Thinking of redoing whole yard | Page 28 | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

Dude, why didn't you trench a water line down there when all of the excavators were onsite?

OK, go 3" or more if you can on conduit (or even 2 3" runs) and lay down detectable warning tape. But you probably know all of this. 

Well, as in all things, it depends. For me, it made sense for me to leave my equipment out near the panels and run AC back to the house 220 feet. Part of this was due to cost of wiring (DC requires massive wire to not get line loss with that distance) but also because every time I would expand the system I would potentially need to run *more* wiring back to the house 220 feet. For example, if I add a wind turbine in the future with my current setup I can just run the new cabling ~20 feet or so to the power shed with my same AC cabling providing power to the house. If my equipment was at the house I would either be re-trenching or trying to route more crazy expensive DC cabling through existing conduit the 220 feet back to the house.

In your case, your distance is much shorter and if you don't plan on expanding much beyond your initial solar installation than you may be good to have the equipment close to the house in your shed. Also, I think we talked about getting you set up with a grid tie system. If I remember your layout correctly your shed is near your power pole, right? That will help with getting it grid tied vs. trenching the grid power back to your barn.

Make sense? I can ramble.

Sounds like you are good to go with the shed. If it was me, I would trench 2 3" conduit runs going out to the barn. That way you can easily pull your DC cabling back to the house and also send back AC power, RJ45, etc. if you want to the barn. A little cost in conduit now would save you a ton of headaches in the future.