Power Supply To A Garage/workshop

Hi All -



I'm looking to add some outlets in the garage (currently have only one) for my workshop. At most, I'll be using a 13 amp table saw and 11 amp shop vac simultaneously.



I had an electrician come out for an estimate and while it was a fair price, I want to do this myself to build some confidence.



A few questions: he said they would probably add 2 15 amp circuits to handle the load. Is that necessary? Or can I add say one 30 amp circuit?



2nd: my garage is drywalled (and insulated). It will be much easier to have the outlets (and wire) on the exterior of the wall. What would be the best materials for this? My breaker is located in the garage and the outlets would run directly out from the side as seen in my poor illustration.



Since it is set into the wall, I'll have to run the wire from the breaker into the back of the first box. Is that as simple as it sounds, or is there something that I am missing?



Any help is appreciated.



Cameron
      

Greetings,



I am looking to wire a sub-panel in my barn to support a general workshop.  Loads would include standard woodworking tools (including 220V table saw), welding, air compressor, etc.



The house has 200AMP main breaker and minimal in-house loads.  Dryer is gas, Oven and cooktop are gas.  Water heater is off the oil furnace.  I think the biggest single load is the well-pump and/or fridge compressor.  We do have sporadic toaster oven, hairdryers etc.  Otherwise its just lights, ceiling fans, flat-panel tv, stereo...



We had 4" conduit installed to the barn, so there is plenty of room to pull a big cable.  The entire run from the house panel to the barn totals around 155' (probably less, but rounding up)



My questions a



Can I pull a 100AMP sub-panel from my main house panel as described?


Would 4/0,4/0,4/0,2/0 aluminum service entrance cable be a good choice for this run?  Could I do it with something lighter?


Could I put an additional sub-panel in the garage (about halfway to the barn) by interrupting the run?  The garage subpanel would have a 220V plug for possible welding and/or electric car charging.  Would this require a separate run?


Are there any other considerations I should be thinking about in planning this?




Thanks for any thoughts you can share on this! 



Cheers,



pete
      

Hello All,

Hopefully I am posting this in the correct forum!

I am new to the forum and I have a question I would like to pose.

I am trying to make an extension cable for my telescope hand control.

I have had good results with the 25' length  but it is to short . So I made another one 50' in length but it give me connection error codes. The cable is correct as it worked for a while .I am using an rj12 6pin connector with cat5 cable(24awg). The power supply is 12V DC with 2.5 amps running on house AC.

The question is: If I put a different power supply on that is 12v DC using 5.0 amps will the increase in amperage effect the DC current flow?



Thanks,

Don
      

Hi everyone, this is my first post.  Hope it works out!



I have a new detached two car garage with two 115v 15A circuits in it.  I want to put in a 12000 BTU window air conditioner.  One circuit runs 10 fluoresent bulbs in the garage and a few in the house but also runs a few outlets in the house that see occasional use by a 12A vacuum cleaner.  The other is solely used for the door opener and outlets in the garage where I often use a 12 amp skill saw. 



Both circuits are aqccessible, which one should I choose?



Puttster
      

I want to put switch in house to control lights in garage.  How do i run romex from garage through drywall into house?  Do i need to use conduit to secure wire.  Thanks
      

I want to set up a hobby woodworking shop in my garage. I was going to run from the panel maybe four or five 12/2's to accommodate lighting, power tools, dust collection, etc. or should I put a subpanel 60 to 100 amp? The main panel is on an outside wall on one side of the house and the garage is on the opposite side of the house. The distance from the panel to the entry into the garage is about 50 ft. I would be pulling wire- a straight run- through a ceiling chase that runs the length of the house. No basement.
      

I built a free standing garage with main power tapped from the home breaker box.  The contractor pulled 4 wires via a conduit to the freestanding garage panel which supplies lights, a garage door, and two 20 amp outlets.



Everything worked well initially, but about 1 week ago one section of the lights in the building went out.  The contractor came out and found that one of the two hot wires in the garage panel was only seeing 100 volts and that went down if anything else was turned on.  He swapped one of the ground wires for the bad hot wire and everything now works. 



What would cause a situation like this where the hot wire apparently had a voltage loss?  Is it safe to continue with the fix where the faulty wire is now the ground?



Thanks in advance!
      

I had a tv plugged into an outlet in my garage. The tv crapped out due to bad wiring {I think}. The reason I say bad wiring is because when I have a radio plugged in I can hear static through the speakers due to the wiring. Garage was built in the 70's. What do I look for when checking the wiring from the house to the garage and then all the garage wiring itself?
      

i want to add a sub panel to my detached garage 30 ft from my house.it will need to run a 220 compressor 2 to 3 outlets and a 5 person hot tub behind the garage.what size sub panel would i need to do the job?
      

Here's a somewhat unusual situation. I have a digital video recorder and a small monitor, both of which I'd like to power off of a car's cigarette lighter simultaneously.



So basically I want to eliminate the standard outlet plugs (and the power supply on the monitor's cord, like a laptop's power supply), and solder everything into one cigarette plug.



I already know how to solder +/- leads to the cigarette lighter, then split into two, but I'm not sure what needs to be wired between the lighter plug and the components so that the proper voltage and amperage gets to each component.



Any help filling in the gap in my diagram? Thanks!