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Instead of substantial Christmas presents this year, LOML and I have just been taking care of other big ticket purchases. I'm a bit late posting these pics, but I figured I'd show that things are actually moving in the right direction towards finally getting my shop set back up.
A little more than a week ago my electrician buddy Dave and his helper Anthony came by and installed an 80 amp subpanel, a gutter box for future expansion, a couple of 20 amp 120v and 240v outlets, and a junction box wired for 40 amps at 240v to wire my compressor into. Here's a bit of photographic evidence:
This is the existing 200 amp panel which was conveniently already in the garage. The hole to the left of it was an exploratory hole just to verify where the wall stud was. The main panel didn't have enough spare slots for the breakers I need for the shop, so a subpanel was in order. There was a 50 amp circuit that was intended for a hot tub (which we will never have). There are also 30 and 40 amp circuits for an electric dryer and range, neither of which is being used either, since we installed gas appliances. So I had plenty of spare capacity to handle the shop power.
This shot was taken a little later, after Anthony got the new 80 amp panel in the wall. Since the panel was flush mounted, we decided to add a surface mount gutter box to make it easier to run additional circuits in the future. (That's where the orange Romex is going in this pic.) And for the record, I didn't do the painting around the existing boxes and conduit. That's my BIL's work that was done before we moved in, and he doesn't to trim, lol. One of these days I'll touch it up when it bothers me enough. The main thing is the dark brown walls are now a lot brighter.
Here's Anthony installing the gutter box.
And the finished installation of the subpanel and gutter box.
The new panel has two 20 amp 240v breakers, a 40 amp 240v breaker for the compressor, and a total of four 20 amp 120v breakers. Two of those breakers are not connected to anything yet, but they're already wired and stubbed out to the gutter box. It'll make it easy to add a couple more 120v circuits in the future if I decide I need them. (The garage already has a three 20 amp 120v circuits coming out of the main panel as well. Those cover the lighting and a pair of circuits by the bench on the other side of the room.) To be honest, we could have made do with an 8-space subpanel, but Dave found the 12-space panel with four free breakers for about the same price, so we decided why not?
For now, I have these new boxes on the wall, about 10 feet or so away from the panels. The blank box is the 40 amp circuit for the compressor. The 240v outlet is a 4-conductor twist-lock. I'm only using 3 of the conductors, but I found a great deal on the 4-conductor outlets and plugs when I wired my previous shop, and it was less expensive to keep using this style of outlets than to replace all the plugs and outlets on my tools and extension cords.
And they installed pretty much the same thing on the ceiling, minus the 40 amp air compressor circuit. I'll add anchored strain reliefs for anything I plug into the 120v outlets. That approach worked well for me in the last shop.
Next step is to install my air line system, then move the air compressor out of storage and into the shop. Once that's done, I'll have a moving day and get a few buddies to help me move the rest of the tools into the shop. Looking forward to that day.
A little more than a week ago my electrician buddy Dave and his helper Anthony came by and installed an 80 amp subpanel, a gutter box for future expansion, a couple of 20 amp 120v and 240v outlets, and a junction box wired for 40 amps at 240v to wire my compressor into. Here's a bit of photographic evidence:
This is the existing 200 amp panel which was conveniently already in the garage. The hole to the left of it was an exploratory hole just to verify where the wall stud was. The main panel didn't have enough spare slots for the breakers I need for the shop, so a subpanel was in order. There was a 50 amp circuit that was intended for a hot tub (which we will never have). There are also 30 and 40 amp circuits for an electric dryer and range, neither of which is being used either, since we installed gas appliances. So I had plenty of spare capacity to handle the shop power.
This shot was taken a little later, after Anthony got the new 80 amp panel in the wall. Since the panel was flush mounted, we decided to add a surface mount gutter box to make it easier to run additional circuits in the future. (That's where the orange Romex is going in this pic.) And for the record, I didn't do the painting around the existing boxes and conduit. That's my BIL's work that was done before we moved in, and he doesn't to trim, lol. One of these days I'll touch it up when it bothers me enough. The main thing is the dark brown walls are now a lot brighter.
Here's Anthony installing the gutter box.
And the finished installation of the subpanel and gutter box.
The new panel has two 20 amp 240v breakers, a 40 amp 240v breaker for the compressor, and a total of four 20 amp 120v breakers. Two of those breakers are not connected to anything yet, but they're already wired and stubbed out to the gutter box. It'll make it easy to add a couple more 120v circuits in the future if I decide I need them. (The garage already has a three 20 amp 120v circuits coming out of the main panel as well. Those cover the lighting and a pair of circuits by the bench on the other side of the room.) To be honest, we could have made do with an 8-space subpanel, but Dave found the 12-space panel with four free breakers for about the same price, so we decided why not?
For now, I have these new boxes on the wall, about 10 feet or so away from the panels. The blank box is the 40 amp circuit for the compressor. The 240v outlet is a 4-conductor twist-lock. I'm only using 3 of the conductors, but I found a great deal on the 4-conductor outlets and plugs when I wired my previous shop, and it was less expensive to keep using this style of outlets than to replace all the plugs and outlets on my tools and extension cords.
And they installed pretty much the same thing on the ceiling, minus the 40 amp air compressor circuit. I'll add anchored strain reliefs for anything I plug into the 120v outlets. That approach worked well for me in the last shop.
Next step is to install my air line system, then move the air compressor out of storage and into the shop. Once that's done, I'll have a moving day and get a few buddies to help me move the rest of the tools into the shop. Looking forward to that day.
