Laying out the Wire

Thank for the info, I will be purchasing a system in the next few weeks and will most def get it from here… this is a very useful and easy to use site! I hate how “invisible fence” proper won’t even give you a ballpark figure until you agree to have some high pressure sales person come out. You guys rock…

Does the fence have to be a continuous loop? I have lake front property and don’t want to discourage the dogs from going down to the lake or dock .

ADMIN – Hi Mike,

The fence does have to make a continuous loop. You can be creative about what that loop looks like, to make it effectively three sides, but you do need a continuous loop of the regular single wire.

We just built a home and but because we are late in the year we did not get the back yard grass growing. We have sod in the front yard. We would like a perimater system once the yard has been seeded but do not want to run the wire back there yet since it will be re graded and that could snag the wire.

If we do a double loop in the front yard, what is the distance between the wires? I assume if they are too close they will cancel out the signal like the twisted wire does.

Is there another option to consider other than double loop now and splice in the backyard next year?

Thanks

ADMIN – Hi Dan,

If you double loop, the two loops need to be at least six feet apart.

An alternative to the double loop is to do a single loop with the the fourth side of the boundary loop running up the gutter downspout on one side of the house, along the gutter, and down the downspout on the other side. The vertical height about the ground allows the dog to go in and out of the house without getting the correction.

Another option would to be to do a loop around front and back yard, just stapling the back yard wire into place. That way when you need to do the grading, you can quickly move that wire, let the grader do it’s work and then put it back in place.

Hi there. I have not purchased this yet, but would like to. I understand from what I’ve read that I can’t put the transmitter in my shed due to below freezing temps. I do have a few areas I can put it inside the house, but I don’t have a garage and what I’m not understanding is how the wires hook to the transmitter. Are there going to be wires that have to run through my house to meet the transmitter? THANKS

ADMIN – Hi Lori,

The wire does need to connect to the transmitter. Most people that put the transmitter in their house will either go through an existing hole (like a ventilation shaft, or under a door), or they will create a new hole by drilling through a wall to create a small portal and then caulking to fill in any excess space.

I was wondering if the wire could be tie wrapped to my chain link fence at the base, or does it need to be buried. If so, what is the range that the dog will stay away from the fence? Thanks

ADMIN – Hi Brian,

You can attach the wire to the chain link fence. We usually just weave it through the fence, but you can also zip tie it in place. I would keep it a little higher than the base so that it stays safe from the weed whacker. The range of the system is adjustable from a few inches up to about ten feet, using a dial on the control box With a fence installation, I adjust the boundary width range it so that it keeps the dog 1-3 feet from the fence.

What is the best gauge of wire to lie if you live in the Midwest? Last summer we insulted our underground fence and it worked great. Then this winter the loop indicator started ringing. Well with 6+ feet of snow on the ground we had to wait tell spring. At this point we are unable to find a break in the wire and I have it all pulled up and looking at starting over. With not knowing what we did wrong we are not sure what to do differently. Just wondering if we should lay a bigger gauge wire than a 20 gauge?

ADMIN – Hi Julie,

Our experience has been that there is no great benefit from running a thicker gauge. Anything likely to break the 20 gauge (lawnmower, edger, aerator), will just as easily slice through the thick gauges. You can of course get thicker gauges either through our store, through most hardware stores or electrical supply stores, but I would not expect any significant benefit.

If your system started showing a wire break in winter when nothing was disturbing the soil, I would guess that either:

(1) There was no break and something else was wrong (try inserting a dummy loop or a short length of wire into the system and seeing if you still get the noise). For example, many of our customers with say the Innotek IUC-4100 or IUC-5100 mistakenly interpret the signal for a low battery or the signal for the collar recharge reminder as a wire break.

(2) Checking the splice points. If the wire is not tied off before the splice or there is a weak splice, sometimes shifting soil will pull on the wire and cause a break.

Let us know if you need any further assistance!

I am installing a fence this week, will there be a conflict if I burry the underground fence wire next to my electric horse fence? Is there a certain distance they should be apart so they do not conflict with each other? Thanks.

ADMIN – Hi Jennifer,

Sometimes you will get interference with an electric horse fence, it is really hit and miss. The only way to know for sure is to test a small section. You will be able to tell if there is interference if the collar does not start beeping in the test section where it is near the fence but works normally elsewhere. You also want to check that the dog fence signal isn’t getting into the electric fence and causing the collar to trigger wherever the horse fence runs even if the dog fence is not in that place. Again, the best way to test is to take the collar and see if it beeps in any sections of horse wire where there is no dog fence wire.

If you do get interference, you want to move the dog fence six feet away from the horse or cattle electric fence. As always, test to make sure the interference has stopped.

