On Mar 18, 4:15 pm, "dpb" wrote:
On Mar 18, 2:54 pm, wrote:



I am running service from my house to a detached garage through 90' of
buried conduit. I will be operating flourescent lights on one circuit
and outlets on another. The outlets will power a fridge, an
occasionally a battery charger, small tools, space heater, etc...
Initially my plan was not to install a sub panel in the garage, but
rather run two separate circuits from the service panel in the house
to the garage. In the future I'd like to have the option to expand my
voltage in the garage to 240V but at the current time this is not
needed. I think I may have made an early mistake that is not to late
to fix. So far I have run 2 lines of 14/2 romex through the conduit.
I understand that this is only 15 amps on each circuit and I was
thinking I should use 20 amp circuits (I know I should have used 12/2
wire). Howver, I purchased the 14/2 and don't have any 12 guage to
use. If I leave the 14/2 in will this be enough to power the garage
effectively? Also, does this give me the option to create a 240V
circuit in the future? If I did decide to switch to 12 guage wire
would it make sense to use a single 12/3 wire hooked to 2 separate 20
amp breakers at the main service in the house and split these in the
garage to the two 20 amp circuits through 12/2 wire? Both circuits in
the garage will be protected with GCFI outlets.

You _should_ do it right to begin with rather than "getting by" w/ a
substandard installation (that, of course, imo ). You're already
talking of upgrading and will undoubtedly want more in the future once
you have power at all.

As others have noted, I'll reiterate the more significant problems
here -- first, for underground even in conduit you need wet-location-
rated conductor and what you've described isn't -- you need an UF and
could dispense w/ the conduit except for protecting it going
underground. 3/4" conduit as you noted later isn't really large
enough.

I strongly recommend going to #10 for the feed and installing a small
subpanel. It will be far better in the end to spend a few extra bucks
up front. But, in particularl, the interior romex is _NOT_SUITABLE_
for the application.

Please elaborate, why isn't 3/4" conduit big enough. Or rather not
big enough for what exactly??