Running power to my garage

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well phooey I thought I might need to buy a 500ft roll. O well I dont want to do it twice so I suppose I guess I am going to buy the right stuff. Home Depot has THHN and THWN so I better go look.

Thanks Ray
Pete
Usually you can buy it by the foot.. I suggest you also pull in a pull string made out of plastic for future adding of wires.. Good idea to oversize the conduit for future and ease of pulling too.. This is my professional advice ;)

Ray
 
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Usually you can buy it by the foot.. I suggest you also pull in a pull string made out of plastic for future adding of wires.. Good idea to oversize the conduit for future and ease of pulling too.. This is my professional advice ;)

Ray
I am probably going to buy the 1.5" conduit which is really big for THHN. On the bright side I just need a little tube for the Ethernet !

Pete
 
I am probably going to buy the 1.5" conduit which is really big for THHN. On the bright side I just need a little tube for the Ethernet !

Pete
I would not go smaller than 3/4" price difference is negligible.. Sch. 80 conduit much tougher than 40 too.. Sunlight resistant is a very good thing .. You get lots of frost there and also may need expansion joint which is good for hot and cold as plastic expands and contracts a lot..
 
http://www.electriciantalk.com/f2/nm-b-conduit-underground-21190/ because I don't feel like typing.. I guarantee water will get into this conduit and romex is no good in water.. I would consider this a wet location no matter how good you glue the conduit! You could use UF cable as it is rated for direct burial or wet I would run separate THHN or equivalent rated for this purpose.. Just my 2 cents..
http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=139188

Ray

Exactly! Regular "Romex" is not to be used outdoors.
 
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Why would the lights get bright? If the wire is too small it would cause a high voltage drop which would result in the lights dimming.
On a 220 circuit, if one leg is loaded heavily, and the other is not, the unloaded side's voltage will rise, causing the lights on that leg to get brighter. Used to happen to my dad's house all the time - when the 115 volt well pump started, the kitchen lights would really brighten for a second or two.

Could also be a bad neutral connection.
 
Don't run phone wire in the same conduit all wires in the conduit must be rated for the highest voltage so it must be in a seperate conduit..

Ray
That makes sense, although it was a licensed electrician who suggested that to me. I didn't do it, anyway.
 
We ended up at Home Depot today from what i can tell code won't allow me to run 6-3 MNB although the county says I can and I have read a few horror stories on it . I bought THHN/THWN to run because its got a higher amp rating and it will be easier to pull one at a time. DBC cable was insane 4.95 a foot so forget that. I will save the 6 NM-b for the garage inside to the welder.

Pete
 
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That makes sense, although it was a licensed electrician who suggested that to me. I didn't do it, anyway.
I am a licensed electrician and all wires in the conduit must be rated to the highest voltage in the conduit.. Good practice to run a separate 3/4" for comm and other low voltage wires.. The NEC is the minimum standard so it's always better to do more than this..

Ray
 
We ended up at Home Depot today from what i can tell code won't allow me to run 6-3 MNB although the county says I can and I have read a few horror stories on it . I bought THHN/THWN to run because its got a higher amp rating and it will be easier to pull one at a time. DBC cable was insane 4.95 a foot so forget that. I will save the 6 NM-b for the garage inside to the welder.

Pete
Good move Exlax ;)

Ray
 
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I see you got the advice on what wire to use for the underground run, I assume you are running this to a sub panel inside the garage?

My detached garage has a 10/3 w/G UF-B feeder line run from a double pole 30amp in the main panel to a small sub panel in my garage running a few light and outlet circuits. Its what was there when I bought the place, I havea feeling that someday I'm going to be digging it up to put in a higher amp line.......

Ray can probably also advise us on whether or not the garage needs its own ground rod in addition to tying into the main panel ground back at the house, this is one I have received conflicting info on.
 
I am not an electrician, I can only tell you how mine was done by an electrician right or wrong?
400 amp service coming into shop, 200 amps stays in shop 200 amps continues to house.
200 amp disconnect for house
200 amp panel in each, both have ground rods.
1800 dollars worth of copper line buried in conduit between garage and house and a couple thousand more from transformer to shop.
they said they could run aluminum service coming in but there have been issues with buried aluminum.
personally if I was going to do all that work I would figure wire for 100 amp service
30 amps is not very much if you want to do any work out there
 
I see you got the advice on what wire to use for the underground run, I assume you are running this to a sub panel inside the garage?

