ADMIN – Hi Brian,

At an old house I installed an innotek fence and had some wire left over. I about to install a new petsafe system in a new home. The new yard is slightly larger and I may need some extra wire. Is it ok to mix and match the innotek and petsafe wires in the same system? they are both 20 gauge.

ADMIN – Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the feedback! I’d recommend the second option you mentioned. Once you go through the training and your dogs are contained you want to keep it that way. If you remove their collars and let them roam through the boundary, they will typically get confused later when they have their collars off.

Also by looking at sportdog and stubborn dog collars the look the same except the colors, are these 2 collars the same and is one smaller than the other. Also on the SportDog I see where you can connect it to a ground rod , to protect against lightning strikes, can you also do the same with the stubborn dog or do i need to buy the surge protector?….thanks Doug

My tenants next door moved out after having Invisible Fence installed, they left the wire in the ground so i pulled up about 500 ft of it, i used wire strippers to check the gauge of the wire and its 16 ga solid core wire, i need about a thousand feet of wire to complete the area i was wanting to enclose , I’m going to get the stubborn dog system witch only comes with 500 ft of 20 ga, can i splice the 16 gauge with the 20 gauge stubborn dog comes with?
thanks Doug

ADMIN – Hi Doug,

The SportDog Collar work with the PetSafe Deluxe, PetSafe Little Dog, and PetSafe Stubborn systems and vice-versa, so your plan to combine the SportDog and PetSafe collars will work fine. One thing to note is that the SportDog collar does not work with the PetSafe Indoor zones.

The PetSafe Stubborn collar is similar to the SportDog SDF-100A collars but there are differences, most importantly that the SportDog does not work with the PetSafe indoor zones, but the PetSafe Stubborn does. The base stations are also significantly different, for example the PetSafe Stubborn does not have a grounding terminal which means that you need to use the Lightning Protection Module if lightning strikes are a concern. (note that a power strip surge protector will not work, it protects against power surges coming in through your electrical system, not power surges coming in through the boundary wire)

You want to avoid mixing wire gauges that are very different, such as 20 gauge and 16 gauge. The reason is that the thicker gauge will transmit a wider boundary field around it that the thinner wire. This means that you will have inconsistent field widths in your system, which may create difficulties depending on your layout.

ADMIN – Hi Tina,

You’d need 1,500 feet of wire to cover 1 and 1/4 acres. Keep in mind that most systems come with 500 feet of wire.

http://www.dogfencediy.com/faqs/how-much-wire/

ADMIN – Hi Laura,

You want to avoid mixing very different gauges of wire, because the sections with thicker wires will produce a wider boundary signal than the sections with thinner wire.

You can mix 20 gauge and 18 gauge and the system will work fine, but be aware that the boundary will be wider in the 18 gauge sections than in the 20 gauge sections.

ADMIN – Hi Nicole,

You can mix and match different guages of wire, but try and keep the guages close. The reason we avoid mixing very different gauges is that the fence will be a little wider in sections with a thicker wire, and a little narrower in sections with thinner wire.

We do upgrade the wire in the kit, so if you get an 18 guage wire upgrade all the wire your receive will be 18 gauge.

ADMIN – Hi Tad,

Moles, gophers, etc do not usually cause problems with the wire, (I suppose because wire is not particularly tasty). However, we do hear of the ocassional case where the mole will chomp right through. We don’t have any great solutions for that problem – maybe someone has a solution?