Saturday, March 6, 2010

Finding Shorts - Cutoff Switch

So I put a cut off switch in the pasture where the hot wire comes down from the house at the top of the holler and feeds into the fence. It looks kind of confusing in the pic below, but it works and makes sense. The hot wire comes from the right side of the pic and ties into the black insulated wire on the left side of the cedar post. The wire loop attached to the rebar/yellow insulator applies tension to the hot wire. The rebar is also flexible, putting some give into the line when deer hit the line. The black wire that wraps around the post feeds into the cut off switch. It's wrapped to keep from pulling out the switch out - once again because of the deer. A line feeds from the bottom of the switch into the fencing lines. I still need to add two more lines to finish off the fencing. They'll go on top to give the fence a height of 5 ft. The reason for the cutoff switch is to make it easier to find things like the scene below. A rotten branch fell, landing right on the line, snapping the insulator. (The bottom wire is the ground wire.) Having a cutoff switch lets me know if the shorts in the pasture fencing or the pasture running down the holler.
Who needs a gym when you can climb up and down hillside ravines all day?

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