critique of my garage electricity refit?

[badmajon]

Hello,

I've finally figured out what I want to do with my garage so I can try electric brewing (30a/240) and hook up my welders (30a/120v and 30a/240v). I love my new house but the garage is sharing a standard 15a/120 circuit with my living room. Not good enough for my needs.

I posted an image so people can understand what I'm thinking of doing which includes a 60A subpanel.

I have a NEC guide and a wiring manual. I do have a particular question which I still haven't found an answer to in regards to code, how to hook an external subpanel up to a recessed main panel. I don't want to redo the drywall in my garage so I am going with exposed PVC conduit to hold the THHN wiring.

My plan includes taking a #6 romex cable and running it into a box with a rear knockout which will sit on top of the drywall and then splicing it with #6 thhn wire which will be running inside PVC conduit to my external (i.e., not recessed) subpanel.

If anyone with some expertise could look at this, I'd really appreciate it.

http://postimage.org/image/89fpkn9g/

 

[MadViking]

This should work. Yes, you can go from the main panel with jacketed cable into a j-box and splice wires coming from a conduit in it. Double check your local electrical codes though (city, county or state). There are a couple of different ways to do it in once continuous wire run;

1) "Fish in" a piece of flexible conduit from the bottom of the main panel into the back of the j-box. With this way, you can run THHN wires uncut from the main panel to the sub panel. -or-

2) Depending on far you would have to go with the wire in the garage to the sub panel, you can use a long enough piece of jacketed cable to go from the main panel to the sub panel, fish one end up into the bottom of the main panel and then put conduit over the wire with a LB condulet fitting at the end of the pipe that goes into the wall to the main panel.

 

[Photopilot]

I'd suggest a larger than 30A 240 circuit for a brewing rig. As long as the run from the subpanel to the receptacle is short should cost less than $30 difference for the upgrade.

I brew indoors in a rental house. Both the stove and dryer use the same receptacle but have a 40A and 30A CB running there respective outlets. At first I only had a 4500W element in my kettle and could run it off the 30A circuit alone. Now that I also have a 3500W HLT element I need to run the 40A circuit to power them simultaneously.

If you are doing 5 gallon batches, you should be fine as is but for 12 gallon batches I need 20 gallons of water heated then 12 boiled later. What I would like is a 50A circuit to run maybe a 5500W element and a 3500W element in the boil kettle to get things heated quickly, then use the 3500W to keep the boil going.

Even if your electrical brewery starts simple, you should over build the wiring to accommodate growth. Is your subpanel going to be a spa panel? Might as well because if you don't. you need to add a GFCI breaker somewhere along the way and a spa panel is often cheaper than a GFCI breaker.

 

[doctorsbro]

dang 9000 watts? Your meters gonna be spinning!

 

[badmajon]

2) Depending on far you would have to go with the wire in the garage to the sub panel, you can use a long enough piece of jacketed cable to go from the main panel to the sub panel, fish one end up into the bottom of the main panel and then put conduit over the wire with a LB condulet fitting at the end of the pipe that goes into the wall to the main panel.

Thank you for your input. I did read though that the NEC does not allow you to run jacketed cable/romex inside a conduit. Unless I misinterpreted this, I don't think I can do this.

 

[WTF_Brewing]

I agree on the 50A outlet. 50A is a pretty standard welder outlet. If you're doing it, might as well set it up for a decent sized welder.