Garage Workshop Planning Question(s)

[Michael Em]

Hey Everyone,

Newbie here again. I'm still awaiting a ton of books I've ordered, but I'm already dreaming (ok, drooling) over turning the garage into a beautiful work area. After listening to all the great comments from everyone, I am now aware that I must do some serious planning.

For the first part, I drew up the floorplan of my garage in AutoCAD. I gave some overall dimensions so you guys can see how big it is. The house was only built 2 years ago, so it is a very new house, with new (existing) wiring.

Currently, there are two 110v outlets in the entire garage. I'm definitely going to need more, but how many more? From the tools I am looking to order later this year and next year (joiner, G0513 bandsaw, floordrill, cyclone, etc) I think I am going to need at least two 220v outlets. But, as someone mentioned, I can only run one tool at once.

Can you guys estimate just how many I'll need? I got overly excited and started drawing up plans for some cabinetry along the west wall. Also, I want to put lights underneath the upper cabinets to light up the work area, so I guess those will need outlets and a switch too.

In addition, the whole garage has one light in the middle. It's ridiculous. I can barely see when it's on at night, so I definitely want to add a lot more ceiling light for when I'm working in there with the garage door closed and at night. On the floorplan, the blue line splitting the garage in two is actually just a groove in the concrete floor. I felt important to identity it's placement to know that it will probably be a pain the a$$ to move heavy tools across it.

The unfortunate part is that the garage still needs to be used for one vehicle, so that will definitely eat up some space.

I have also posted a pic of the existing box on the side of the house (opposite side that the garage is on...wouldn't ya know it!).

Keep in mind I'm waiting for my Tauntons Wiring book to come too, so I literally know nothing about the electrical world yet.

Also, do you guys actually unplug your 220v machines to free up a socket for another machine or do you just install one for every machine you need?

And what's going to happen to the electricity bill? Will it explode?

Thanks or any input or advice you might have for adding outlets.

Michael

[Don Baer]

Michael,
It looks like your panel is kinda full. I would definitly reccomend you conside putting a sub panel in the garage. No the first thing you'll need to do is re-arrange some circuit to free up room to feed the sub from. I'd relocate the Garage GFI's to the sub then use the space from the main to put in the breakers to feed the sub from. Now you can put any additional receptiical and 220 V circuit directly from the sub panel.

In terms of how it will effect the your electric bill just take the horsepower for the tools you'll be running and multiply that number by .746. (746 Watts/HP). Take that number time the rate you pay and you'll have a doos idea what the cost will be to run your shop. For instance if you have a 2HP DC and a 3 HP Table saw running thats 5 HP or 3.73 KW. 3.73 x say 15 cents/ KWH means that it will cost you roughly $.56 to run them both for an hour.

In terms of how many 220 Volt outlets you will need I would reccomend that any motor larger then 3/4 HP be run from 220 Volts. That means in the above example you would need two seperate 220 Volt circuits so that you can run them at the same time. I doubt if the Joiner/Planer/Table saw will run at the same time so I'd run 1 220 Volts circuit with 3 lugs off of the same breaker for those tools and then a seperate circuit for the DC.

I hope this helps.

Oh and welcome to the creek.

[Al Willits]

I've got the car in the garage problem also, so I have everything I can on mobile base's, eventually I'll mount the table saw permanetly and still keep everything else on wheels.
Makes it easy to move stuff out of the way when the car is in the garage.

Also ya can never have to many outlets, I have one long extension cord for the 220 stuff and probably 12-14 outlets, many 4x4 boxes with 4 outlets in each.

Al.....another newbie...:)

[Mike Cutler]

Michael.
First off. Put everything on wheels. TS,BS,Jointer,Planer,Sander, even the workbenches if you can. At 19' you will run out of room a lot quicker than you realize. My shop is 19' long, and I've had to come up with some interesting machine setups. Get urethane wheels to make it easier to roll across that expansion joint in the floor, or fill the joint with RTV.

For 220 volt outlets I have one on each wall in my shop, and it's only 9' wide. You might only have two machines running at once, but tripping over extension cords, sucks. It can get dangerous too. Put them on each wall. Put one by the door also. You never know.

For 110 outlets. I have one duplex receptacle at each 220 receptacle, and 2 additional outlets on each wall. One receptacle at each end of the bench. A quad receptacle, on one wall. All the receptacle are high enough off the floor that a sheet of plywood can rest against the wall and be underneath the bottom of the receptacles.

Is that the entire electrical panel. 125 amp service? It's already full of mini's. You may need a seperate panel just for the shop.

Shops evolve over time. put in enough electrical service, and lighting so that the shop can be changed and adaptedt as you change. I've moved mine around quite a few times, and now I'm getting ready to take over the whole garage.

[Doug Shepard]

Most of the points I would have made were already covered by others. Here's a couple more I can think of:
I've got a couple of 110v outlet boxes that hang from the ceiling. These have come in unbelievably handy. Since you're likely to have to roll your tools out to a central location, putting all your outlets on the walls means tripping over lots of cords and having to possibly use extension cords to reach the outlets. There's just enough cable on them to rest the box on the floor, but the vast majority of the time I only have them hanging down 2-3 ft. When not in use the cable and box is wound around a couple of hooks attached to the ceiling.
The cord reels with 25-30 ft that pull down from the ceiling are also real handy but avoid the bargain ones with the thinner gauge cable as most tools need more amps than those can provide.
Try to plan out where you're likely to roll the 220V machines and locate your 220 outlets to minimize how much cable you have laying on the floor for a trip hazard.