Hi, Ok I was wondering if it is possible to run two separate containment system loops from one transmitter via the origin of the loops both be twisted pairs landing on the same terminals on a single transmitter?? Example: A twisted pair on the transmitter running to a loop in the back yard, and another twisted pair coming off the same transmitter in the house, heading the opposite direction, to the front of the house, to a loop there? Take in point I have no desire for the dogs to have access to the sides of the house. Thanks

ADMIN – Hi Eric,

You can run as many loops as you want from a single transmitter, provided that the total length of wire does not exceed the system capacity (rarely an issue on any lot less than 5 acres). But, instead of running both loops to control box (in parallel), you want to have one loop hang off the other loop (in series). This pretty easy, just splice some twisted wire into the primary loop at any point, run the twisted wire to the secondary loop, and splice the twisted wire into the secondary loop.

The reason that it is better to run them in series than in parallel is two-fold. First, in series you will be alerted of any break – in parallel if one of the two loops get a break you will not get any notification from the system. Second, if you run it in parallel the two loops can have very different boundary widths – if you run them in series the boundary widths will be the consistent.

After the utilities were marked, I found out my phone line runs parallel on one side of my planned perimeter (front and back yard loop) for roughly 100 feet. How close can I bury my wire to this line without any interference? The system (IUC-4100) instructions state ‘not within 10 feet’, but this would then place the wire too close to the house. Thanks

ADMIN – Hi Dan,

10 feet is a good recommendation but I think if you stay a minimum of 6 feet away when running parallel to any kind of utility lines. If you need to cross a utility line, make sure to cross over it at perpendicular angle.

Make sure to run the wire and test it before making the install permanent. That way you can easily adjust it.

Hi there we have a vacation home on a lake. We want to be able to let the dog go to the lake. It is not practical to do a double loop back like the directions. I also tried to go down the beach, then back and then back to the other end and then twist the three wires together and it does not cancel out. Can I run the wire through “metal” conduit am
Nd then bury deep into the sand. Will this cancel the signal ? I saw on another website that you could drive copper grounding rods at each corner of the beach and then attach the end of each loop to a post and that would complete the circuit? That does not make sense to me however.

ADMIN – Hi Tracy,

There is unfortunately no getting around having a complete loop of wire. Doing a triple twisted wire does not work. One thing you can do is either make the wire high enough above the dogs or deep enough below the dogs that they don’t get the correction. So either string the wire high above the lake side of your property (perhaps in some trees) or run the wire out into the lake and sinking it to the bottom. If you sink the wire deep enough, the dogs will effectively be able to swim over the wire without getting any correction. The only other option is to do the double U-shaped loop.

The grounding rod trick is really inconsistent in our experience. The idea is that you complete the circuit by having a copper grounding rod on either side and the signal goes through the soil. When we experimented with this method it worked very inconsistently and seemed very sensitive to the soil moisture and the type of soil. So sometimes it would work fine, and then other times it would stop working when it got a bit dry. Also you often had to turn up the signal strength really high to get it working which leads to having very wide boundaries. You can experiment with the copper rods, but I would not rely on it working.

I have an inactive electric fence around my property. The wire is, of course, on insulators and made of aluminum which is cheap, doesn’t rust or corrode (more than the light coat of oxidation it will always have) and is an excellent conductor. I understand that your underground wire is intended to carry RF signals. I think the aluminum wire I have around the property (about 18 acres) might carry the same signal. What would transpire were I to connect the pet deterrent signal generator to the fence wire (the regular fence charger would not be used). Also, I note that your wire appears to be insulated. Were the insulation to break could the signal be shorted to ground (I doubt it but needed to ask.) Thanks, GV

ADMIN – Hi Jery,

The system doesn’t work well on a bare wire. When the wire is uninsulated, anything touching the wire becomes part of the transmission loop and distorts the signal. (Much in the same way that the new iPhone aerial is sensitive to being touched) For this reason, if the insulation gets stripped, you often get a drop off in performance as the current shorts to ground.

That said, if you already have the wire set up around your home – you can always give it a shot. Let us know how it works.

Can you use different wire within a loop? My home has a boundry loop installed with red stranded copper wire, and I see the Innotek systems come with yellow. I’m not sure of the gauges yet, but the yellow Innotek stuff appears to be much smaller solid wire. I have a 5 acre lot and I know it has multiple breaks. I was planning on the 5100 unit, but wanted to make sure I had everything set before ordering.

Thanks!

ADMIN – Hi Jonathan,

You can use any gauge wire you like solid or stranded with any of the systems we sell. The key standard is that the wire is rated for direct burial. Also if possible, try and be consistent and use the same wire everywhere.