How to Install a Subpanel Start to Finish

hey homestead prepper today we're going to try and hook up an electrical sub panel and before we get started I need to tell you guys that you need to work at your own risk and if you do attempt to do any electrical work you do it under the direct supervision of a licensed electrical contractor electrical work is very hazardous and it can be even deadly if you don't know what you're doing and even if you know what you're doing you can still get electrocuted like I did and I guess I was dead for a short time but it's not a joke and don't be cocky around it and you know get help also your codes are going to vary from area to area I mean even here in my area and in my own County you can do something in one part of the county and the inspector will say that's great and then he goes on vacation and in that same part of the county another inspector come out there and he won't like what you did or who wants some modification to it or adjustments so contact the authority having jurisdiction which would be your local building department or your electrical inspector that way you make sure you're doing everything right now what I'm going to show you this video is for entertainment and information purposes only so this is just an overview of electrical how we do it in this area so anyone wanting to do some electrical work I wouldn't go by this video like I said I'd get a electrical engineer to draw up something consult your building department get a permit and have it properly inspected now I know there's going to be some people out there say well I don't like that work at my own risk and you know you're really going overboard on this contacting professionals and everything well you know what guys every time I make a video and I put a disclaimer in there somebody comes up and they say they don't like that so here's what I'm going to say to everybody who doesn't like my disclaimers come to Florida get your own state certified electrical contracting license put some videos on YouTube and you know put a little statement there that you're open to litigation okay so all right well let's let's get started with the video this is the panel I'm using today it's 8 or 16 circuits which means there's a maximum of 16 circuits that I can put in there if I use the wafer breakers I'm using an outdoor panel because I'm putting it outdoors now if you're working subpanel indoors and you want to get an indoor rated sub panel now you can use an outdoor panel indoors but you can't use an indoor panel outdoors I mean just you know a lot of electrical is just common sense okay well let's get this thing opened up I've already got it ready you take the cover off this can come out and if you look in there I've already mounted the ground kit rounded that right there and this is the neutral bar so this is the ground dead connector this is the grounding conductor and your female will probably come with a bomb screw and if this is a main panel you know right after the meter first means of disconnect after the meter then you would put this in and your grounds and neutrals would go in here unless the authority having jurisdiction wants a separate bar mounted over here and then a main bonding jumper and then you would put the grounds on one side and then the neutrals on the other side even though they're both connected so anyway that's that's the way it's done in my area we've got this up here being this is a rain type panel put a hub up there it comes with a block wall plates keep the water out so let's just go ahead and put that on drop one of the screws anyway it's not rocket science but they make whether such hubs for this right here but we're not coming out of top of the cone or anything okay so without that ready anyway this panel is ready to get hooked up so you can do is screw it to what I'm going to put it on alright if you can see I've got the panel mounted and I've got it dead level I put one screw right there and that's just to hold it up there so let's put another screw in it see if it'll go another screw handy here I'm using a self-tapping screws because I'm screwing in the metal now it shift it a little bit that's alright we're still level we can see that still in the ballpark so just put a couple more screws in here but one like right here and I think we put one more in I think we'll be doing well and there we go this panel is not coming down okay we got that all nice and level we got our PVC that comes down I've got this ditch here I've got another video on how to put PVC together I've got the pipe eighteen inches well the ditch is 18 inches to the top of the pipe that's what's code in this area your your jurisdiction might be different you might have to be 24 inches well no I might be able to be less who knows I've got it running all the way over here that's the heat that I used to this panel right here so all right well let me get a fish tape out and I'll have to get a wire measurement and we'll get this wire pulled in I still need to strap that pipe right there I've got the ditch covered up and I want to make a note that is against code to throw debris back in the ditch when you cover it up so like that root stick those rocks you're not supposed to put that back in there just nice clean fill dirt so got it all nice and covered and if anybody's interested it took me about two hours to dig it and it took about a half hour to cover it up so anyway that's where we're going gonna take that fish tape down there in the lower right part of the screen and we're going to run that through there okay this is my fish tape some people use strand and they you know put a mouse in there and they suck it through the shop back I'm going to be using this to pull so if you notice the head on this this is not just a piece of wire that's cut off here because it'll when you try and push it over to the other panel it'll get stuck you don't hit on stuff and it'll cause you a lot of grief so what I do is I've been this whole thing around like this and then to keep it from snagging you put a little electrical tape right here this is 3m brand I mean you can use the Harbor Freight stuff whatever you want but this is what I use so we're just going to wrap this around here like this put this on and if you go to pull it back out for whatever reason it won't snag and catch on anything so the fish tape you just pull that and this just unwind it so you put a little out now this is the live this is my main panel right