100 Amp Electrical Upgrade
Up to this point I was still using the 40 amp feed that originally went to the old 2 car garage. To my surprise I never once tripped the 40 amp breaker. Even with the pool pump running off of it and measuring my air compressor alone drawing 25amps at peak!
Just like painting I questioned if it was worth the effort to upgrade but ultimately decided I already had all the material on hand and we had been debating adding a heat pump for the pool and/or AC for the shop which would no doubt force the upgrade anyway. I knew I needed help feeding wires through the conduit and hired an electrician to help.
I took the day off before to dig up the existing trench and dug a new one as the plan was to intercept where my new conduit met the old conduit and then reroute it along a new path coming up next to the gas and data lines where it would then run through flexible conduit in the crawlspace where it met the elbow that went down into the main panel in the basement.
Coincidentally I ended up digging this trench 6 years later to the day I dug the trench at the old house!
We ended up reusing the original conduit due to some unforeseen issues running a new one so in the end I dug the trench for nothing. in the above picture following the conduit down leads to the shop, through the rim joist leads to the house panel.
We were originally going to pull 3 of 4 wires out and use the 4th to pull the new wires through. This ended up not being possible because the previous owner had ziptied the wires together every couple feet. Out they came and we ran a fish tape through. Stripped back 6-8” of the wires, twisted the ends all together and to the tape and wrapped it all with about ¼ roll of electrical tape.
We then fought against friction for probably an hour literally pushing/pulling as hard as we could but finally the wires came out of the shop panel. Had another small fight getting it down the last 8’ into the basement but got that sorted out too.
Took an hour break for lunch and then got the trench filled back in and pavers reset within a couple hours.
