I know nothing about electricity at the moment, and of course just
bought a first house. Fortunately it has a nice detached garage with
its own 125 amp panel.

My question is, I see a bunch of 20 amp breakers, one 40 amp and I
beleive another high amp one for the furnace.

If I needed another 240 50 amp breaker for a high powered kiln, do I
need another panel or can some of the 120v 15-20amp be rewired to suit
that purpose?

Sure ill all 'educamacated' over the next few years as this house is
older. Just curious though of what I can do in the short term to
upgrade as I want to set up a proper glass blowing shop.

pauly wrote:

I know nothing about electricity at the moment, and of course just
bought a first house. Fortunately it has a nice detached garage with
its own 125 amp panel.

My question is, I see a bunch of 20 amp breakers, one 40 amp and I
beleive another high amp one for the furnace.

If I needed another 240 50 amp breaker for a high powered kiln, do I
need another panel or can some of the 120v 15-20amp be rewired to suit
that purpose?

Sure ill all 'educamacated' over the next few years as this house is
older. Just curious though of what I can do in the short term to
upgrade as I want to set up a proper glass blowing shop.


A competent study needs to be done of the existing loads
to determine the Service Entrance ampacity requirements.
This is not a trivial task.

For more opinions, post to: Alt.Home.Repair

Jim

"pauly" writes:
I know nothing about electricity at the moment, and of course just
bought a first house. Fortunately it has a nice detached garage with
its own 125 amp panel.

My question is, I see a bunch of 20 amp breakers, one 40 amp and I
beleive another high amp one for the furnace.

If I needed another 240 50 amp breaker for a high powered kiln, do I
need another panel or can some of the 120v 15-20amp be rewired to suit
that purpose?

You'll need an electrician for that one. Depending on the current
load being served by your 125A subpanel, you may need a larger box
there with a larger feed from your main box, you may need to upgrade
your main box, you may need to upgrade your electric service from the
power company (which may involved them hanging a larger transformer).

240V is typically available on the electrical panel. The feed is
composed of Two 120V legs out of phase. 240V breakers go across +120V
and -120V. In contrast, 120V breakers go from one of the legs to
ground. The big question in your situation is: is there physical
space for another 240V breaker on the subpanel, and is there enough
current capacity left on the subpanel to handle another 40A @ 220V.
That's a lot of added load, so my guess would be no.


Sure ill all 'educamacated' over the next few years as this house is
older. Just curious though of what I can do in the short term to
upgrade as I want to set up a proper glass blowing shop.

--
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

Hard to say, the blur of buying the house is all thats left and some
digital pictures and a few camera movies.

Unfortunately I cant take another look until I return to Canada and
take posession in late July.

From what I can see on the picture is power enters the house by a line
opposite of the garage. There is what appears to be a 2nd line going to
the other side of the house but next to the driveway that goes to the
garage. Looks like that line is then conduited down and below ground so
I would assume its for the garage.

Will have to look into it closely as longer term I want a separate 50
amp not including my glass equipment to power a hottub.

There is one kiln I found that uses 240v 40amp breaker that will do the
job so I can get away without 50 amps at least for now. There is a 240
cord I can use for that, ultimately though, id guess id need 80-90 amps
spread over about 6-8 (of which one would be the 40 amp kiln - already
have a 13 amp 120v one) devices so no matter how I look at it,
eventually I will have to upgrade. For the time being it will have to
be a workaround.


Todd H. wrote:
"pauly" writes:
I know nothing about electricity at the moment, and of course just
bought a first house. Fortunately it has a nice detached garage with
its own 125 amp panel.

My question is, I see a bunch of 20 amp breakers, one 40 amp and I
beleive another high amp one for the furnace.

If I needed another 240 50 amp breaker for a high powered kiln, do I
need another panel or can some of the 120v 15-20amp be rewired to suit
that purpose?

You'll need an electrician for that one. Depending on the current
load being served by your 125A subpanel, you may need a larger box
there with a larger feed from your main box, you may need to upgrade
your main box, you may need to upgrade your electric service from the
power company (which may involved them hanging a larger transformer).

240V is typically available on the electrical panel. The feed is
composed of Two 120V legs out of phase. 240V breakers go across +120V
and -120V. In contrast, 120V breakers go from one of the legs to
ground. The big question in your situation is: is there physical
space for another 240V breaker on the subpanel, and is there enough
current capacity left on the subpanel to handle another 40A @ 220V.
That's a lot of added load, so my guess would be no.


Sure ill all 'educamacated' over the next few years as this house is
older. Just curious though of what I can do in the short term to
upgrade as I want to set up a proper glass blowing shop.

--
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

The first thing to check is if there are two empty slots available for
another double slot breaker.

Then next is the total capacity of the panel, 125 amp total, so so far so
good. This is less than 50 amps.

Next would be the question, what all will be in use "all at the same time"?

Will you *ever* have more things on and running (kiln, water heater?,
furnace?, etc.) which will total 125 amps?

Many times not *everything* is turned on and running at the same time. So
you can have 500 amps worth of breakers in a panel in theory, but so long as
you never exceed 120 or 125 amps total use at any *one* time, you are OK.

Breakers are designed to protect the wiring. The breaker to the panel is
designed to trip if "at any one time" you draw more power than is safe to do
so with the installed wiring.


"pauly" wrote in message
I know nothing about electricity at the moment, and of course just
bought a first house. Fortunately it has a nice detached garage with
its own 125 amp panel.

My question is, I see a bunch of 20 amp breakers, one 40 amp and I
beleive another high amp one for the furnace.

If I needed another 240 50 amp breaker for a high powered kiln, do I
need another panel or can some of the 120v 15-20amp be rewired to suit
that purpose?

Sure ill all 'educamacated' over the next few years as this house is
older. Just curious though of what I can do in the short term to
upgrade as I want to set up a proper glass blowing shop.