Wiring a Radio RA2 Auxillary Repeater

[Neurorad]

I would use direct burial rated cable, in the conduit. Assume the conduit will fill with water.

You could use 2 non-Lutron branded cables, and save a few dillars, one for power and the other for signal. Slightly more labor.

I used a non-Lutron brand of 2 pair, 18/2 + 22/2 twisted and shielded, but indoor rated, for inside my home.

 

[upstatemike]

I doubt if I will use Lutron brand cable but I can get the same spec cable from third party vendors. I'll look at the 2 cable approach to see what it does for me in terms of cost savings vs extra labor. Also have to do the numbers on using both direct burial and conduit... it is a pretty long run between buildings but I get your point about water in the pipe.

 

[upstatemike]

Another thought just occurred to me.. the main house and the boat house have separate electrical feeds from the pole. Does that mean the shield on the Radio RA Auxiliary Repeater cable is going to try to bond the grounds for the two buildings? What might be the downside of this?

 

[wkearney99]

The repeaters don't use a grounded connection for power.  It's just a two-prong DC transformer.  And I'm imagine Lutron would know better than to have and AC/DC ground plane being shared.  But Lutron's support should be able to answer this question.  
 
Now, the question of inter-building connections and potential for lightning issues... that'd be my bigger concern.  At the very least I'd add an ethernet surge-suppressor on the MAIN repeater before it connects to the rest of the house's wired network (and it's power connection).  With the hope that if there's any lighting strikes it'd be limited to the repeaters and not up to the rest of the network.

I've never asked Lutron about surge suppression on the aux link.

 

[upstatemike]

Good point. I need to think about lightning protection for the whole low voltage bundle between buildings. Besides the RS485 wire there will be several Cat6 and RG6 runs included. Also ADT is supposed to tie the boat house into the main security system but I don't know what they will need for that.

 

[wkearney99]

I've had a few inter-building connections have trouble with surges, most typically commercial PBX setups though (POTS lines, analog extensions, etc).  Always ran network fiber between buildings, as Ethernet gear was always too expensive to 'roll the dice'.  But these days there are more options for surge suppression for wired Ethernet.  Though I'd imagine there'd still be the 300' limit that would make fiber necessary, even without surges.  Kind of a shame there's no ethernet connectable Aux repeater. 
 
You can, of course, use multiple main repeaters, but I'd worry about exceeding the limits of 100 devices per repeater; two total.  Be sure to plan around the devices on the Aux being part of the count for their host Main repeater.  I've run into a situation or two that had too many devices/rooms crowded onto the 1st repeater, making it impossible to add motion sensors/rollbacks without first moving stuff off to the 2nd main repeater.  Leaving some 'headroom' during multi-repeater setups is a good plan.

I've owned enough boats over the years to know lightning is something to accept as LIKELY to happen eventually.  Plan for it, either through prevention hardware or insurance, hopefully both.  
 
But for this situation, yeah, I'd reach out to Lutron to see what their recommendations are for it.  

 

[upstatemike]

I wonder what DirecTV, Spectrum Cable, and ADT would say if I sugggest we want to do everything with fiber? I suspect they would not be too enthusiastic. I'll need to think about this some more once I have a final count of what all needs to be in the cable bundle.
 
I don't know if another main repeater connected via ethernet might be a better option. At the end of the day all they want is 2 switches in the boat house to be Radio RA to control some exterior pathway lighting either from the house or the boat house (lighting will be powered from the boat house.) Maybe I should put a repeater on the side of the main house closest to the boat house and try to hit the switches with Clear Connect. The side of the boat house towards the main house is kind of dug into a steep bank so the signal might have to travel through some earth and concrete to reach the switches.

 

[wkearney99]

I hear ya.  I wouldn't hold out much hope for running anything other than regular Ethernet over fiber.  It becomes a hassle trying to find all the right adapters, converters and other dongles.  But you'd have to use fiber unless it's absolutely under 330' feet TOTAL of wire length, as that's the max for wired Ethernet.  Well, not without getting into a whole other set of converters (essentially a DSL setup, etc). 
 
I've had good success using Lutron's Ra2 motion sensors in an outdoor environment, but this was under the cover of a porch roof, not hanging out exposed on a wall.  It might be useful in a boat house to have motion activated lighting.

I gather you're talking about putting the AUX repeater on the closest side of the house?  Any chance you could get down there any do a field test?  Bear in mind, foliage coming out in the Spring/Summer may have a negative impact on coverage.  I don't know how sensitive the Ra2 signal is to that, but know it's a problem for many other setups.
 
I don't know that I've ever seen any discussions on distance coverage across different devices.  As in, switches vs dimmers vs sensors, etc.  I know Lutron's perspective is "do not do that, use the proper aux repeater and wire".  In my very limited testing I can only reliably get about 100' using a Pico.
 
There's also the possibility of using a VCRX in the main house and the car remotes down in the boat house.  Those have a lot more coverage distance than regular switches or Pico remotes.  That and the VCRX also has a contact closure input that could potentially be used in some fashion.   But then they're not 'normal looking' switches.

If there's an automation system you could also go the route of using that to integrate two separate systems.  A separate Ra2 Select or Caseta setup in the boat house could communicate over plain Ethernet.  

If it's not a complex system and the Aux repeater with Lutron's wire will work... I'd go that route.  Bite the bullet on the right wire.. once and not be haunted by work-arounds later, right?

 

[LarrylLix]

If you can use Ethernet between the buildings consider a proper WiFi forcuses antenna. It would likely be cheaper than a firbre optic setup..
 
If you run conduit don't forget to sand or drainage material pad your elbows that run up the wall. Frost can and will rip the pipe apart or damage the passthrough holes or pipe.

 

[upstatemike]

Was thinking at the lower end of the conduit (the boat house) I would use a T instead of an elbow for the turn up the wall and then dig a small dry well below it with gravel and sand so any water drains there. Not sure how to handle the main house because the pipe will likely go into a basement area which means the run goes down the wall instead of up. Don't want to drain water into the basement so I have to think about the best way to engineer that entry point.

 

[vc1234]

Was thinking at the lower end of the conduit (the boat house) I would use a T instead of an elbow for the turn up the wall and then dig a small dry well below it with gravel and sand so any water drains there. Not sure how to handle the main house because the pipe will likely go into a basement area which means the run goes down the wall instead of up. Don't want to drain water into the basement so I have to think about the best way to engineer that entry point.

Water, leaking or condensed, is  a problem with all electrical conduits -- they are not supposed to be water tight. One solution is not to use a conduit at all, another is to try and seal it with something like
 
https://www.polywater.com/product/polywater-fst-foam-duct-sealant/
 
You can also try and arrange for the house conduit entry above the ground with perhaps a drain of some kind.

 

[LarrylLix]

I wouldn't try to enter a building below grade as the cable entrance will never stop weeping no matter how well you seal.

Use pipe and seal the warm end of the pipe and leave the cold end open to the air to allow condensation to get out.

Pad your elbows in the ground with material that remains liquid like sand or pea gravel so it cannot pull down as the ground rises and falls with frost. There are expansion joints for pipe.

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