Getting the Lead Out

We went mining for metal in the front yard the other day. Not deliberately, of course. But these things happen.

Kathy and I were enjoying the nice weather all last week by gardening in the front yard. And by "gardening" I mean "pulling weeds." Almost nothing growing in the yard is there by choice. We just maintain the random flora as best we can, and try to eliminate the least-desirable ones.

I get bored easily, and so after dedicating a few strenuous minutes to weed-pulling, I found another project to occupy my attention. One that involves tools, electricity, and an element of danger. There used to be a big restaurant sign hanging out in the yard (and there soon will be again) that was illuminated at night. There are two lights atop the posts that hold up the sign, and two more lights down in the ground that shine up onto it. The wiring was getting old and ratty and really needed to be redone. Since Kathy had so conveniently removed all the weeds from that area, this seemed like a good time to redo it all.

The DPO* seems to have had a strange attitude toward electrical safety and code compliance. In some places, the 110V wiring was encased in conduit (metal in some places, plastic in others) and buried about a foot underground. No problem there. But in other places, the high-voltage wires were just sitting in the dirt inches under the soil. We've hit this wire with a shovel more than once, and the weed cover was about the only thing protecting it. With the weeds gone, the wire was often exposed, just lying on the ground. Not ideal.

So out it comes. I dug up all the 110V wiring, whether in conduit or not, traced it back to its source, and laid new conduit with fresh new Romex. And it only took me four trips to the hardware store! You know how it is: Once you get started on a fix-it project you think, "as long as I'm here, I might as well..." So the scope of the project keeps changing. And you never seem to have the right combination of elbows and unions in your junk box, do you?

Anyway, when it came time to cut off the old, dirty wires under the weeds, I was having a hard time. My cutters didn't want to nip through the wire as easily as usual. Hunh? That's strange. I know the wire's dirty and kind of stiff, but that's just encrusted mud, right?

Nope. Turns out it was encased in lead! Cleaning off the outside of the wires revealed a lead casing wrapped around it, like metallic Romex. I'd never seen that before. It had the usual 18AWG solid-core copper wires inside, but the outside was a thick jacket of this soft metal. Well, that explains how it held up to all those shovel strikes for so long.


*Damned Previous Owner.