Electrical advice.
 

At my old house my shed was hooked to the house with a heavy extension cord which worked fine cause I was mostly just running lights but I'd like to be able to run a decent compressor and a 110 welder in the future. The shed is about 100ft from the house and I'm not sure what wire I will need. I plan to put it in the ground so I know I will need direct burial cable. The panel in the house only has one open spot so I plan to run that to a second box and then out to the shed with another box in the shed. What size wire should I be looking for? The welder needs 30amp on max settings and I haven't decided on a compressor yet. It's not a big deal if I can only run one at a time.

Couldn't size the wire for you but I would recommend conduit vs direct burial.

What is the size of the house service?
Maybe you should run a whole new line out there with it’s own panel.
I don’t know PA code, but that’s what I would do.

The house is 100 amp but everything in the house runs on natural gas with the exception of the dryer.

Mine is 160' from my house it has 3/8 " wire buried in a pipe
Not sure what the gauge # is , no problems....I bought it this way

Go here for a calculator and fill in your parameters.
https://www.southwire.com/support/vo...calculator.htm

Direct burial is "the norm", but if allowed I would use the gray pvc conduit buried.
Then pull individual wires (not the all-in-one romex).
Reason being, if one wire develops a problem you can pull out and fix or replace just that one wire.

I would also try to run 220 if at all possible then use 110 from the sub panel in the shed. When you can get a super deal on some sort of 220 machine, you will kick yourself for not running 220.

I assumed we were talking 220.
Definitely run 220. Wires will be smaller too
OO7 is correct on pulling individual wire.
You won’t be sorry you did this Tim.

Agreed.. Plus you could snake in a couple extra wires if you wanted or future growth,back up circuit, or a 110 circuit off a different breaker in the house for out side lighting around shed. :beerchug:

Plastic is cheap. Oversize the conduit. Definitely run 220 if at all possible. Idea of leaving a pull wire or string is smart too.

I would look to the future if I were you Tim. 100 amp service is small. You might be able to put the shed on 50 amp subfed service, but I would look into upping your service to 200 amp, and just put in a line from the meter loop to the shed, and not tying it to the house. Your going to lose some power in the line to the shop from the house. If you live there long, you'll be glad you went to 200 amp service. If you change out the meter loop, add in a hard disconnect so you can run a generator too. Also be glad you did that.

Hey Tim,

Not sure how old of a house your in. Do you know if you have any aluminum wire in the house? Do you have all copper? I had an older house with 100 amp service. When I tried to upgrade to 200 amp the electric company told me I would have to pull out all the aluminium and replace with copper. Well, I was just about to start pulling it out when I got a letter in the mail from electric company to tell me 200 amp service was not available for that address. When the service guy was at the house he said it "looked like" from the pole it was available but apparently not the case. I wanted the aluminum out of the house anyway so I pulled it out and replaced with copper. About 3 years later I called the electric company again. They said I could get 150 amp service. It cost me about 2000$ to upgrade panel and to pull lines but it was worth it.

As long as you don't change the main breaker for the house, you don't have to change anything to upgrade service, except the outside meter loop and main breaker at the pole. House will still be 100 amp service, just like it was, you will just have more service to pull from. Electric companies like to blow smoke when they don't want to spend money. If you change your meter loop, they have to come out and unhook/hook it up.

In the house I was referring to. It was built in 1890. The power service from street last upgrade was in the 50's. For 150 or 200 amp service they wanted to change poll to house lines, new mast, meter loop, enclosure. Inside it was up to me to install new panel and and all new breakers. Old panel had fuses.

The house was built in 1935 but was completely rewired a few years ago.

Tim,
My little shack has 240, never hooked anything to it, but it is there just in case I need it.
Wire was a lot less spensive 20 years ago, are you DIY?

Put in a 240V 50 amp breaker and run it to a sub panel in the shed. You'll want minimum size of 8 gauge wire. I might go to 6 due to the length. If you don't have an opening for a 240 breaker, replace one of your 120 breakers with a 2-in-1 120 breaker. That'll free up one slot. As long as you put the welder and compressor on separate phases, you should be able to run both at the same time. I'd run the wire in conduit for protection if you ever go digging around in the yard and forget exactly where the wire is.

Adding a sub panel and enabling 220/240 power is a good idea as others have suggested. If you run a sub panel in the shed, you might as well understand something about bonded ground and nuetral. For starters, check out this link: https://diy.stackexchange.com/questi...nd-and-neutral

Bill, you know what..... that's a really good point. I think it also kind of backs up my thoughts on splitting the shed from the house and not sub feeding it off the house panel. For the distance, and the fact it's buried, I think it's probably safer to put it on its own. Even if service isn't increased, I would still pull power out of the meter loop and put it a main panel in the shed. Subfed panels are fine, but when you're talking another building 100' away..... I mean, I've subfed garages off a house panel, but they were detached and only a few feet away. If the shed for instance, got hit by lightning, sitting in the yard by itself, it would feed back to the house. If it's on it's own panel, with a seperate bonded ground, the house should be protected. *Should* be.

What do you mean by a hard disconnect?

A throw switch.
Preferably for a gen set up you would want a double pole double throw (DPDT) switch. Or a mechanical transfer switch.
You CAN NOT use a breaker as a disconnect when running a gen set. It is illegal. A breaker can back-feed. You have to have a hard disconnect, or physically remove the wires from the meter/main breaker so the gen doesn't back-feed. In my area, the electric company won't prosecute you if you remove the meter from the box (break the tag) during a power outage and you want to run a generator. They would prefer that, than a possible back-feed. They will come out and install it when the power comes back on. I would still call them before pulling the meter though. I'm not saying all power companies have the same views. This is just what our local power company advertised during the last winter power outage that lasted days/week.

