Peg it for the first season, bury it once you are sure. The layout is almost never right first time, and a buried wire is an argument you cannot win.
The case for pegging
A pegged wire sits on the surface, held down every metre or so, and the grass grows through it within a few weeks until it disappears. It can be lifted and moved in minutes, which is what you will want to do after the first month, when you discover the machine clips a bed corner or cannot find a passage.
The cost is exposure. A pegged wire is cut by a spade, by an edging iron, by a fork, and occasionally by the mower you still use for the edges. Every one of those is a repair.
The case for burying
A wire a few centimetres down is out of reach of most of that, and it is invisible permanently rather than for the eleven months of the year the grass is growing.
The cost is commitment. Correcting a buried run means lifting turf, and few people do it — they live with the layout instead.
The things that actually cause trouble
Joints. Every joint is a future fault if it is not a proper waterproof connector. Twisted-and-taped joints in wet ground corrode, the signal degrades, and the symptom appears a season later.
Gauge. A thicker conductor is more robust and carries the signal further on a large perimeter. The wire supplied in a starter kit is often the thinnest the maker could justify, and on a long boundary a heavier replacement is a sensible upgrade.
Corners. A sharp corner is a place the machine turns hard and the wire gets scuffed. Rounding them slightly helps both.
Depth. Each machine has a limit stated in its own manual. Below it the signal weakens, and a weak signal shows as a robot that overshoots rather than one that stops.
How this site handles it
The boundary wire family here treats the cable, the pegs and the connectors as three distinct articles, because they fail differently and they are bought separately. Pages print the stated conductor diameter and the insulation where a maker gives them, and say when a listing is a bundle rather than a length of cable.
The questions that keep coming in
How deep can the wire go before the robot loses it?
A few centimetres is normal and the machine’s own manual states its limit. Deeper than the maker allows and the signal at the machine weakens, which shows up as a robot that overruns the boundary rather than as a robot that stops.
Can I join two lengths of wire?
Only with a waterproof connector made for it. A twisted joint in wet ground corrodes, the resistance climbs, and the symptom is an intermittent fault months later that looks like a failing robot.
Last reviewed 26 September 2026