bought this house and wondering if i can run 240 for a garage heater. I found this box under a work bench. it comes from under the house in the crawl space piped through the wall into the garage. nothing comes out of it. strange.

I know the previous owner had a compressor i think he said he was runnning 240. a previous sale on this place fell through due to lack of gfci's and issues with the panel. so the home owners hired an electrician to fix that and he installed a new panel.
at closing the owner mentioned he was not there when the work was done and the electrician removed his ability to use the compressor which he was upset about.

so basically what is this box? and will my panel allow for getting 240 to the garage?
I may get an estimate and evaluate that versus gas as there is a gas line very close from the dryer.

 

The only mention I see of garage is circuits #19 and #21.
I see a single 2P30A breaker for A/C in the panel.
Nothing claiming 240v in garage.
Only two breaker spaces left.

That is a splice box. Open it up. There won't be any live parts popping out of it.
If I was to guess... I'd say that box is back to back with the outside A/C condensor.

If the conduit goes back to the panel.... you may be able to pull more wiring thru.

 

i will try to trace it back to the origin. gets tough cuz there is conduit running everywhere in the crawl space with lots of lights so i lose track of it. its not a single piece of conduit going back to the panel, it ties into the first juntion box powering a light.

the AC condensor is on the other side of the house.

why run electrical in with nothing coming out of that box? makes no sense.
And why did the electrician put in a panel with no room to grow? kind of upsets me.

 

There may be wiring in the box. Never know until you look inside.
I agree on the panel size... bare minimum installed.

Could have been a 30 or 32 space.
Square-D-QO-100-Amp-32-Space-32-Circuit-Indoor-Main-Breaker-Load-Center

 

Could be that the previous owner was only willing to pay for a small panel. They weren't going to need additional room after moving.

 

well you guys actually made me think about this and after taking a better look its simple. The half basement is finished and they built an elaborate frame around the box all wood trimmed. Never noticed that before but he put in the biggest box that fit the space.
So with only two single pole spots left if i ran 240 to the garage or a future hot tub would those be double pole 30 amp breaker? meaning I would not have the space in the panel for it? I know a hot tub breaker is like 60amp.

 

The breaker in the 2-4 location is a 240v breaker. You can probably move a breaker to get a 240v space at the bottom. Your panel cover is also showing that you can use single pole tandem breakers in all locations. That gives you some room to add more circuits.

 

thats great new! So i just went and pulled the cover of that small box in the garage. it has two wires a white and a blue and they are 12 AWG. Now I am going to trace them back to see where they go. So that wiring will work for 240?

 

White/gray are used as neutral only and green is ground.

You would need to replace the white wire with any other color except listed above.
Those two wires would suggest a 120v 20A circuit.

 

so here pictures of it. emt garage is where it goes through into the garage. emt is where it comes out by the panel but it stops ? no wires? whats going on here? So the wires i saw must come from the other section of smaller emt, those just go to a junction box for outlets.

 

The plot thickens..................

 

yes for sure. Well in any event I appreciate your help. I have at least discovered my panel can support a 30 amp breaker and I have conduit run to the garage, and even a small sub box. So i can get an estimate from an electrician to set this all up properly. it may be within my budget to get that done.