Owning your own backyard cable
 

Just looking for some advice/ideas from people who have their own cable / know a guy :).
I have a 170m lake and have wanted to put a cable on it for ages. It's a little thin @ 25-30m wide, but I'll widen it in the future (I like air tricks and I don't want to end up on the bank).
How did you purchase your systems (loan? went in with friends? cash outright? built it yourself? kickstarter?) Are you using it commercially or just with friends? Are you using mains power or a generator?

Any recomendations on starting dock and obstacles?

Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Will, I own The Wakeboard Cable. Check us out we can get you setup for under 10 grand.

I can help you with some of your questions... You have plenty of space for your cable even without widening; you can put the cable closer to one shore to leave yourself more space for the air tricks. If you are trying to use a generator you may run into issues, its not necessarily the power of the generator, but its responsiveness under load. If you do get one it will need to be a pretty strong 3 phase generator. Power from the line is going to be your best bet in most situations.

If you like air tricks you will probably really like a couple kicker options. I would recommend splurging for an HDPE top on it. In total the kicker will run you about 1200 bucks to build. A start dock isn't that important; I just built a little beach at my place. Depending on your skill level you might want some long flat rails to practice on 13 inches wide and at least 40 long to make it worth the effort.

Owning a cable is a ton of fun. Good luck!

Cheers David! I'll have a look. I'd love to go power from the line but the nearest connection is 200+m away and will cost me more than the system to put in :(
Definitely love the idea of a kicker and a flat bar! Do you normally float them or use pylons to keep them in place?

I know some people who have run power from the pole 200m look into single 0 romex aluminum power cable, it will do the trick and is way less than copper. If you get a generator it will definitely be more than the cable. Mine is run with the aluminum cable 200 ft or so and it was 350.

I float kickers for sure they are wide and stable, it's better and cheaper to sink rails.

Oh OK. The advice I've received from a couple of sources was due to the distance / motor I'd need some fairly heavy cable. Is it because your system can be run single phase or does that work for 3 phase as well?

You also should check with your electric utility, every utility has different regulations. There is a maximum distance that they will run secondary voltage before they will need to run primary (high voltage) and set a transformer closer to the site where power is needed. The utility always supplies the high voltage cable. If the cable system requires 480 Volts, that distance may be further. Most large electric motors require 3-phase power, if 3-phase is not available, there are phase converters available, but they will add some extra costs to the project. 3-phase motors require less amps than a single phase motor, that's why they are used, and as a result can use smaller wire. I know that the Sesitec requires 3-phase, but I'm not sure about David's system

Ahh I understand. Well I remeasured the site and the transformer is actually closer to 300m away. It's a shame because there's a power pole literally 10m away but it has no transformer and the power company isn't interested in installing one there.

How do you go with engineering requirements and insurance?

If you are handy and have friends willing to help, building one isn't too bad. Here are some pics from my build. We went the route of building our own, because we saw the quality of some of the more reasonably priced systems and knew we could have better for about the same money. The dimensions of your pond are pretty good too, I would say you want to be more at about 30 meters the whole way if digging on it is an option. That is definitely something you could do at a later date too if you decided to. Our span is about 650 ft. which is a little longer than yours. I had to add a dynamic braking unit to help stop the cable fast enough on each end. The weight of that much cable was back feeding the motor and tripping an error in the VFD. A friend of mine has a similar setup which is only about 400 ft. and he did not need the braking unit. Once we got it all dialed in, the thing runs like a champ. Super quiet and heavy duty. Our system also runs on single phase with a converter to 3-phase.

http://www.backyardrailpark.com/buil...keboard-cable/

Looks great :) Unfortunately I have many friends who are willing but not handy :( We looked into building our own but lack the knowledge and experience to DIY. The other issue is we want to potentially use it as a source of revenue down the track (open to public bookings) however in Australia, insurance requires an engineers certification and this is very difficult (and expensive) to get.