I wrote previously about the complicated wiring I ran between the two houses, the main utility box, the walkway lights, and the pumps. It contained wires for LAN, telephone, 220V mains electricity, 24V DC, and more. As we closed up, I worried that something would come up that I forgot.

Well, I forgot one.

We ordered a gate opener for the front gate a while back and I completely forgot it. 🙁

We ordered a Powertech PL600 sliding gate opener. Our real interest is that it says that it uses a 24V DC motor. While I suspect that it is designed for a 220V AC->24V DC power supply, it should be quite easy to hack it to take 24VDC from our solar power setup.

Assuming I can find a way to run the wire there.

Actually, it isn’t really so bad. Because the gate is on the other side of the parking area from the trenches we dug, we would have needed to run the wires under the cement floor of the parking area, which wouldn’t have worked. But I came up with an idea to run the line from the other side of the house along the retaining wall around the land all the way to the gate. It adds about 10m of wire, but doesn’t require going under a solid cement parking area. Nor does it require redigging any trenches.

So it is probably what I would have had to do had I not totally forgotten it. At least that is what I will tell myself. 😉