We needed to run 200 amps of electricity from the meter on the back corner of the garage to the mechanical room in the middle of the house.  This part of the process was necessary and lessons were learned, but it was a smallish stand alone project, so here is the shortest video segment yet…

Cable run:

Code requires that 200 amp service needs at least 2/0 copper cable or 4/0 aluminum.  I went with the copper, even though it is a little more expensive, because it is much thinner and easier to work with.  The rooms are not that far apart, but since I had to start in the back corner of the garage and travel a long path up and along walls, I ended up ordering enough for a 125ft service run.

The run requires three of the heavy 2/0 cables (220 volt service) and one smaller 4 gauge ground wire, so the total weight on the spool was about 200 lbs.  We attached conduit to the steel Quonset hut with 3/8ths inch bolts that could support the weight (and the tugging).  Actually, these were bolts left over from assembling the Quonset hut.  On the back wall, we attached to the Fox blocks with wood screws every 8 inches.

The cables have a slightly slippery coating that makes pulling easier, but I still didn’t think my wire puller could handle the load.  Instead, we used the wire puller to pull a rope thru the conduit, and then we used the rope to pull the heavy two-ought cables.

Code limits the maximum number of bends because it just gets too hard to pull the wire if there are too many.  My run was below the maximum, but I still didn’t want to try pulling the whole thing at once.  Instead, we put up the first section with just a single 90 degree bend and pulled the wires just thru that.  Then we added sections, threading them over the cables and working back toward the breakers.

The quick time-lapse makes it look easy, but it really didn’t feel like it at the time and I was very glad to have hunters help.  Don’t try this sort of thing on your own.  At one point you can see us both trying to support the weight of the cable while we add screws for the brackets in that back corner. Lots of sweat.

I just liked this pic that the timelapse camera took of the arches while we were organizing the wires

My parents came out that weekend to help with setting up steel (that’s another video), but also jumped in to help me wrangle the wires into conduit and fit those in place between the garage and the mechanical room.  The trickiest part here was that both ends of the assembly were fixed and we had to get the conduit measured just right and then, with the wire already in side, fit between the two ends. Fortunately, it was just flexible enough.

This last section of conduit is “outside” now, but eventually the kitchen floor will be poured over it.

Introduction:

Welcome Hunter M. to the video.

Hunter is an 18 year old college student (just finished his 2nd year of film school) with a side interest in building.  His personal interest is in a tiny house project, and, hopefully, he will build his own some day.

Hunter is a great worker, with a very optimistic attitude and a great sense of humor. He is also great at paying attention, he learns fast and he anticipates what I will need next. He has been a great help so far this summer and I am sure he will do well in life. I would be happy to recommend him to anyone, just not on Saturdays when I need his help.

Tips:

1) Be careful about the direction of your conduit.  I put the first section in backward and my first attempt to pull the first cable failed because the cable was hitting on the inside end of the pipe in the connection. Fortunately, I was at least consistent and could go around and pull the cable from the other direction.

Pull the cable in this direction, and never mix directions with the conduit.

This sort of rebar bender can help you move service entrance wire

2) Similar to the service entrance, I found that using my rebar bender helped me feed the wire thru that hole between the inside and outside.  It is tough to describe without catching it on video, but you can make the thick/stiff cables move like an inch worm around the corner and through the hole.

3) Code requires all the cables for a run to go thru the same conduit.  This is to keep all the cables the same length so that the sin curves for the AC current stay in sync between the black and red cables…  If anyone wants to know more, I could come back and put in an illustration to explain that here.  I did know that and put all the cables through the one conduit.  The second conduit is so that I can later come back and run other things (Ethernet?) from the garage to the mechanical room. When building a concrete, underground house, a second wire chase is a good idea.