Ok, I have a question. I'm waiting for a friend of mine who is an electrician to come out to look at my situation. I live about 600 feet back from the road and I'm building my garage about halfway down my driveway. I have 200 amp service in the house and the breaker box is full of breakers with no open spaces. The guy who wired the box did a crappy job initially and when I go to use anything like my compressor, the thing trips a breaker. The air conditioner browns out the bathroom. Its dumb. Anyway, I want to run power out to the garage from the panel in the house. I have to run a lift, a decent size compressor(not sure how many amps) lights, heat, and outlets which I do use a 110v welder on. I've been told it can be done, but I'm waiting for my electrician. Of course I don't have any patience, so I figured I'd post this thread. What size wire will get the power out to the garage and what am I going to have to do in the house to get the wire in the box? Ideas? Thanks Bob
I'm not sure but depending on your local electrical code I think you can run an auxiliary breaker box out of your existing box so that you can make more connections. I have the same problem here, if I need to run one more circuit I'll be in trouble. :bglasses:
You should run a seperate service to the garage. If you plan on having an air compressor, lift, welder, heat, etc., you're probably going to need 100 amps just for the garage. That's the right way to do it, especially if you're having problems with your existing service. I wouldn't take the chance.
Agree with Dominic 100%. Once that's done, or during, go back into the house & make changes to what you have. If designed & installed properly, you shouldn't see any tripping breakers or brown outs....none! Check your local codes. The NEC is a bit different from the CEC, but generally the same. Your compressor is likely drawing a very high current only to start. Once running it will fall way down. You can oversize the breaker by up to 300% in some cases when using a motor starter with overload devices installed. Breaker protects for short faults, overload protects motor from overloading. Don't forget.....check your local codes!
bob, the best way is run another single circuit breaker box off the main incoming line with a 100 amp fuse. then run your breaker box in the garage. you should have at least 2 guage running that far from the house. better oversize than undersize for the main line. also run 12 guage wire for all your plugs and lights. overkill, but you may want to change something down the line and your all set for it. make sure you put plugs in all over so you dont have to trip over extension cords. get out the bucks for the wire!!! btw, dont forget the fire extinguishers. john
When you bury the electric, also bury some 1" - 2 " plastic or pvc so you can run phone, cable or watever. I ran 3- 2 gauge wires to the garage with its own panel. More than enough power. I also ran 1" plastic gas line for natural gas, and 2 - additional 1" plastic gas lines. 1 - for water (which I disconnect and blow out in winter) and 1 for all my other stuff. Overkill is better and easier to do once. It also helps to have buddies who work the utility company's. Tony
When I ran electric and gas service out to my garage 18 years ago, I later put a blacktop parking area above the ground where the PVC electric service pipe and the steel gas pipe are buried. They were both buried about 2 feet deep. Well as my luck would have it, the gas pipe began leaking a couple years ago and I had to replace it. When I later fished a sattelite TV cable through the conduit, it came out wet.......so the PVC prolly broke also. I guess putting blacktop over everything was a bad idea. ou:
Bob: It sounds like now is the obvious time to upgrade all of your electrical power needs. You may find it considerably cheaper to contact the power company and upgrade your main supply to 400A. Also, upgrade your distribution panel from an apparently small number of breakers to a 30 or 40 breaker panel. Off the 400A you should feel very comfortable in running a 100A feed into the new garage. If you find the 100A feed is not enough, run a second feed. Most of the newer 4,000 sq.ft. homes today are running 400A service. It shouldn't be toooooooooooooo expensive.. Good luck.
There you go.... The wires entering your house to the main panel will NOT be capable of handling the increased current load. Get several estimates and make sure they are all quoting the same size service, also make them specify brand name(s) of the panel. I'd recommend Sq D (not the home line cheap crap). :bglasses:
Bob before I start let me explain what I do for a living I work for a REA in Montana which is an electrical utility and this type of problem is nearly a daily thing. Depending how your utility charges for larger services (400a) this could get really expensive. In your new shop going from a 100a to a 200a service will mainly give you more room for more circuits. Generaly loading a shop up to 100a could be rare, unless everything was turned on and running at max. The distance from your house to the shop comes into play. The longer the distance the bigger the feeder wire. If your panel is full in your house leave it alone, I am assuming that your compressor will going to your shop so that may elliminate the browning problem. Sometimes the decision comes down to a dollar issue. Not knowing how everything sits in your yard and your utiliy rules, I would go for a new 200a service at your shop if you are going to have electric heat. If not go with a 100a service. Don't go cheap inside stay away from the bargains pakages. Sq D is the Caddilac of breakers stay away from the HOMELINE series, ITE Siemens is the next step down. Put in alot of outlets there cheap to do now tuffer to do later. The other option would be to put it in conduit and surface run everything expansion later is easier that way but more expensive. If you run an underground feeder from your house put it in plastic for protection especially where it is driven over. Hope this helps and not confuses. Thanks Rick
Thanks for all the replies guys! Right now I'm looking at getting the power company to come out and splice into the power running down the driveway. My sister n law is a lineperson for the utility. She says I can splice into the main wire and just run it to a new meter on the garage. I think all I would have to do is dig the trench, put in some schedule 40 conduit and buy a meter box and install that. then the power company runs the cable and hooks it to the meter which they provide. Sounds fairly inexpensive. I'm waiting for a tech guy from the utility to call me back to see if this can be done and what exactly I would be responsible for. I'd rather do this than run 300 feet of wire from my panel in the house to the garage. My fingers are crossed that it will be relatively inexpensive, or at least comperable to running the wire from the house. I definitely won't skimp on the inside. plenty of outlets and lights and good panels and breakers. We don't want any probelms. Thanks guys! Bob