My detached garage has a 10/3 w/G UF-B feeder line run from a double pole 30amp in the main panel to a small sub panel in my garage running a few light and outlet circuits. Its what was there when I bought the place, I havea feeling that someday I'm going to be digging it up to put in a higher amp line.......

Ray can probably also advise us on whether or not the garage needs its own ground rod in addition to tying into the main panel ground back at the house, this is one I have received conflicting info on.

The plan is to run 60amp service with a ground rod at the garage off the sub pannel. I have to hook up 230 amp for the arc welder and a few other things like the Radial Arm Saw.

Pete
 
My detached garage previously had 2/0 aluminum direct burial from the house panel to the garage panel. I lost power to the garage over the winter. I metered the panel in the garage and had 0 volts on one leg and 80 on the other, pulled the cover off the panel in the house to meter the voltage there. I found that the garage feeder was tied into the main lug on the meter side of the breaker. So my line from the house to the garage was leaking voltage into the ground and I had no way to turn it off. Called the PoCo and had them pull the meter so I could disconnect the garage feed.

Since I needed about 80' of wire and wanted the ability to have 100 amp service in the future, I went with what they called mobile home feeder wire. It is aluminum direct burial, 2 hots, a neutral, and a ground in seperately insulated conductors, king of wound together. I'm sure it has a proper name but I don't know what it is. I think it is 2/2/2. Aluminum conductors.

Since the previous wire was direct burial aluminum and failed I figured I'd put it in a conduit (copper was outrageous $). I ran it thru some schedule 80 and buried it 18". Everything now hooked back up and working OK. In the house I am currently running a 60A breaker to the garage, but I plan to replace that box and will wire it for full 100A service when I do so. I have no need for 100A now, but wanted to have that option in the future.

I decided to try to figure out what happened with the old wire. I tied it up to the ATV and pulled. Turns out is was only buried 6-8" deep and I had got into it with a shovel (without noticing) when I planted something that spring. If it wasn't for the record drought and lack of moisture in the ground I'm sure it would have failed much sooner. I found a couple places where it had corroded all the way through, and was most of the way thru in others. Not good.
 
I still have a land line and I like it.. I switched to Comcast from Verizon and I will say Verizon while more expensive land line always worked! Comcast backup power dies pretty fast.. Sound quality is just as good though.. Cell service works here but signal is marginal..

Ray
 
Ever heard of apple airport? Stream music from your computer, phone, ipad etc. wirelessly to any speaker.
Heard of it but I have about 7million feet of 25 year old copper speaker wire on a spool to use. Lol I do however have an Apple TV that streams iTunes from the computer does that count ?


Back on topic I started digging the trench yesterday and tomorrow a buddy is coming over to help with the remainder ill put up picks for you guys to see ! It is nice and deep in fact I thought I found Jimmy Hoffa but it turned out to be a tree stump lol.

Pete
 
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Nope... never heard of it. I'm fairly behind on technology. I married my tech support. The better half loves Apple so I'm sure she's heard of it.

Matt
 
But to do that every speaker needs its own built in amplifier and power.
You can get receivers and speakers for free or next to nothing on CL. For something like a garage it's great because you can have access to you all your music and control it from anywhere without having to go to a central stereo to turn it on and off.

Airplay or not speakers need to have a power source. But the airplay cuts down on the wiring costs and it's cool to use your ipad as the ultimate remote. :)
 
For what it's worth, I just built a garage last spring and ran power to it last fall. My garage panel is 60 amps and the wire I used is 4 gauge 4 wire aluminum. The distance between panels is about 85 feet and it cost me $200 or so for the wire. I burried it straight underground, it was rated to do so. It's about 8-10 inches under.

Andrew
 
My garage is seperated from the house by a 6 ft pathway. We might have that dug up this summer to put in a brick walk, if they do I will replace the buried line with 6/3 to upgrade my garage panel to 60A. Since I put gas in the kitchen I can reroute the existing 6/3 copper range hookup to tie in and only have to replace the buried section.

Might also sting a couple runs of cat5 out there to bring network and phone ( I have a huge spool of it left from when I wired the whole house)
 
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