Electrical Circuit Identification Suggestion

[Jack Frederick 135]

I’m new to this hobby and have posted a few times in the Gen Woodworking section.

Thanks to everybody that has helped me.

I wanted to give back, so here goes.

I recently turned my third car garage area (12x22) into a dedicated woodworking area and have been really pleased with how it’s worked out.

When we built the house I had a 100A sub panel put in the basement mechanical room which is directly below the garage/interior house wall. I did this as I knew when we built I would do something in the garage that required additional circuitry, just wasn’t sure what at the time.

Anyway, it’s a woodworking area now.

The builder wired the garage to code and put two 15A receptacles on the third car garage exterior wall at standard “light switch” height. These share the same circuit as the lighting in the garage. The garage door openers are on are a separate circuit.

Obviously the 15A circuits, sharing lights, was no where near enough for the tools I had planned to use.

So, I ran 2 new 20A circuits to the third car area from my subpanel. Giving me three circuits, 1 -15A and 2 - 20A. When I was laying this out I was concerned that once I insulated and hung drywall I would have a really hard time remembering which outlets shared circuits.

Than I had an idea, which I hope is helpful to someone.

My 15A circuit outlets, installed when the house was built, are white outlets with white face plates. I decided I would do different colors to easily identify which outlets shared a circuit.

Today I have 5 - two gang 15A outlets, shared with my lighting, they are fine to charge battery’s with, run my stereo and soon my TV as well as a security camera for my driveway and my shop and my sprinkler system control panel —all low current consumers. And yes, your math is right, I added three additional ones on this circuit to accommodate my needs. These are all white.

I have 6 - 20A two gang outlets on the wall and around the area (some from ceiling with pull down extension cords) that are black outlets with black face plates. These are 60” off the floor so I can lay sheet goods against the wall and not cover them (a helpful idea I learned on this forum!).

I have 6 - 20A two gang outlets, spaced evenly around the shop to compliment the black outlet circuits and installed at the same 60” height. Some also for ceiling use. These are gray outlets with gray faceplates.

So, long story short, I now have outlets coming out of my rear - less than 24” apart in some areas. More amperage capacity than I can fathom using by myself (could easily add more later I needed to), and a very easy way to quickly ID which are shared.

This is super helpful when my wife is sanding and running the dust collector and I want to run the router table or the table saw/miter saw. I simply look at what circuit she is using - gray or black - and pick the open one.

There are all sorts of colors available at Home Depot or Lowe’s or any big box so if you wanted 5 different colors or more you could do so.

Anyway, hope this helps someone.

Thanks!

[Bill Dufour]

I find white outlets are easier to see and get the plug into. That said you can just use different color cover plates. I have some outlets switched with the lights for machine light sand the radio. For those I used some orange outlets I picked up cheap at habitat.
Bill D.

[Jeff Caulk]

When I wired up my shop I color coded the outlets to indicate separate circuits.
There's a strip of white general purpose outlets along each long wall on separate 20A breakers.
Each 120V tool station has an orange outlet. Since I'm a one man shop, and should only run one tool at a time, I branched those slightly so there are three outlets on each 20A breaker.
The compressor is on a dedicated 20A circuit with a black GFCI.
There's a third general purpose circuit of grey outlets along one short wall where a work bench is.


That allowed me to always have an outlet readily available, and have a full 20A available for a tool while I run a shop vac or task lighting from the GP outlets nearby.
I have four separate 20A circuits available at the work bench.

The 240V circuits have dedicated tools so I didn't need to color code them.

[Malcolm McLeod]

I used a slightly different scheme: All my 120V receptacles are in 2-gang boxes with all the same color. The left side is one circuit/CB; the right side is different CB. For simultaneous loads, I only need to plug the tools into opposite sides of any particular box(es). Incremental cost is an 'extra' run of wire, but I was installing in existing structure and so used conduit and THHN wire. Easy and relatively cheap.

As with your scheme, a glance around the shop tells me which to use.

[Jon Snider]

I did pretty much the same as Malcolm.

[Wayne Cannon]

I use a fine tipped "Sharpie" to put the breaker # on the face of each receptacle.

[roger wiegand]

I wait for a breaker to pop from running too many things at once on it then move the plug somewhere else. In 40+ years of shop ownership I'm still waiting, have never blown a breaker from overloading the circuit. (Of course big loads like DC and compressor got dedicated circuits.)

[Jim Becker]

My shop outlets are labeled with circuit numbers from a label maker.

[Mike Cutler]

Everyone comes up with a different scheme. It's nice that your is working well for you.
It's just me in the garage/shop, so I don't have a problem popping breakers.