Example with two options for power. (This is a 3ph box, but it was an easy pic to get.)
Attachment 94909

That is what I thought you meant. Around here if you do not have a transfer switch, they get very upset.

1 1/4" PVC conduit and also drop a 1/2" or 3/4" PVC conduit in the trench. The 1 1/4" will handle up to a 100 Amp wire and the smaller conduit used for and low voltage line later. Phone, cable, alarm or anything else. PVC is cheap you can start with small wire now and upgrade later. On the generator a sub-panel and one of these.

Yeah, if you have a gen set running, you better have a transfer switch, wires or meter pulled. They came and inspected me at the shop one time when I had a gen set running. I didn't have a transfer switch, but I pulled the wires in the panel. They were fine with it then.

That's just a double breaker with a mechanical switch that makes it so only one can be on at once. That wouldn't fly around here. Must be a throw switch. As stated, a breaker can backfeed, but a pole switch cannot. It's a hard disconnect. I'd check code, or power company before I'd get one of those. Most places wouldn't allow it.

I personally would go with a fully automatic transfer switch.

Never thought about running 240 out there but that does make alot of sense and would certainly give me more air compressor and welder options. Thanks for the input guys!:beerchug:

Tim, I'd just run direct burial wire and not piss around with conduit.

Use something like this. https://www.wireandcableyourway.com/...QaAtCUEALw_wcB I'm sure you can get it cheaper locally.

I'd also ask a few electricians in your area on the codes. We have a member here that does that for a living that lives near Pittsburg that could probably steer you in the right direction and I'm sure there are others too.

I think it would be better to run something like #6UF wire to a 50 amp subpanel so that would give you 120 & 240 in the shop.

Here is an example on the issues you may run into.
https://www.ridgidforum.com/forum/me...r-60a-subpanel

What Oak said... #6 is the proper wire for that distance and amperage.

Not sure I like direct burial for that long a distance tho.

X3. I ran a 50 amp service to an outside receptacle for my generator, used 6 gauge wire and a separate 50a breaker.

In a similar situation, I used a #2 Aluminum service feed (2-2-4 I think) and drove a ground rod, which will carry 100a but fits in a 50a breaker; ran it thru 1 1/4 conduit. I can upgrade to 100 amp just by switching the breakers when I expand the shop.

That being said, I have 200a to the house due to no longer used resistant baseboard heaters (120a worth:bigeyes:)

The old feed to the shop was 3 wires on one breaker plus a 12/3 to another...but it was OK because of the garden hose conduit:biggrin2:
Yeah, there's no codes or permits out here.

NO CODES?? That sounds dangerous. Be careful with garden hose. It rots fairly quickly.

Not really no codes; AFAIK the NEC is default everywhere in the US that doesn't have local code boards, but with no permits or inspections people do stupid things sometimes.

Let me clarify the other, the garden hose and multiple feeds is what I ripped out. I didn't want to come home to an ash pile in my yard.

Illinois doesn't have anything in place that keeps anyone from doing anything electrical. You can wire your own house with no permit or license. You can wire your neighbors house. But the city or municipality or even county may have rules, or required inspections. Obviously, when you sell, the buyer generally has the house inspected. While there is nothing to prevent you from doing your own work, there are "codes". If it's not right, you have to pay to fix it, but they can't fine you. I know it doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense, but basically nothing in the second worst state does.

In the oilfield here, all the wells are powered on buried electric, direct burial cable. Miles of wire in the ground out there. Lots of farms bury lines to the sheds, but always in conduit. Direct burial is cheaper, but like Lance said, on a home lot, conduit is a lot safer. More apt to dig a hole in your lot and forget where that wire is. Don't want to hit it. Out in the oilfield, it's buried very deep because most oil wells are in farm ground. They do have a lot of blo outs due to lightening. I wouldn't do direct burial on a homestead.

WOW, you are lucky they are so lenient.
Last summer we had a hurricane knockout power.
I pulled the meter AND the 200amp breaker downstream.
Then hooked up my generator.

Power crew drives by looking for damage to fix before powering up the neighborhood. They see the empty meter box and boss man has a conniption fit.
He said the penalty is they disconnect your service at the fuse on transformer. Then you have to go to the county and go thru the entire permitting process as if it were new construction.
Plus pay a fine to the power company to reconnect, all of which might take a month.

Anyways, after I pointed out that I had doubled the safety factor by pulling the meter and the main breaker, they decided to let it slide and we had power back about 30 minutes later.

I am surprised the rewire did not include at least a 150 amp service.

But anywho, if you install the shed service with your local building police and permits involved, they might want you to upgrade other stuff before they will permit the shed power.

I would get with a local electrician friend that can look it over and tell you if you can do what you want at an expense you can live with.

Before contacting the building poo poo.

Jeez. You know though, so much of the time it depends on who the guy is. We've all ran into inspectors, city council members, HOA boards..... cops, who get a hard-on for something stupid. Even when common sense should take precedent, like what you did. I mean, you were only looking out for the power people's well being, and safety. A "duh" moment in my opinion.

I will not be discussing any of this with anybody before i do it. It's going to be bad enough paying for it so there's no need to be getting extra people and fee's involved.

That's what I would do too. :biggrin2:

Think you are confused by the way they word the electric codes on state level , Mo. Is worded the same as Il.
But you need an electrician to hook up power to a box , run lug lines , even hook up an outlet , or ceiling fan, light
You can run lines to have it ready to do ...legally.

Boy they’d hate me then. I did all mine myself. Called an electrician buddy to ask what size wire I should run, but that’s all. The less “they” know the better IMO.