I am planning on putting a subpanel in my detached garage. I will be running under ground. What size and wire type should I use? Do I need or should I run the wire in conduit? I would like to run coaxial too. should that be in seperate conduit in the same trench? I will pull permits! I just want a refresher course so I dont look like a idiot when I talk to the BI. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Fellas, LMC
The panel will be 36 ft from the subpanel
Replies
There are direct burial cables, but putting it in conduit has the advantage of making repairs or upgrades easier.
And the coax or phone heeds to be in a separate cable.
But why 100 amps. You you really need it or does it sound sexy.
Lots of extra money unless you have a real needed for it.
Most shops can easily get by with 60 amps.
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
100 amps should be ok, We are thinking of putting a pool in soon, I have heat and air too (forced air). Just want to have enough juice. Does it sound sexy to you. The 100 amp breaker for a QO was like 60 bucks.
Thanks again, LMC
What guage wire and how many pair?, I will run direct burial and then a piece of conduit along side. For some low voltage stuff. any other advice?
LMC
Edited 4/6/2007 6:31 pm ET by loucarabasi
#3 for the panel would be good and if your only going to have a phone then one pair will work..but you may want to just pull some 4 pr. and a string for changes down the road and make the pipe size large enough tooI 'm sure Bill or some comm guy will add their 2¢.
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The gauge depends upon the distance and whether you are using aluminum or copper, and the type of wire. If you are using UF, then you will need a larger wire size than if you are running THHW in a conduit. A 5% voltage drop is considered the maximum that should be allowed. If the run to the subpanel is of sufficient length, the wire size may need to be increased to meet the 5% maximum voltage drop. You will probably need something between #3 copper (for THHN) to 1/0 for aluminum - or maybe a size larger if the distance is such that you need to correct for voltage drop. I don't have my copy of the NEC here, so will leave it for others to give you something more exact, although supplying the distance information would be helpful. However, if your line voltage is low to start with, you may need even larger wire sizes to get an acceptable voltage at the end point.For a subpanel, you will need four wires. Two "hot" wires, a "neutral" (termed "grounded conductor" by the NEC), and an equipment ground wire. With larger size conductors, the equipment ground wire can often be of a smaller size (unfortunately, I don't remember what that size is). The neutral and equipment ground wires need to be kept separate at the subpanel. You will also need a ground rod connected to the subpanel equipment ground bus (there are some exceptions to this, but it is what is normally required.) Hopefully, someone with more complete information will fill this in for you.
the distance is 36 feet, and I wrote that #3 would be sufficient as long as he doesn't need the full 100A ..if he does then #1 would be needed...and a ground rod if the garage is a seperate building IIRC.
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., wer ist jetzt der Idiot ?