are spaced far apart. I got a large area that will have 12 boxes spaced roughly 36 feet apart. So it's over 400 feet in length. Is the only way to cut the 13 conductor wire at each box and make your two connections and splice the rest back together and continue on down the way? Or to shave back the jacket and pull two wires out and leave the others intact?There has to be a better way right? Not really interested in the two wire decoder method. Thanks in advance


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## hsvtoolfool (Jul 23, 2018)

I think this question is over most of our heads, @Amosjdg . It's not really an average residential design.

Personally, I'd run each valve box wire back to a central location in the yard which aggregates all the wires. Maybe use a small above-ground box in a mulch bed to keep all the connections dry and easy to work on. I'd run 4 or 6 conductor wire from each valve box back to this central box. This is just to have some spare wires at each valve. Then I'd send TWO 8 or 10 conductor wires from the central box back to the controller. Having a few spare wires allows you to quickly swap if a break ever happens. It's very helpful for debugging too. Or you can easily add another valve for drip irrigation (or whatever) later. And it's just me, but I'd also put all the wires in PVC conduit. It would save messing up the lawn later if you need to re-pull a leg later.

Adopting the "parallel" layout described above reduces the distance from the controller to any specific valve. This helps reduce voltage drop, although I strongly doubt it would be an issue. Hunter controllers output about 24 V DC at about 0.5 amps, so you'd only get about 3 volts drop in 18 AWG wire across 400 feet. For what it's worth, I played around with this voltage drop calculator to get that estimate...

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/wire/voltage-drop-calculator.html


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## Delmarva Keith (May 12, 2018)

Amosjdg said:


> Hey guys. Wondering what everyone does for wiring valves that are spaced far apart. . . . shave back the jacket and pull two wires out and leave the others intact . . .


Yes.


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