Karla's Studio-Shed Project 2006

Karla's Studio-Shed Project!

Days 16-20: Electrical wiring.
This page will be a little bit different than the others since there wasn't a defined amount of days that we worked on running electricity to the shed. We started working on the shed's electricity the first weekend in January (2007), but had to take baby steps at each step in the process. The first thing I had to do was to get a permit from the city of St. Peters to run power to the shed. Once I got the permit, my dad and I started wiring the outlet boxes and the breaker sub-panel in the shed. However, for each thing we bought from the hardware store, we had to return it and purchase several other items since the original ones weren't going to work. Originally, we were going to wire the shed with two 30 amp circuits, so we purchased wire, circuit breakers and conduit accordingly. However, we realized it would be better to run 100 amps to the shed, so we had to return all the stuff for the 30 amps and purchase a larger sub-panel, more circuit breakers, larger wire, larger conduit and etc. Unfortunately, the local hardware stores didn't have everything we needed (for the larger sizes), so we had to make several trips to return items at one store and get new items at the other store. My dad also had to visit a small hardware store to find some speciality items, and I ended up visiting an electrical supply company to find the hard-to-find items. Overall, it's been a big pain in the rear, that has taken over a month to complete. All of the pictures below were taken at the end of the wiring process, prior to having the work inspected by the city of St. Peters (which passed with flying colors!).
	Finally! Some wiring pictures! Here's a shot of the sub-panel inside the shed. The panel is capable for being wired with 100 amps, but we've wired it for 80 (4-20 amp circuits). Each circuit powers a separate outlet in the shed. Great job, dad!
	After the Super Bowl, I was surprised by my dad and husband with power! Nearing the end of our electrical wiring, the lights now work! :) I'm so happy with how they look! The last thing I need to do with these is to paint the silver conduit and junction box (upper left) brown to match the rafters.
	Not the most exciting picture, but I thought I'd capture the conduit body (elbow) and ground wire running outside of the shed. The green ground wire will be attached to an 10-foot grounding rod which will be driven into the ground. The conduit runs outside of the shed and connects to a water-tight flexible conduit, which then connects to another elbow that goes into my garage.
	It's hard to capture all of the wiring my dad did in the shed, but here you can see most of it. The sub-panel is in the upper right and you can see the wires coming from it and going to various outlets. You can also see my range hood that is temporarily installed. We installed it so we knew where to run the wires. We'll take it back down before we start the insulation and drywall process.
	Leaving the shed, we're now in my house. Here's a shot of the main breaker panel in our laundry room. The new wire my dad ran comes through the top, middle portion of the panel and connects to the top circuit breaker on the right side. It's a double 50 amp circuit breaker for a total of 100 amps.
	In order to use a 100 amp circuit breaker, we needed to use 6-3 wire with ground. This wire is extremely thick (about 3/4" in diameter) and weighs a ton! Not to mention it's pretty pricey at almost $3.00/foot. We purchased 70 feet of wire and ran it through the floor joists in my laundry room. The shed's wire is the black one on the far left. I can't even begin to tell you how difficult it was to thread that thick, heavy and stiff wire through the holes we drilled in the joists. Whew!
	We're not quite done with the wiring (we only have a few loose ends to tie), so I thought I'd share an image of the propane box I've been working on while my dad's been wiring. I drew up the skematics for this little box and built it using leftover materials from the shed. I'm really happy with how it turned out! The lid still needs to be shingled and I still need to stain the box, but overall, it's pretty close to complete. :)
	It's been a while since I've posted a picture of Watson. Here he is in all his glory; illustrating how large the box is. :) What a ham!
	A slightly boring and fuzzy picture, this shows off the space between the shed and my house. You can see that we've buried the flexible conduit (that houses the 6-3 wire) and where it attaches to the conduit body on the outside of the shed. You can also see a small, copper rod sticking out of the ground. This is the grounding rod, which my dad and I drove into the ground. It's a 10-foot rod and we managed to get all but one foot driven into the ground! Next, we'll be attaching an outdoor box over the end of the rod and will run a grounding wire from the shed and from the house into the box.
	Over the weekend, I managed to build a table for my torch! I didn't really have a good plan for building the table and kind of winged it as I went along. It measures about 1.5' x 4' and is around 28" high. It's a very sturdy table (hey...it holds me!) and is almost perfectly level. I had a few issues with all four legs not touching the floor at once, but this was due to the pine studs being slightly warped. I purchased some adjustable table feet last night and will screw into the the bottom of the legs. All that's left to do is to paint the table brown and afix the galvanized steel to the top. :)
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