To the best of my recollection, you can do 40 amps on 8 ga. cable. As Grant
said, figure your voltage drop before going with that cable. I'll chime in
that I'm a fan of "in code" electrical work, as well. Nothing inherently out
of code in what you have said so far, provided stuff is buried to proper
depth, conduit is properly sized, cable colours are ok for use (ground
green, neutral white, hot lines red and black), breaker at feeder panel
correctly sized etc. etc. Don't know about the US code, but it would be
legal here to tape the exposed cable ends to address the colour issue.

Others will undoubtedly correct me with regards to US practise.

Adam Smith,
Midland ON

"stanley baer" wrote in message
...
I have found several hundred feet of 8 AWG wire that I would like to use
to bring electricity to my shop that is 200' from my house. At the moment
I use a 3ph propane powered generator but it is expensive to run.

I plan to run the wire through a buried plastic conduit and have enough
wire to be able to have two of each of the power carrying conducters and
two ground conducters.

What will the current capacity be of this setup? (I realize it is probably
not up to code)

stan