here so I'm going to be pulling from this my helper is going to be on on the other end you know I can't state enough how dangerous electrical is and I can say that because I've been electrocuted before so okay so you just take this and this is the pipe that we're doing we're just going to stick that in there and you pull this you just stick it like that it just goes right in we'll get that down there on the other side of special note like I said this is the live main panel that has power in it right now if you were to push from the sub panel over here and this would hit one of these lugs or busbars you would get electrocuted so like I said guys work with and take all your safety precautions very specially and don't be toxic like that did and that's how I did electrocute what you do is we have somebody stand on the other end and then you can push out you know 40 feet of this if you're not careful to always have a house like I said don't you know you have to be wary of what you're doing and you can call the power company and pull the meter if you need to be like you're safe probably be the smart thing is alright alright okay we got the fish tape here all we need to do is make up the head and get the wires pulled in okay now y'all pay attention to what I'm doing here I got my fish tape and I have my wire stripped and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it just like this and then I'm going to take this in and fold that over like that okay now here's where the trade secret comes in this is by neutral number six we're going to take a dull knife and we're going to skin it then what we're going to do is we're going to take say maybe a couple strands out on one side and then we're going to take a couple strands on the other side you can see what I'm doing here and then what we're going to do is we're going to cut I'm going to cut this center part out right here and then we're going to do the same thing to this only what we're going to do is we're going to stagger it I'm not going to put it all right here we don't want to make the head so big we come down a little bit we bring this one like this and then we bring this one like that and then the next wire will do the same thing we'll put it here and then we'll put the next one down here and then we'll tape it all up and what that does is that keeps the head from being massive because you if you if if the head is too big it won't go down in pipe or it will be a really tough pull so that's that's that's how I do it and some people well let me let me get this made up here okay I got the head made up you can see that's nice and small I wrapped it actually dope I wrapped it with tape now this is wire pulling lubricant and this is yellow number 77 and they have some blue stuff and it has a bunch of colorful names in the trade but this is yellow 77 so what we're going to do is we're going to put this on here and get this lubricated you want a nice and go all the way down the wire and we want to put some this excuse me down there like that and you just lubricate this and it's going to make the the wire pull just so much easier so and what I usually do is as the person's feeding it you shoot a little bit of it down there it doesn't affect the wire long long time ago I worked with a guy and he used motor oil as a lubricant said lubrication but he said that the wires were oil and gasoline resistant now I don't recommend you do that okay but this this is the proper way to do it some people use dishwashing soap that will work but this this right here is the best okay here we go you guys can use gloves or if you're tough enough you can use the prayer hands all right well there we go what you want to do is pull this to the top of the panel and cut that portion off right there with the tape and clean this off and that should give us plenty AUTOSAR okay that's the head right there what we're going to do is just cut this off I've got a rag and I'm going to wipe that stuff off of there the soap but you have to be careful for is if you phase the wires you don't cut the phase tape off and then you have to home it out so that green wire just take this little shop towel here and clean the wire off okay let's clean up all we got to do is make space in there for us to pull breakers okay we got that cleaned up and you can look and you can see that that's looped that was just one wire that was not two pieces of wire and all I did was hook up the ends and pull it through and if you look at this it'll say what size wire it is this is going to be a 60 amp circuit so this is actually good for 75 amps so I could put a 70 at breaker on here of course I'd have to increase my ground size to a number eight this is a number ten but I'm just doing 60 that's all I particularly need and if I overate the wires a little bit and that's good and we have a continuous white number six you can't be rate the neutral on this type of circuit here so all right well what we're going to do is just cut this off and what I'm going to do is a little extra so what most electricians do is you pull the wire up to the top of the panel like right there and that's where you cut it off I usually do that then just give a little extra it's better to have a little extra and not enough so this one off okay and cording to our national electrical code book we have to ground our sub panels with grounding electrodes some places may say one electrode some places say - this particular area says you could have two grounding electrodes these are five eight by eight feet long galvanized you know your local jurisdiction might say you got to have copper but around here galvanized is fine and the ground around here so soft you can take your hand well I usually use two hands and you can just about beat this thing in the ground until it hits the hard pan or there's some red clay down there sometimes if you go over like pine Ellis County you get up around the salt water you you have to beat that in with a hammer this one is sticking a little high the ground I remember the old days we get a ladder out on our 16 ounce hammer and drive that thing all the way in the ground but I'm going to take both hands want to do the same thing this is a five out as far as this one is going to go and I'll have to beat it let me let me just show you a trick that I use because what happens is when you beat it with a sledge hammer this will mushroom out you won't be able to get the ground clamp over it so let me up let me show you what I'm