Electrical Question for New Shed/Home Brewery

[estricklin]

So I'm having a 12x24 metal building built on the slab that my old wooden shed was on, really excited about it too. I am mostly going to use this shed for brewing but there will be some other projects such as woodworking going on out there.

The existing wire is a 10 or 12 gauge (not sure) connected to a 30 amp breaker in my breaker box in the house. I'm in the process of building an electric brewing system, it will be a 20 gallon max, mostly brewing 10 gallon batches. If I understand correctly, this system will need about 30 amps of power? I'm also going to install a 30 gallon water heater in this building and a window AC unit. The water heater probably uses 10-15 amps and the AC I'm not sure about. Add all that plus lights and power tools. It's about 100-125 ft from the breaker box in the house to where the breaker box will be in my new shed.

I believe I need 6 gauge wire and a 60 amp breaker for this. Does that sound ballparkish? Really wasn't planing on spending that kind of money on wiring this because I may rent this house out in the future but if I wired it like this, at least the renters could use a welder or 220v air compressor in the shed if they wanted to. My own small welder and compressor are wired into another circuit in a tool room that I have, so they won't be in the shed.

My other question is, my house is only set up for 150 amp service and I'm all electric except for my furnace. It shouldn't be a problem to replace the 30 amp breaker in the box in my house with a 60 amp?

Thanks in advance everyone!

 

[Facinerous]

Thats a lot of questions my friend, which is probably why nobody responded.

From my perspective I would say yes, 50 or 60 amp should be able to supply what you need out there in the shed.

As for your service, I don't have a good answer for you because I don't know how big your main house is and how much stuff you already have in your panel. Since you are all electric there that does kind of throw up a red flag for me, but I don't want to dissuade you. I would recommend an electrician do a load calc on your panel and your total demand.

Its as simple as adding up the breakers that already exist in your panel, but you can derate some of the existing breaker amperages due to its assumed use. Once again, I can not do that for you because I am not physically there.

I think you may be better off without the extra water heater in the shed if you are overloaded. That would bring down the total need for power down considerably out there.

 

[homebrew57]

It shouldn't be a problem to replace the 30 amp breaker in the box in my house with a 60 amp?

This should be a big no no unless you can confirm that the 30 amp circuit was wired with 6 gauge, which I doubt. It was probably wired with 10 gauge. You can always go down in breaker size, not up.

 

[soccerRef]

This should be a big no no unless you can confirm that the 30 amp circuit was wired with 6 gauge, which I doubt. It was probably wired with 10 gauge. You can always go down in breaker size, not up.

Since he mentioned the need to change wire gauge prior in the post, I believe the OP was simply asking the question about placing a 60 amp breaker in the place of a 30 amp since his panel is full. The answer to that is yes, with the requirement of also upgrading the wire to #6.

Just something to think about if you end up running 125 feet of new wire to the shed -- upgrade to a larger gauge wire for the future... if at anytime you decide you want to upgrade the shed sub panel to say 100 amps, you don't want to have to re-do all that work.

 

[homebrew57]

Yes, sorry. I re-read the post and I guess I read that last question out of context. As long as you upgrade the wire, swapping the breaker shouldn't be a problem, as soccerRef said.

 

[estricklin]

Since he mentioned the need to change wire gauge prior in the post, I believe the OP was simply asking the question about placing a 60 amp breaker in the place of a 30 amp since his panel is full. The answer to that is yes, with the requirement of also upgrading the wire to #6.

Just something to think about if you end up running 125 feet of new wire to the shed -- upgrade to a larger gauge wire for the future... if at anytime you decide you want to upgrade the shed sub panel to say 100 amps, you don't want to have to re-do all that work.

Thanks for the replies.

I decided to go ahead and upgrade my service to 200 amps, AND I'm going to place a separate box outside right beside my main breaker at the meter loop, to add the 60 amp breaker for my shed. The already installed 30 amp circuit with 10 gauge wire I am going to just cut off where it comes from my house and add a few 120v outlets to run power tools or something around my back door. Will probably change breaker to 20 amp SPST from the 30 that's currently there.

Now I just need to find out more about upgrading to the 200 amp service!