DIY or Pay Electrician? Adding GFCI breaker and running new circuit.

I've come into possession of High Gravity's 240v BIAB system, and now need to figure out how to power it. From what I can gather, I will need to add a 30amp GFCI breaker into my panel, run 10/3 wire from the panel to the receptacle, and wire in a 4 prong receptacle. The run from the panel to where the system will be set up is about 60 ft through my garage.

I had an electrician come by and was quoted $1230 for all the work. That seemed high to me. I'm already in possession of the GFCI breaker and the receptacle. Adding up the cost of wire and conduit, plus labor time, I can't see how they got to that number.

So the question is, do I attempt to install this myself?

I have room on my subpanel (installed recently to service a new furnace), and the feeder breaker appears to be 30amps. Do I need to do anything special to the subpanel, or can I just snap the GFCI breaker in there and run wires? (With the main breakers turned off, of course).

Here's the subpanel:



Here's the panel - it feeds the subpanel from the second and third slots on the top left (the 30 amp 2 pole breaker):



I feel comfortable wiring up the receptacle and running the wire, but the panel stuff makes me slightly antsy. Would love some insight.

 

First, it's always better to let experienced/licensed/insured people hand dangerous stuff in your life. Why not? Ok, the reason why not is $$$ and the satisfaction you get from DIY, though if your house burns down the satisfaction and $$$ things don't apply.

I did mine in no time at all. You should be able to kill all power with the main breaker, replace that 30A breaker with your GFCI breaker, and you're done (except running the new 30A ckt). 240VAC will have two lives and a neutral (White). Make sure all of them go through the GFCI breaker. Earth GND (green) goes around it.

 

The first problem is that the run to the sub panel is only 30 amps. The circuits being fed from that subpanel are consuming some of that capacity already so you may trip that 30 amp breaker. Did you get a written quote so that you can see what work they were planning? It may have included swapping out that breaker to a 50 amp and running larger wire to the subpanel.

 

I asked about that. The subpanel serves a furnace which consumes between 7 and 10 amps, but we'll almost never run our furnace and brewery system concurrently. The brewing system will pull about 21 amps. Based on that the electrician seemed to think we could just put the breaker in the subpanel?

 

That 30a breaker feeds the subpanel. If I swapped it out with the gfci, where would I run the new wire from? Would I just splice into the line running to the subpanel?

 

I assumed you were going to run a ckt to an outlet from a breaker in that subpanel. I also assumed your plan was to replace the breaker in the main panel with the GFCI. All that works fine if 1) your furnace isn't running while brewing, and 2) the furnace doesn't trip t he GFCI (motors can do it).

Putting the GFCI in the subpanel is a better idea probably, but you still have the problem of brewing when the furnace is on, which would then trip the main panel 30A breaker.