Shed Electrical Installation (How to Add Electricity to a Shed - DIY)

if you want to learn how to take electricity and add it to your shed then you're in the right place this video is going to help you to plan out your sheds electrical layout it'll show you how to actually route your conduit from your main electrical breaker to your shed i'm going to talk about how deep you're going to need to excavate depending on what type of conduit and cable you're using and i'm also going to give you a preview of the switches the lights the outlets and everything you can install within your shed so if you need electricity in your shed make sure to watch this video all the way through let's get into it [Music] [Music] [Applause] so in my opinion the first step in adding electricity to a shed is just to call a local electrician meet with them at your house and figure out the best way to route electricity to the shed so typically your sheds electrical is going to be pulled directly from your home's main panel but talk with the electrician and see what they think okay so this project starts with my electrician he went and he added a circuit for the shed and he ran it around and then it basically goes outside the house if we go outside he left it coiled up right there so this is where the project starts we're gonna be running it to the shed all right first things first we're just gonna make sure it's off should be after confirming the circuit was flipped off i took a half inch drill bit and i drilled through the blocking underneath my deck these holes were created so that i could run the three-quarter inch pvc conduit through the blocking and connect it to my house as you're seeing now [Music] next i took the 12-2 romex cable that was coiled up outside my home and i threaded it through that first stick of three-quarter inch pvc conduit after getting all of the romex cable through i took the piece of conduit and i inserted it into the house and sealed it with some caulk so at this point i threaded the cable through the first stick of conduit and i have the end right there and before doing anything else with that conduit i'm gonna install a piece of blocking which is going to allow me to take the conduit from below the deck put a 90 degree bend on and then get it below grade so after making my measurements i cut my pvc conduit to size you can use a miter saw or a hacksaw and here i am preparing to make the first connection of pvc conduit you can see there's a bell in fitting and a plain end fitting you're going to apply that conduit glue which is similar to how you would join pvc pipe and then you're just going to push one end into the other and hold it there for a few seconds until it dries next up we're gonna make the transition from horizontal conduit to vertical conduit and i'm installing a 90 degree bend fitting to accomplish that next up we're going to install our gfci outlet and to do this we're using one of these exterior rated outlet boxes i'll link it in the description and you're going to attach the mounting clips to both sides and fill any condiment openings that you're not going to use in our case we don't need the one in the middle since we're going to be going in through the top and out to the bottom they have these threaded connection fittings where you can connect from the outlet box to the conduit incoming and outgoing then you're simply going to apply your pvc cement and you're going to attach the conduit to the outlet box on the top right there you can see that we have the 12 2 romex cable coming out through the top and then what we're going to do is actually attach the gfci outlet box to the piece of blocking we installed previously after installing the incoming conduit i'm installing the outgoing conduit and i have the ufb cable which we'll talk about in a second being threaded down through that piece of conduit and although you can do this later i decided just to wire up my gfci outlet now you can look up tutorials on youtube for how to install an outlet but it's black to black which is the hot then you have your neutral which is white to white and then attach your ground and here we are installing the exterior rated cover now the outgoing piece of conduit from that gfci box is going to be routed below grade and this is where we need to start planning and actually excavating to the required depth so you have many different conduit and cable options when running electrical cable below grade and the type of conduit cable you're going to be using will determine the berry depth you'll need as always consult with the licensed electrician and consult with all applicable electrical building codes to get the requirements for your specific area to illustrate the different burial depths depending on the condo you're using let's take rigid metal conduit for example if you're using rigid metal conduit you only need to bury your conduit 6 inches below grade however if you plan on using pvc conduit you'll need to bury your conduit 12 inches below grade note that 12 inch burial of pvc conduit is contingent on the following the cable within the pvc conduit must be gfci protected before it's routed below grade and two the circuit must be limited to 120 volts and be protected by no more than a 20 amp circuit breaker in my area if you meet both of those requirements you can bury your pvc conduit 12 inches below grade there's also a certain type of cable called ufb that can be directly buried below grade with no conduit this type of cable must be buried a minimum of 24 inches below grade but it is an option if you don't feel like using conduit for my specific shed application we're going to be using pvc conduit so we need to excavate down a minimum of 12 inches and to excavate for my conduit i used a post hole digger and a shovel also real quick if you want to learn how i actually built this shed you can check out my other videos or check the link in the description all right so according to code we got to be about a foot in the ground as you can see we're just over a foot here and we're a foot into the ground at every location so after excavating down i started to dry fit all the conduit in place measuring it and cutting it to size here you can see i'm installing a 90 degree bend and you're basically going to want to dry fit all of your conduit in place before you glue anything and it's basically just like a puzzle to get everything to fit together so after dry fitting all the conduit you can see here that i'm threading the ufb cable through the individual pvc segments and you don't need to use ufb cable if you're going to install it in conduit but i just kind of went with the belt and suspenders approach and as you can see here i'm now attaching the 90 degree bends and these two 90 degree bends are back to back and you can see that i'm still kind of struggling to pull the cable through so make sure that you pull the cable through as you go so you don't end up having a situation where you have a bunch of bends and you're not able to pull it through here i am installing a conduit clip to hold that vertical piece of conduit in place and now once you've dry