Pole barn sub panel

[mx842]

You don't use copper on service or sub service feeders. Aluminum is 1/4 the cost. You wont find that at the box stores, you'll have to go to an electrical supply company.

Ok, that makes sense from a cost stand point but don't you have to go bigger if you use Aluminum? You are right about the box stores not having much because all I have found there is the house trailer buried wire which is 2,2,2,1 and from their chart is only good for 75 amps I think.

Thinking back to a few years ago I had rented a storage lot that was shared by a large electrical contractor. There was hundreds of rolls of service wire piled up all over the place that were brought for different jobs and never used. When things would get slow the boss would get his men to go to the yard and cut this stuff up in 3' pieces and strip it then haul it to the salvage yard. He used the money for the big Christmas party he had every year.

He told me if I ever needed anything to just get it but let him know what I got so he could keep track of it. Now I wish I was still there because this would take care of what sounds like a major expense I really had not put much thought in to.

 

[Gizmo2]

I used 6 aluminum for a 50 amp service and 2" schedule 80 conduit. Need schedule 80 here where it comes above grade so I just bought all schedule 80.

 

[tcartwri]

Ok, that makes sense from a cost stand point but don't you have to go bigger if you use Aluminum? .

You generally have to up one wire size. Still winds up being way cheaper.

This is a voltage drop calculator from a Canadian supplier. US code is very similar to ours, so it will give you a good ballpark. They also have a price list for download, which is generally 10% higher than what you would really pay.

Voltage Drop Calculator - Nexans

 

[ultrarunner]

grsthegreat....

I really appreciate your informative posts...

It is very helpful having someone knowledgeable willing to share...

The brother of a friend is clearing out the old family homestead and asked if I could use a coil of service drop aluminum cable... it is one bare and two insulated wires and the about 3' high.

His Grandfather used the material to run power to the well pump and outbuildings.

With everything going underground, is there much use for this?

 

[grsthegreat]

grsthegreat....

I really appreciate your informative posts...

It is very helpful having someone knowledgeable willing to share...

The brother of a friend is clearing out the old family homestead and asked if I could use a coil of service drop aluminum cable... it is one bare and two insulated wires and the about 3' high.

His Grandfather used the material to run power to the well pump and outbuildings.

With everything going underground, is there much use for this?

man, ive been an electrician for 30+ years, and i can count on one hand how many overhead runs ive personally installed. Utility companies do the drop services here, and the only reason i would need overhead wire would be if someone wanted to run overhead to an outbuilding....which no one does. Snow loads, trees and just uglyness of the stuff makes everyone want to go underground.

That wire is not rated for underground use.

Just a note, the 2/2/2/1 IS rated for 100 amps for a service. But for 200 feet or more we generally use 1/0 wire to prevent voltage drop, and its not that much more $$$.

4/0 URD tristed wire at my wholesale house is running $ 1.92 per foot. So 200 foot run will cost about $384 bucks or so (wholesale). Not sure how your prices would run, but its not too expensive. Just as a joke i had them price out the copper......ready .... Combined price with reduced neutral = $ 9.43 / foot x 200 feet = $ 1,886.00 for the run.

way more than 4 x the cost...more like 5 times the cost.

Just thought youd like to know. Also, if you use copper tell me where you live so i can come and dig it up and strip it to sell :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

 

[mx842]

man, ive been an electrician for 30+ years, and i can count on one hand how many overhead runs ive personally installed. Utility companies do the drop services here, and the only reason i would need overhead wire would be if someone wanted to run overhead to an outbuilding....which no one does. Snow loads, trees and just uglyness of the stuff makes everyone want to go underground.

That wire is not rated for underground use.

Just a note, the 2/2/2/1 IS rated for 100 amps for a service. But for 200 feet or more we generally use 1/0 wire to prevent voltage drop, and its not that much more $$$.

