Some jackass (me) installed a bunch of under-landscape wiring during a lawn renovation/sprinkler/outdoor lighting and speakers project.
Now that all the grass and plants are coming in nicely, it's time to turn my attention to the speakers and lighting aspects.
The jackass part is that some of the wire I installed is 14 gauge x 4 conductor copper-clad aluminum speaker wire, which is spawned directly from the devil I believe.
The wire, particularly the ends that sat exposed over the winter, is an absolute bear to strip and terminate. Often removing the insulation removes a lot of crumbly aluminum wire as well. If I trim the wire back several feet (where I have enough to do that) or even take virgin wire that's been inside, it's still difficult to get the insulation off without significant loss of conductors. My advice is "don't use this CCA stuff; it's garbage!"
However, I have a handful of runs of a few hundred feet now buried next to sprinkler pipes, other copper wires that I don't want to disturb, under hardscaping and landscaping, so it's not practical to replace the wire with something made of actual conductors, so I need to try to terminate and use this.
I'm considering carefully stripping with a straight blade, using Noalox goop, landing the conductors in 5.08mm pluggable terminal blocks (the "green" EDGK type), plugging those into a small PCB and zip tying the outer cable for strain relief in the field, then using the PCB to carry the signal out to another cable to the speakers or lighting. I have 3 speaker and 2 low voltage landscape lighting runs done with this stuff, so 10 "ends" and 40 "wire ends" in total.
Any tips?
Any contrary guidance? Thoughts on crimp terminals vs the screw lands on those connectors?