House on the lake, needs power run to the boat-dock with lights.

distance to dock is 600ft, putting in lights along the way, 8 pole lights 100watts each, then on dock just 2 plugs and 2 lights. nothing major as far as power needs. maybe 1500watt max.
will this work?
run 220v 10-3 wire, spilt the lights on 1 side using 110v for one switch.
and another switch for dock power, using the other 110v from the 220 line???
600ft is at a straight line, planing on buying 1000ft..
is that too far, for voltage drop using 10-3, 220v, 30amp breaker?????

 

You can't run general purpose circuits off a 30A breaker, so you could run 10-3, but you can only put a 20A breaker. Which is not a problem, you don't seem to have a large power need either way.

There are several requirements for docks.. most of which I don't know since I've never had to work on one. Docks are not something that common where I am.

I'm pretty sure one of those requirements is GCFI protection, but I could be wrong.

 

600 feet is a long way to run residential voltages. So you will either need expensive wire or will need to tolerate some voltage drop. How well your loads can tolerate voltage drop depends on what those loads are. Incandescent lighting tolerates low voltage extremely well. The bulbs just burn a bit dimmer. But those two receptacles on the dock are the wild cards. It depends on what you plan to plug in. Anything with a motor is the worst.

 

getting ready to buy the wire, allready bought the lights. 900 watts will be on one side of the 220v 10-3 uf line. and I'm concern as to what voltage drop and what i'll ever need to plug in at the boat dock? Such as a saw or battery charger... or a boat lift air pump, which is bascally a shop vac blower.

the neighbor's has about the same wire and distance to his dock, and he has enough power, but I'm not sure about mine?
I don't want to buy anything bigger than 10-3uf.
Any other ways to do this job?

thanks.....

 

The effect of voltage drop on things is sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic. Drop the voltage too much, and your saw may not even start. Drop it a little, and your saw may run okay but have somewhat reduced power. Voltage drop may also cause your saw not to last quite as long, but that would be hard to quantify and hard to even know if it happened or not.

On-line voltage drop calculators, such as this one, allow you to see what the voltage drop will be based on distance, amps, voltage, wire size, and wire type. You'll see that 15 amps of 120-volts over 600 feet of #10 copper has a huge voltage drop. Even at 240-volts (which assumes you can balance the load on the two hots), the drop is very large.

How about a generator?

 

Looks like #4 to get a drop under 5%, Hey, I like that calculator!!

 

John just out of curiousity are transformers say like buck boost type or constant voltage transformers ever used to correct voltage drop in this type situation?

 

Code calls for conductors of branch circuits and feeders to be sized as prevent a voltage drop exceeding 3% each. Also maximum total voltage drop on both feeders and branch circuits to the farthest outlet not to exceed 5%, will provide reasonable efficiency of operation. I'm not sure but I don't think this to be measured under load.

 

Just to clarify: This is not a code requirement. It's a code suggestion (called a "fine print note"). And the code makes very, very few suggestions.

 

It must be under load - if there is no load, there is no voltage drop....