4/0 URD tristed wire at my wholesale house is running $ 1.92 per foot. So 200 foot run will cost about $384 bucks or so (wholesale). Not sure how your prices would run, but its not too expensive. Just as a joke i had them price out the copper......ready .... Combined price with reduced neutral = $ 9.43 / foot x 200 feet = $ 1,886.00 for the run.

way more than 4 x the cost...more like 5 times the cost.

Just thought youd like to know. Also, if you use copper tell me where you live so i can come and dig it up and strip it to sell :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

Nawhhhhh....I think I will keep that a secret if'n ya don't mind. Speaking of selling copper wire. I tore down an old building years ago and before I did I salvaged everything I could before I took the bull dozer and knocked the building down. I got almost 1500' of 3/0 copper 3 strand with a #1 ground wire. I kept that stuff for years thinking I would be able to use it one day. Well one day I fell on some hard times and took it to the scrap yard and at that time it was only bringing .60 cents a pound and by the time the crook at the scales got finished I took out of there $215.00. I knew I had got robbed even at .60 cents a pound but I needed the money and some money was better than no money. I sure do wish I had it now.

 

[grsthegreat]

Nawhhhhh....I think I will keep that a secret if'n ya don't mind. Speaking of selling copper wire. I tore down an old building years ago and before I did I salvaged everything I could before I took the bull dozer and knocked the building down. I got almost 1500' of 3/0 copper 3 strand with a #1 ground wire. I kept that stuff for years thinking I would be able to use it one day. Well one day I fell on some hard times and took it to the scrap yard and at that time it was only bringing .60 cents a pound and by the time the crook at the scales got finished I took out of there $215.00. I knew I had got robbed even at .60 cents a pound but I needed the money and some money was better than no money. I sure do wish I had it now.

ya, you got robbed alrignt. i hate some of these scrap yards around me. I finally found one place that allows me to verify scale accuracy before they weigh using a gallon jug of water (known weight) or a set of marked weights they have there. The last time i scrapped out my wire pile, i striped it all (have a striping tool that makes short work of it) and i weighed it at home. I took it in ad their weights were within a few pounds of mine..so all was well. And i took home aprox $2,400 in cash. Mind you copper was in the $2.20 -$2.40 per pound range

 

[bearcreek paul]

Ok from what advise I have received.
1 I will need a bigger box with main breaker since this box only has six spaces.
2 extend conduit into box.
3 1 ground rod 8 ft long.
If you think of any thing I missed let me know.The wife and I have to pull our camper back from cape may this weekend,so I won't
be starting until 9/27/11 on the fixes. Thank you.

 

[Gizmo2]

Ok from what advise I have received.
1 I will need a bigger box with main breaker since this box only has six spaces.

Can you use 2 of the spaces for a main? It would leave you with up to 8, 120v circuits left.

 

[grsthegreat]

Can you use 2 of the spaces for a main? It would leave you with up to 8, 120v circuits left.

Judging by the picture, that panel can only handle 6 breakers (i dnt think the bus is broken to allow for mini twin breakers on those small panels). You can use a 2 pole breaker as a main breaker, then have 4 remaining spaces. If you only want a few lights and maybe a welder outlet, it will work just fine.

Personally, i can get a 12/16 space panel for about $40.00 so i never mess with these small panels. And to be totally legal (if you care at all) youll need a breaker retainer bracket to set the main breaker inplace. Its a plastic support piece and a screw to force the main breaker to remain in place so it cant be accidently pulled out of the panel while still live. Doing so could hurt/kill someone.

 

[mx842]

Ok from what advise I have received.
1 I will need a bigger box with main breaker since this box only has six spaces.
2 extend conduit into box.
3 1 ground rod 8 ft long.
If you think of any thing I missed let me know.The wife and I have to pull our camper back from cape may this weekend,so I won't
be starting until 9/27/11 on the fixes. Thank you.