And yes, I unfortunately replug when switching 220 machines. The work area doesn't allow for them to share the same space when they're rolled out anyway so multiple 220 outlets with everything plugged in at the same time just isn't very practical in my case.

[Dave Harker]

I added a subpanel - my garage also started with only 2 outlets!

Mine is 100amp, 32 breaker slots - don't get one with only a few breaker slots - you will want to expand it later.

I put in several 110v circuits, with outlets every 32" (every other stud). These outlets are on alternating circuits, ie, the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc, outlets are on one circuit, and the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc, outlets are on the other circuit - that way if I need to plug in two tools, say a router and a shop vac, I can just use adjacent outlets and be sure the two tools are each on their own circuit.

I have 3 220v circuits, each is 30 amps, 10 gauge wire:
1) a dedicated air-compressor outlet
2) a dedicated DC outlet
3) a general purpose tools circuit, with 6 outlets. I plug in my 220v tools as I use them, and only one is ever in use at any time - my Grizzly 1023SL cabinet saw, or my Grizzly G1018HW jointer.

I have 110v circuits for each of the following, all 20 amp, 12 gauge except lights and furnace:
- 6 flourescent light fixtures
- a Reznor furnace
- a ceiling fan and few 110v outlets (tv, stereo) and air cleaner all share a circuit - the air cleaner's outlet is 9 feet up, 1 foot down from the ceiling.
- general tools circuits as described above
- others I probably don't recall

I also laid in some wires into the ceiling, to some ceiling-mounted elec boxes, for future drop outlets if needed

I also put in phone and cable TV wires, since garage already had them, but not running over to the shop area - I extended them. I also ran "cat 5" wires to the cable -tv outlets, with the coil of cat 5 in the attic, ready to be hooked up if I ever want to. Now I have wireless, may never use them.

Lots of pics of this "garage to shop" remodel project on my page:

http://webpages.charter.net/harkerhome/WWShop/garageremodelpics.html

[Paul Comi]

Michael, congratulations and good luck with your new shop set up. Its a fun process to put one together and I went through setting up and equipping a 2 car garage set up over the past 3 years.

When I installed outlets, I was told to put a pair of outlets every 6 or 8 ft on all 3 walls with one outlet being above countertop height and one about 8 inches from the floor so that's what I did. I also ran 6 outlets overhead in the ceiling mounted to the rafters as I don't have a finished ceiling in my garage - just 3 rows of shop lights.

At the time, I had a chop saw, a benchtop table saw and some portable power tools so I thought I was going overboard, but once you install a proper table saw, a full size jointer and a decent size bandsaw you are already up to 3 220v outlets. Since I figured I would only need 2 at most, I ended up sharing the 220v circuit for my bandsaw with my jointer. They are never used at the same time so it works out fine for me.

In my shop, I found that the table saw was best positioned centered in the room nearly butted up against the garage door. I work almost all the time with the garage door open and with a shop made outfeed table I can handle 8 ft rips of plywood that way safely. With this configuration, I ended up retrofitting my 220v outlet for the table saw so that it was over the end of my table saw. I have a quick connect plug and receptacle so for my table saw and that way I don't have cords running across the floor.

Outlets in the ceiling are useful for mounting an air filtration system which to me is more important than a dust collector. Going to sleep coughing night after night ended when I got one of those and I highly recommend it.

[Al Willits]

Just a thought on extension cords, consider that you may change the location of your power tools as you build your garage into a shop/garage and find the 220 outlets end up in the wrong spot, I may end up with outlets on the wall, but not till I'm sure where each of my power tools that run on 220 will be...at least for awhile... :)

Also, by running enough cable, I can have my wiring behind the power tools and for the most part, out of the way, so I'm not so sure they'd be much more troublesome as just a line running from a plug in on a wall.

This lets me have the DC, Jointer and planer all plugged in and not have to deal with removing and plugging in cords, my extension cord has 4 2x4 outlets on it.

I found 10ga power cord at menards and all the 220 outlets and plug I needed for pretty reasonable, the power cord is soft enough to move around and heavey enough to take years (for me anyway) of use, its a cheap way of running power till I get the garage done....which also may be years....:)
Just a thought.....
Al

[Jerry White]

Michael,

Those before me have already given you good advice.

It appears that you definitely need to install a subpanel for the shop. This would probably be best located in your shop area. I believe you would do well to have 20 amp, 120 volt outlets spaced at a maximum of every six feet around the perimeter of the shop, placed about 52 inches above floor level. The 120 volt ceiling outlets at strategic locations are a good suggestion, too. I would also place a minimum of one 20 amp, 240 volt outlet on each wall, too (all on one circuit is OK). Some would say that you should go ahead and wire the 240 volt circuits for 30 amp service, "just in case". I would not argue with that, but 20 amp circuits will probably serve you well.

(edit: At first I did not catch the future cyclone. For that, I would run a dedicated 240 volt cicuit, as that machine will be running simultaneously with another machine. That one probably should be a 30 amp circuit, as you could very well end up with a 5 hp motor on that circuit.)

To address the lighting that you had questions about, it is important to know more about your walls and ceiling surfaces, as well as ceiling height. The best case is that the room is painted white. Makes the lighting much more efficient. I am about halfway through a project of lighting my shop of similiar size to yours. I have the white finish and I have power to one side of the room lighting. The plan is for a total of 13 four foot dual 32 watt T-8 lamp flourescent fixtures with daylight lamps. It appears that it is going to give a nice level of illumination to the room. A couple more fixtures would not be excessive for my space.

Good luck on your project!

Jerry