He's already got the EMT bridging the house and garage



"zxcvbob" wrote in message
...
Pason wrote:
It is a detached, but why do you say that only for an attached?

An outbuilding technically can only be fed from one circuit. If both
circuits run thru the same conduit and disconnect at the same box in the
garage, it's probably not a big deal.


I think that would still be possible, but again it would only be 30 amps,
right? If that's the only option that's okay however I would like to
maximize the power to the garage.

Two options. I'm not sure which is better under the 2006 electric code;
my code book is a few years old:

To maximize the power to the garage AND reuse the existing conduit, pull
the existing wires out and replace with three #8 THWN wires. That will
give you a 40A 240V service with 2 hot wires and a neutral. You will have
to make a new ground at the garage and bond it to the neutral, and you
can't have any other grounded pipes or wires connecting the garage to the
house. (CATV, telephone, metal gas or water pipes, etc.) The subpanel in
the garage needs to be rated for Service Equipment, but that's not a big
deal because almost all of them are.

You might can run the three wires and use the EMT as a separate ground,
but I don't know if that's kosher. You'll still need to drive a ground
rod (or two) at the garage. In that case, you would not bond the ground
and neutral at the garage subpanel, and you wouldn't care about
phone/gas/water lines connected back to the house.

Best regards,
Bob