Sounds like you are on the right track. Like grsthegreat said get a bigger box for sure. You never know what you may want to do next year and from what I have seen you can get a larger 100 amp box with more spaces in it cheaper than you can the smaller boxes. Later on if you want to add a little more amps you can either pull the old stuff and run larger wire or add a couple more strands of wire the same size and double it up so you don't lose everything. Although you probably should check with the guys here that know more than I do about doubling up because just because I have done that in the past and didn't burn down anything down does not mean it's okay to do it this way. It could just mean I was lucky so please by all means check first.

Your thread has been very helpful and I have a zillion questions myself about my project but I guess I need to do my own thread rather than hyjack yours.LOL

 

[mx842]

ya, you got robbed alrignt. i hate some of these scrap yards around me. I finally found one place that allows me to verify scale accuracy before they weigh using a gallon jug of water (known weight) or a set of marked weights they have there. The last time i scrapped out my wire pile, i striped it all (have a striping tool that makes short work of it) and i weighed it at home. I took it in ad their weights were within a few pounds of mine..so all was well. And i took home aprox $2,400 in cash. Mind you copper was in the $2.20 -$2.40 per pound range

Yeah their were some pretty shady stuff going on a few years back. We had 7 or 8 places we could carry scrap to but I think they were union because they all were just alike. A lot of people who sold scrap didn't like how they were doing but what can you do.

I used to switch around from place to place because sometimes they would use the bait and switch trick. That would be when a new guy shows up they would give him a pretty fair weight just to get him hooked then as time goes on they would start a little at a time skimming off the top so you wouldn't notice as much. Finally the scrap haulers got a union of themselves and started doing what you did weigh before they went across their scales so they knew what they had on board. Once they knew for sure they were cutting the deck they got weights and measures involved and those boys busted their azz and really hard to where a couple of them went out of business or bankrupted then changed their name.

I remember there was one really big company probably one of the biggest on the east coast that got hammered really hard but they just paid the fines and once it was over it was back to business as usual and shortly after that the owners sold the business and now it is run by different people. I don't know if they are any different because I never go there anymore.

There are a lot of smaller dealers that have popped up that give fair prices and measures and they get my business now. I never liked the idea of driving up on a truck scale with a couple hundred pounds of anything it just seems like there is too many ways they can short you that way. I don't deal with those guys anymore I like to see my stuff on a scale right in front of me. They may still be able to skim a little but at least they have to work a little harder.LOL

I know, I know this is way off topic.....sorry!

 

[grsthegreat]

Sounds like you are on the right track. Like grsthegreat said get a bigger box for sure. You never know what you may want to do next year and from what I have seen you can get a larger 100 amp box with more spaces in it cheaper than you can the smaller boxes. Later on if you want to add a little more amps you can either pull the old stuff and run larger wire or add a couple more strands of wire the same size and double it up so you don't lose everything. Although you probably should check with the guys here that know more than I do about doubling up because just because I have done that in the past and didn't burn down anything down does not mean it's okay to do it this way. It could just mean I was lucky so please by all means check first.

Your thread has been very helpful and I have a zillion questions myself about my project but I guess I need to do my own thread rather than hyjack yours.LOL

doubling up or as we call it "running parallel runs" is totally legal .

 

[ultrarunner]

doubling up or as we call it "running parallel runs" is totally legal .

Are their exemptions for really large applications...

At the plant I worked at many years ago... we had a power system that was an emergency tie in to the grid and I had commented the wire required must be huge and later found that it had a special buss where the individual cables were connected in parallel so no double lugging or anything like that.

 

[grsthegreat]

On really large services (ive installed some 3000 and 5000 amp services) the bus bars are set up to receive sometimes 6 runs of wire on each phase. We will run 6 parallel runs of 4" pvc pipe to transformer and each pipe will have 4 runs of say 1,000MCM copper wire. Then each lug in the panel would get one wire from each conduit (phased together). This was the ONLY way to get enough amperage to the panel. Each wire would be rated for 500-600 amps x 6 wires (or more for larger panels).

