Hello all,

I'm very new here. This is actually my first post. I'm a home DIYer and was given some awesome tools from my wife on Father's Day. However, these tools (along with other tools/shop equipment) are going to need a lot more power. The previous owner of my house didn't use the garage for anything other than storage, therefore, there aren't many receptacles and he didn't supply much power to it. I've tried contacting electricians in my area but they haven't gotten back to me and all of my electrician buddies don't seem interested in residential work as they mainly do industrial stuff.

Anyway, my thoughts are to wire up a 60 to 100 amp sub panel in my garage with maybe 10 different spots for circuit breakers. My current panel is in my basement and doesn't seem to have any more room for the amperage draw that I'm going to want or need. My current panel is a Challenger SB20(20-40)C1 model number 4. I mainly need 110v receptacles but I'm going to need 220v eventually (when I get my stick welder and air compressor).

I don't have any intentions of wiring anything up myself, however, I'd be more than happy to do the dirty work (running the wire and all of that).

If anyone could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Is the garage attached to the house or detached? I assumed attached since you have a few receptacles already. Ray gave you a diagram to add a subpanel and ground rods to a detached garage. If detached, the existing receptacles must be fed from the new subpanel as only one power feed is allowed by the NEC.

 

For reasons of liability many electricians won't agree to that,

Please answer Joe's question, "is this an attached garage". If so I gave you some misinformation.
.

 

 

For an attached garage the process would usually be to run SER cable from you house main panel to the new garage subpanel. Through the basement, crawlspace or attic is the preferred way, but it can be done on the exterior of the building if there's no other path.

A very common size would be to use #2-2-4-6 SER aluminum cable from a 90A breaker in the main to a new 100A panel in the garage. The cable needs to be protected from damage where it is exposed, and fastened with appropriate size clamps, but it's pretty straightforward grunt work to get it from point A to point B. Just be careful not to tear the jacket and don't bend it too tight. Leave a couple feet of slack past each panel to allow enough wire for bending and termination inside the panel boxes.

The proper breaker for that Challenger panel would be the Eaton BR290. You also might need to buy an add on lug kit to attach the #4 neutral wire to the bus in the panel.

 

If it were my house, I'd probably run a 60A feed into a 100A panel. Unless you're planning a really large welder, 60A should be more than enough for a one or two person shop. #6 wire will save you some dollars and be much easier than wrestling #2 AL.

But of course what Ben laid out would work quite well too.

 

Ben, what you suggested is almost exactly what I did.

I ran #2-2-2-4 SER aluminum cable from a 100amp breaker in the main to a 100amp subpanel. Running the cable was extremely straightforward as i found some conduit that was in my garage already that led straight into my basement. The conduit only had some what looked to be speaker wire, so fitting the service cable into it and through the hole was still very easy. It was maybe a 20' run total for the service cable that only required me to move some drop ceiling panels. I had a 30' piece of service cable so there was plenty on either end. Had an electrician buddy come by and wire everything plus run some additional receptacle wiring. Wired/installed most everything in an evening.

Thank you all for the assistance.