Garage electrical... (1 Viewer)

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gregnash

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So probably know the answer to this (hire an electrician) but figured I would try and see if it is something I can do.

In our house apparently the garage was an add-on as it seems the old owner ran a direct line from the house breaker box to the garage. This line powers 1/2 the garage (east and south walls) which has multiple 110v plugs as well as a few lights.

The main light that is wired into the system is the overhead garage light which I would like to replace with a couple 6' fluorescent bays as well as wire the front of the house for motion sensor lights at the driveway. From what I could tell the owner ran the line into the garage at the main overhead light and then split everything from there. Looking at it I need to rewire the main junction to handle the two 6ftrs and would also like to add a two receptacle plug if possible.

Can provide pics if necessary but hopefully the description helps. I have little to no electrical experience so if it seems like it is definitely not a newbie job (no I do not want to blow anything up resulting in calling out a professional to fix my mistake at 2x the cost of what they would have charged for the job originally).
 
Lighting and recepts should be separate.

A sub panel in the garage would solve this and give you options for future expansion.
 
Teach yourself - what you want is pretty simple.
 
Teach yourself - what you want is pretty simple.
Yeah that is what I was thinking.

Ok so a breaker box in the garage. This will basically serve all my needs for the garage then. How hard would it be to add a 240v plug if one is not existent already?
 
Easy if you have a subpanel.;)
 
Ok any good forums or sites out tree to visit to help me plan this? Definitely not going to happen right away as we got other things to take care of with the house but I would like to get myself prepped as much a as possible.
 
A sub panel for your garage is a must but you need to be sure you have heavy enough cable running between the house panel and the sub panel. The way you describe your set up you only have a single 14/2 wire with 120v going the the garage. Adding a panel to this wouldn't do much for you and you couldn't run a 240 circuit later on. I place to start looking is on the house breaker panel, if the garage feed is a single breaker it is 120v, if it is 2 breakers pinned together than it is 240v. In either case you will only have xx/2 wire, and it needs to be greater than 12 gauge to even consider a sub panel without a wire upgrade.

If you have a basic single 14/2 120v 15 Amp breaker than this needs to be upgraded to feed a sub panel as there is only so much you can put on that circuit. When I built my garage I used a 60A 2 pole breaker in my house panel to feed my garage sub panel with 8 gauge wire and 240 v. I have at least 6 circuits IIRC in the sub panel. 240 40 A mig welder plug, 240 20 A compressor, 20A 110 plugs, outside GFCI plugs, 220v 15 A plugs, lights, overhead door opener plugs. On 2 occasions I have tripped the 60 A breaker in the house panel feeding the garage sub panel due to load.

The bottom line here is you need to be careful to use the correct breaker/cable combo to keep your set up safe, functional and insurable. It is not to difficult to figure out, I have zero formal training but learned by asking lots of questions to people who do know.
 
Ok thanks for the info. The 240v plug was something that would be a nice to have but there is already one in the garage I was just going to put a second one in at the front end of the garage to make moving the welder into the driveway easier. Not a huge deal as I have an extension cord for the welder.

Basic wire that is coming from the panel is thicker than my thumb. I will have to get up there and see if there is writing on the sleeve of the wire that tells me how big it is as I honestly do not remember if there are two breakers or one for the garage.
 
I went out and looked yesterday to see what the outside fuse panel looked like and for those that I have marked as part of the garage there is not double like @gpfj40 was mentioning. So looks like adding another 240v plug is out of the question.
 
I wouldn't say it's out of the question, but adding another CIRCUIT for a second outlet might be out of the question. If you simply want the outlet to be in a different place, and are not going to use the two together,nylon can just wire a second outlet from the first one. If you try to use them together, the breaker will trip.

However, that said, you might be best to use the feeder for the 240V plug as your panel feeder, instead of the other small wire that you mention. The wire feeding the 240V plug is likely larger gauge wire and able to handle the increased load of a sub-panel.
 
Yeah the circuit that the original 240v is on is different that the one that most of the garage lights are on. The current 240v is what powers our clothes dryer and oddly enough shares a wall with the house.
This makes me think that the garage was an add-on at some point after the house was built as everything on that wall (home oil furnace, dryer, couple plugs, garage door opener) are on a different circuit than everything else in the garage. The rest of the garage runs off that single wire that goes ABOVE the garage door opener and then splits from there.
 
So, um.... No welding while the clothes are drying then....
LOL.... yeah unfortunately. Like I said, this is kinda screwy and can definitely tell that the previous owner did it on his own which makes me believe even more that that garage was an add-on. House was built in 1963 and still had the screw-cap style fuses when we moved in. First thing we did was upgrade the exterior panel to breakers and then had the electrician go through the house and switch over all plugs to 3-prong.

Maybe what I will do is take a short video tonight showing where line comes into garage and then splits and runs. Ultimately the thing I want to do more than anything is get rid of the stupid single light can in the middle of the garage and replace with two fluorescent trays.

EDIT: Here is the video...

 
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