fit everything you're just going to go back you're going to apply the conduit pvc cement and you're going to glue all of the fittings together as you can see right there i have a coupling to attach that straight run a pvc conduit to the 90 degree bend and as i mentioned before i highly recommend that you thread the cable through as you go it's harder than you would think to actually pull that cable through so working piece meal is what i recommend and after installing all of the pvc conduit 12 inches below grade it's time to 90 degree bend upward and come out through the ground and connect to the shed so for my electrical conduit layout i decided to route my conduit into the shed on the side near the front so i drilled a three quarter inch hole through as you're seeing now and just like before i'm going to use a tape measure to measure the distance i need to cover with the conduit then i'm going to dry fit everything and make my cuts just as before i'll link all the specific pvc fittings i'm using in the description and after dry fitting everything in place you're going to glue all the pvc components together with the pvc cement and because this is a high visibility area i wiped off any excess pvc cement purely for aesthetics continue to glue everything together but before making the final connection you want to make sure that you thread your cable through the conduit and into the shed as you're seeing now before you make that final connection so as you can see i have the cable threaded through and now i'm gluing that final connection 12 inches below grade and now i'm just going to apply a little bit of construction adhesive to the back of the fitting there and then i'm going to permanently insert it into the shed and press it into place then i took a little bit of clear caulk and i sealed around the perimeter of that fitting to prevent any water from ever getting behind then i took a conduit clip and i permanently attached it to the shed to hold it in place now here's a look at the entire run going from the house to the gfci outlet that we installed down below grade and then following the conduit routing underground and to the shed so at this point we're going to be doing some work on the inside of the shed and the first order of business was to install an outlet so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take the power feed cable that's coming in at the bottom there and i'm going to route it through that receptacle box and i'm going to install an outlet there next i'm going to take the power cable from the outlet box and i'm going to install some exterior switches and right now i'm just marking the outline of that receptacle box then i took an oscillating tool and i cut out around the outline i continued using an oscillating tool until i cut all the way around the outline on the siding and then i installed the receptacle box as shown using some mounting screws on the inside to attach it to the blocking i installed previously okay so at this point we're gonna take our incoming power supply we're gonna route it into that outlet receptacle box and as you can see i'm gonna wire that outlet in place and then we have the outgoing wire from the outlet receptacle box to the switch box so i installed two switches there but we'll get to that later next let's install some side lights on the shed i installed my lights on the side of the shed and i centered them between the windows i used a hole saw bit to cut a hole perfectly sized for a new work electrical box as you're seeing here and then i adjusted that and installed it between the studs as you're seeing now then make adjustments as needed to get it centered within the hole you drilled and then tighten it down once the location is finalized next feed your electrical cable through the box and make sure you have enough slack to get back to the power source here the lights are going to be installing i bought them on amazon and i'll link them in the description then wire the light up based on the manufacturer's instructions after wiring the light i used some clear caulk to make sure that the area around the light was completely waterproof so at this point we need to connect the shed light wire that's going to the receptacle box at the light to the receptacle box for the light switch and power so to get through the studs i'm drilling small holes about half an inch through the studs with a little drill bit right there and once we route that through we can take the power cable and feed it into our switch box on the outside of the shed here's a look at me routing that through you can see the powers coming in the bottom and there is going to be the switch wire which is going to the side light of the shed and i'm repeating this process for the second light that is drilling holes through the studs and routing the electrical cable from the light all the way around as you're seeing now to the power supply on the opposite side of the shed so here's the routing we're going above the roll-up door and then we're going down to the actual power feed i then installed some decorative lights on the front of the shed the exact same way that i installed the lights on the side i then routed the electrical cable from those lights to the incoming power supply with the exterior switches i wired two light switches on the sheds exterior one light switch controls the two exterior lights on the sides of the shed and the other switch controls the decorative lights on the front of the shed i also installed an overhead bay light on the inside of the shed after confirming that everything was working and after getting the thumbs up from my electrician i went and i back filled everything along the entire conduit run and there was one segment right here where i wasn't able to get the 12 inch depth that i needed per code so i installed some concrete and this is going to prevent anyone from digging this area accidentally damaging the electrical cable lastly i planted some grass seed over the soil that i used to backfill the conduit routing area and the grass turned out pretty good i'll link that video on growing grass in case you're interested here's a look at the electricity added to my shed [Music] if this video was helpful please consider dropping a like down below it helps my channel out and subscribe if you like diy content like this in the next video i'm going to talk about shed storage and also how to apply epoxy on the shed floor which i think looked really cool thanks for watching and i will see you on the next

Channel: Andrew Thron Improvements

Views: 182,405

Keywords: Shed Electrical Installation, How to add electricity to a shed, how to add electrical to a shed, shed electricity, shed electrical, how to add shed electricity, electrical in shed, add electrical to shed, add shed electricity, PVC conduit, conduit bury depth, UF-B, how to add lights to shed, lights in shed, how to connect electricity to shed, shed electricity connection, shed electrical connection, underground power, how to add underground power to a shed, electricity, DIY

Id: -pRhVgcqa1M

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 14 2022