The only thing you have to do in parallel runs are to keep each set of runs and their ground together in each pipe. You cant run all the hots in one pipe and all the neutrals in the other for instance.

 

[ultrarunner]

On really large services (ive installed some 3000 and 5000 amp services) the bus bars are set up to receive sometimes 6 runs of wire on each phase. We will run 6 parallel runs of 4" pvc pipe to transformer and each pipe will have 4 runs of say 1,000MCM copper wire. Then each lug in the panel would get one wire from each conduit (phased together). This was the ONLY way to get enough amperage to the panel. Each wire would be rated for 500-600 amps x 6 wires (or more for larger panels).

The only thing you have to do in parallel runs are to keep each set of runs and their ground together in each pipe. You cant run all the hots in one pipe and all the neutrals in the other for instance.

Thanks for the clarification... I do remember lots of conduit runs.

 

[crbr]

Good thread...

 

[ducks13]

It sounds like lots of people will disagree but you are not required by code to have a main breaker. You are allowed 6 switches to disconnect a service to a structure or an outside feeder like you have. The rest of your evaluation of what you should do is correct.

 

[MikeInMaine]

You have gotten some good advice.

Here's one way to put it all together. There are also other ways of fixing your issues, but wanting to use what you already have, this is how I'd do it:

If 6 spaces is all you think you'll need, then purchase a 2-space, 70 amp box and put a 2-pole 50 amp breaker in it. This will be your Main Breaker. Connect it you your PVC conduit with a male fitting & locknut, or a coupling with a box adapter.

Then attach your 6-space panel either above or to the side of your main breaker box, using the largest offset nipple that the box has a knockout for. Feed your 6-space panel from the 50 amp breaker.

Be sure to mark your neutral conductor white or gray, and the ground green. This is usually done with colored electrical tape, and is supposed to cover all of the visible wire, not just the ends. The neutral doesn't need a connection in the small box. It can run straight through to the neutral bar in your 6-space panel. The ground from the house, the ground from the 8' rod, and the ground going to the 6-space panel should all connect in the box, with the box also bonded (connected) to the grounds via a screw or strap that comes with the box.

If you are going to place the 6-space panel over the 2-space box, the top of the box may require a hub in order to put the offset nipple on the top. This is a nice way to do it. 1-1/4" is a common size.

In the 6-space panel, the neutral connections must go on the neutral bar, and the grounds must go to a separate ground bar. This is because it has been correctly fed with 4 wires. Make sure the neutral bar is not bonded to the enclosure. Make sure the ground bar is bonded to the enclosure. If the 6-space panel didn't come with both a neutral bar and a ground bar, you can buy a ground bar and install it for your grounds.

Oh, I forgot, before you start, turn off the power and double check to make sure it's safe! (I know you know that, but it's always good to hear that advice over and over.)
Best of luck,
Mike

Ok from what advise I have received.
1 I will need a bigger box with main breaker since this box only has six spaces.
2 extend conduit into box.
3 1 ground rod 8 ft long.
If you think of any thing I missed let me know.The wife and I have to pull our camper back from cape may this weekend,so I won't
be starting until 9/27/11 on the fixes. Thank you.

 

[grsthegreat]

It sounds like lots of people will disagree but you are not required by code to have a main breaker. You are allowed 6 switches to disconnect a service to a structure or an outside feeder like you have. The rest of your evaluation of what you should do is correct.

you know...your absolutely correct. Its been so lone since ive used a small panel, that i have forgotten that little clause.

You can actually feed a small garage with say 2 circuits and use simple switched as disconnects. Thats the problem with modern times. You forget about the old easier lazier days. In the past 10 years or so i have never installed less than 50 amps to a small building, and they always want welders, air compressors, 20 outlets...bla bla bla... oh and heat. I usually have 16-24 space panels installed.

Gone are the 6 space days.