gonna do okay as I stated before when you beat this with a hammer sometimes this head will mushroom out so big you can't get the connector over it so what I do is go in put the connector on tighten it up and then what I'll do is I'll take some black tape there's a couple hits with a hammer that thing will loosen up and it will come off of there and it will slide down and you'll make a hole down there you won't be able to get your connector out sometimes so let's go ahead and tape it up like I said I guess there's other ways to do it but it sure beats the alternative of beating this thing in the ground and then having to get a hacksaw and cut that off just so you can put this on there the inspectors around here like it about six inches out of the ground some other places around here they like have it beaten below the grade so all right there we go that's a ground rod number two okay something else I want to show you guys is the ground rods have to be a minimum of six feet apart and if we look here where we're almost 7 so if you put it any closer than 6 that is against code so I used to work for a guy he was so cheap what he would do is he would put him exactly 6 feet apart and then he would bend the tops over so he would use less ground wire so but I mean I don't recommend you do that but okay well let's get let's get the rest of this hooked up here okay according to Article two 1566 our grounding electrode conductor when we have a service wire which is number two copper or smaller which we're using number six is that the right copper wire to use for the grounding electrode conductor is going to be number eight solid so this is what I have is some number eight solid we're going to go from that Brown rod to that ground rod and we also need to ground the shipping container to because it's metal okay you want to take a little ditch right there and you want to bury the wire you want to protect it I guess I need to go a little bit deeper than that but I'm just showing you what you're doing in the wire like I said is going to run up right here into this panel so let me get that dug a little bit more and get that run okay we're just going to feed this round wire through the pipe and there it is what you do is just put it in there I need to some glue right here and glue this thing in there all right that one you're doing that connector skittled blue okay we got the wire in here you notice there's no insulator on here I guess you know where we afraid it's going to get grounded or whatever but anyway it's PVC and you know your inspector might say no he wants a insulator on there I have no idea but I'm not going to put one on here but it's usually not required in my area you take the wire and bend it like that and we're going to go in this ground bar try and be as neat as possible and I think if you take our pliers and Bend this that I think we can go right there take your screwdriver put that in there and you want a little bit come out on the other side I'll show you that and we're going to tighten it down okay I just want to show you up close when you run the ground wire it comes up and goes through the back here don't put the ground wire next to the nut because you'll cut it in half and that's not the proper way to do it's got to go along the back here we're just about ready to do the smoke test here so if you notice I've got a couple blanks in here and there's an open right here and I've got some of these filler plates so we're going to take one of these out we'll just go ahead and just put it right in there snaps right in and there now it's a lot safer I've had two real able the panel I don't know I guess I need to get some gray paint or something and it wouldn't rub off you have to mark this permanent you can use these little stickers right here but I like to write it in marker so all right well let's give it the test to see if anything flames up all right well that's a good sign it is always a good idea to check your work I don't care how perfect you did the job how well you think everything went you need to pull your meter out and you need to check your voltages when you're finishing up on a job so let's let's turn this on here to alternating current because that's what I have available to me right now Hertz and we're going to do a little check right here let's let's do a check and see if we got 120 coming in so we'll go across here and it says we got two forty seven point five let's go from a hot to the ground dead conductor our neutral one twenty three point seven let's go to the other phase over here one twenty three point eight let's go from here to the grounding inductor one twenty three point seven let's go the other phase one twenty three point seven okay and I always like to go across the grounding conductor in the grounded conductor and I've got zero if you go across your ground and your neutral and you've got like 120 volts you got some big big problems you need to work that out guys the reason you need to check the voltages and I'm so adamant about that is because years ago I worked at a company and it was like eleven service techs there and kinko copier called up and they had a new machine they wanted hooked up it was 120 volt 20 amp dedicated line it required one of the guys went out there and they got it all hooked up and they plugged it in and they left and later that day a Kinkos call him said the coffee machine wasn't working well someone else went out there and what had happened is this is a single-phase panel you've got two hots here well it was this was a three-phase panel at Kinkos it had a phase B phase and C phase so if you can just pretend along with me here that that's a phase that's B phase and that C the guy had put the breaker on the B phase and on that particular type of transformer a delta it's it's 120 208 120 and he snapped it on 120 doesn't mean the 208 volt line and there was 208 volts going to that copy machine and it burned it up so always check your work I can't emphasize that enough okay well I think we're going to call this a wrap homestead prepper out

Channel: homesteadprepper

Views: 997,708

Rating: 4.5248041 out of 5

Keywords: 220 volt subpanel installation, subpanel, subpanel intsall, pull wire, pulling wire, pulling wire through conduit, electrical, electrical installation, out building subpanel, panel wiring, 240 volt subpanel, electrician, underground conduit, pvc, 60 amp subpanel

Id: oDor0hNmfL8

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2016