How to Run Underground Power to a Shed | Ask This Old House

[Music] Wow this is big huh look at how roomy it is in here holy Knakal double doors I like it yeah we've got plenty plenty of room for our stuff here I've got a some electric tools here no place to charge them though you know ah then the lights either so I've got my fly tying station here as well I tied some flies for fly fishing here officially I am oh but it's hard to do in the dark yeah need some lunch feel me I don't see it going on I'll check it out over here this is this is where we park our cars out here okay very nice yeah so it gets pretty dark out here with all this tree cover so lights out here would be pretty nice huh we're also thinking about electric vehicle at some point too so maybe a charging station off of the a big leave a guy like that it's like a mini house exactly yeah speaking of house we got to get electricity from the house to the shed huh so why don't you show me where the main panel is and we'll evaluate it done all right cool so how are we looking good so it's a 100 amp main service coming in supplying the whole house it's enough electricity the panel's a little full right now but I think we can adjust it we can put some of the mini breakers in it splits things up a little bit helps things out now if we were just running light and outwards to the shed probably run a couple of circuits underground and call it a day that would be good but with the e V charger and the flexibility that I like to have out there I'm going to put a sub panel in so a sub panel is basically this it's a smaller version of this usually and sometimes we mount them next to the main panel allows us more circuits when these fill up but with this here we have some tricky situations that we got to deal with we got to run the wire from here over to the corner of the house going to ground once we do that this goes to the corner and this goes on the ground same wire six gauge it's rated for about 60 amps of electricity but we can't run this in the conduit underground so that's what I want to do for you but that's not the problem the real problem is outside let me show you what I mean oh here's a little bit of an issue getting the electricity from the panel to the corner no big deal come across the basement once we get to the corner we got to come outside and go underground 18 inches below the surface up to the shed now it's quite a distance up that hill and it's a lot of it's really steep incline I also see some exposed ledge over here which I don't love so how do we deal with the lunch well if we hit the ledge we'll deal with that when we get to it and I have a pretty good sized trenching machine that'll help us dig this before we do any digging we call the utility locating service it came out mark for any underground pipes and wires gave us the okay today okay the trench is dug and I would say we got half lucky so right around here halfway up the hill you can see 18 inches that's great that's what we want conduits going to go in the trench set some sand around it come up put some tape we're good but up the hill here not so great look number that ledge I showed you eight inches right here so this whole area right here we have to treat it a lot differently than down there what we'll do is we'll lay the pipe inside the trench on top of the ledge and then we'll cover it well mix up some concrete we'll cover it with two inches of concrete that way there if you're ever in this yard digging you're going to hit that concrete and you're going to know exactly where the conduit is so you'll stop let's start out this end with the pipes are okay let's get some sand in there we put the sand in the trench first to protect the conduit from shop rocks [Applause] [Music] [Music] I use this propane torch to heat the PVC until it's viable once it cools it holds whatever shape I leave it at we backfill the trench with a few inches of sand to act as a warning and then the caution tape goes on top of that [Music] [Music] all right Paul the pipes in the trench everything's back filled then it looks real good the next step is to get the wires from the shed to the house for that we're going to start with this right here this fish tape will pull the wires up go down that end over okay all right let me know when you see it Paul okay when you get it just pull it all the way through got it I got it all right pull about 5 or 6 feet all right well good okay now we'll get this rope tied onto that fish tape and ultimately this is what pulls the wire is the rope alright so I'm gonna head up the hill and pull this rope in you just make sure it comes off there real good alright alright how's that keep coming a little bit more when we're running wires underground in a pipe we need to run individual conductors with a special insulation on it and because it's 240 up here at the shed we have two hot wires a neutral and a ground alright so coming in from the outside pipe we have these wires right here individual conductors they're going to splice together with these wires right here they're the same size and conductor and it's just in a cable that goes up to the sub panel right there now I could have just came from the top of this junction box right up into here with pipe but it's a little tricky so I like to use this now they get spliced together just like this with this special insulated connector here okay so the difference between a main panel and a sub panel is that the grounds and the neutrals are separated that's really important now this hot wire goes on this side of the bus bar and that supplies power hundred twenty volts to these three breakers this hot wire over here this supplies power 120 volts to the other three breakers and if you need 240 volts you tap it off of both sides with a two-pole breaker okay so that's how it works yeah it's that simple all right let's get running some water [Music] [Music] Oh now with the wiring finished in the shed time the edge of the base okay so that's the same connections we did out in the shed the underground wire is tie into this cable right here we win them right back to the electrical panel now we're going to tie those into the main breaker so I've gone ahead and made some room here we were able to take four breakers and condense them down to just two breakers using these mini breakers now we'll tie the feet of wires that go up to the shed into this 240 volt 60 amp breaker is now going to feed polity ships with the power shut off to the electrical panel I can tie these into the main breaker now okay the power is back on everything is tested let me give you the tour as you drive up your driveway here this whole area is going to be well lit from that light right there it's on a time clock so when it gets dusk comes on when it goes to dawn it shuts off nice through these really neat doors here you can see the amount of light in here I had this LED light strip plenty of light right here where you're working in there's another one I've talked to light up the rest of the shipment perfect over here at the sub panel I've added this surge protector whenever you go underground with wiring you're introducing the possibility of surges and spikes from transient voltage so that's a great idea now there's plenty of room also for your electric vehicle charger and speaking of charger now you want more as a place to live awesome isn't that great now there's plenty of outlets everywhere else you can plug anything you want in outside let me show you here so there's an outlet up here you can vacuum your car anything like that and there's a security light here motion activated so as you walk up the stairs the lights going to come on or if you're anywhere in this rivalry area light comes on to perfect Scott can't thank you and all you guys this is been great it was a lot of fun when you get that electric car give me a call thank you what's the matter little wedge stop you from digging down deep enough and I'm still rattling from that whole day it was crazy you know that's the first time that I've seen concrete used as a solution to a trench can't get deep enough yeah it was good you know you got basically three depths that you have to comply with if you're 18 inches you all of inches in your 6 inches different voltages need different depth if you can't hit them you cover them ideally I'd love to dig it all deep enough but sometimes you just can't with legend we'll also you just cover it with concrete that's a good solution so you ran enough power out there which is why we had to go down so deep we were in 240 volts right for his electric car if you needed it whatever it was but you know because it's detached because it's high-voltage we have to treat it very special part of that specialness is right here this 8 foot growl rod we got to drive that into the earth and we got to bond it to the electrical panel and that's just that's a code you have to do it so and it's safe it's real safety on will you do be time flies all night long nice job yeah [Music]

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,305,237

Rating: 4.8371634 out of 5

Keywords: this old house, how-to, home improvement, Episode, TV Show, DIY, underground power, Scott Caron, electricity, difficult skill level, garden shed stains

Id: ZHUY6SD6SsM

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2017