Breaker Box

EndersShadow

So assuming my house purchase goes through fine, I will now finally have a house in which I can run dedicated lines to my gear. I know Paul has a thread going on 20amp circuits, and I dont want to jack his thread.

So I have a couple questions, but first, here are 2 pics of the breaker box in that house.





My questions are:

1. How many open slots do I have to run lines?
2. Regardless should I just have a sub-panel put in for just those lines and leave the existing breaker box as it is?
3. I am hoping to put in 2 dedicated outlets per setup (HT and 2 channel) for a total of 4. I would run my amps off 1 channel, and gear off the other. On the channels I am putting AMPS ONLY on, do you suggest I have a outlet put in with noise/surge/voltage regulation in side it or should I just buy a decent receptacle and then a noise/surge/voltage regulation piece of gear? Any suggestions on which ones to use?

I would hire an electrician to do this work, because I will be honest, anything with that kind of voltage scares the crap out of me. Simply looking to see what my options are with my existing setup and get your guys thoughts on my "plan"

pitdogg2

Dan from what I see there are 5 open standard size slots. If you go 1/2 size you have more. When I did mine I put them in the top two slots that may not be an option for you heck I do not know if it makes any difference. My reckoning was first juice in will be cleaner than down the panel(and my top 2 were open). The electrician will be able to tell you for certain what your options are for sure.

I sure wouldn't think a sub panel is in order...but your cash your way my friend

EndersShadow

What are the differences between going with a "whole" v a "half" size slot? Obviously you fit in more, but are there power drawbacks? Can you overload the panel?

Just trying to learn all the "fun" stuff :biggrin:

pitdogg2

EndersShadow wrote: »

What are the differences between going with a "whole" v a "half" size slot? Obviously you fit in more, but are there power drawbacks? Can you overload the panel?

Just trying to learn all the "fun" stuff :biggrin:

More breakers in a given spot. Normal size is 1" 1/2 size are 1/2" and yes you could overload the box easily if you do not take in consideration amperage draw. i.e. 100 amp box with say 12 spots and you put 24 1/2 size in there that could add up to more than 200amp...not a real technical explanation but you get the drift...obviously not everything will be on at the same time or draw the same but still you need to be cognoscente of this stuff. Basically they(1/2 size) are made for a person that has a full box but still has not exhausted the draw and needs a new circuit for something but does not want to redo the whole panel.

BlueFox

Yes you can overload a panel. However, I do not know how you calculate the total. I do know you do not just add up the breaker, for example ten 20 amp breakers is not the total for a 200 amp panel. You can have more, but what the upper limit is I do not know.

EndersShadow

Gotcha.

Yeah I figured there was probably some sort of equation and math involved. But knowing I have 5 open slots for now is good enough for me.

As I said I would be paying an electrician when the time comes to do all the work, and he would obviously let me know if that was an issue we might run into.

dkg999

You have to load balance the panel, meaning at any time the current draw has to be roughly equal on both sides of the panel. I've got a book that helps you with the calculations, and I'm sure there are websites that would help you calculate it. My recommendation would be to run a sub-panel for the audio/HT circuits. That way you could integrate a power conditioner and surge protector with that sub-panel. At the farm I have an EATON Light Commercial DPV unit that has both surge protection and filtering integrated with a 60 amp sub-panel. It seems to work pretty well and cost around $600 IIRC. I had a Tripplite commercial unit prior to the EATON that gave up its life when a lightening bolt hit the top of the 90' silo and jumped directly into the electric line going to the house. It stopped the lightening surge, however it was blown to bits. Nothing on the circuits it was protecting had any damage.

GlennDog

All the 110 breakers pictured are 1/2 size (we call them tandems here) except for the microwave breaker. There are 5 full size slots available. So you have 10 halves to work with for future needs. Most likely the panel will suit all your electrical needs, unless you build an addition . . .

I hope the inspection goes well AND appraises at or better than your offer . . .

Speedskater

Thoughts:
a] Full size breakers a better than the half-size or dual breakers.
b] You may not be able to put breakers in all those blank panel spots. Check the big label inside the panel door.
c] You may not be able to put half-size or dual breakers in all the slots tha are available for full sized breakers.

d] A good plan is to run a bigger circuit (40 or 60 Amps) from the main to a small breaker box in your A/V rooms.
e] Now is a good time to add a whole-house surge suppressor

f] You can put as many 20 Amp breakers in a 100 Amp circuit box (panel board) as will fit, but the main breaker will trip when the total current exceeds 100 Amps.
g] Load balancing is seldom doable in a home, as each big power appliance is independent from the others.

leftwinger57

I get that it's a new house and you want dedicated circuits for your gear not to draw from other circuits. I think 4 would be way over board for most needs ,I see how you want to seperate them but it just might be overkill and the coin of the 2 exrtra circuits could go else where. I also agree go w/ the full breakers. I never heard that the top breakers are any better off then the ones on the bottom and that could be easily metered both w/ draw and no draw on the circuits. If you have access to home run the circuits
I would not use a sub panel.

Speedskater

leftwinger57 wrote: »

[...................]
I also agree go w/ the full breakers. I never heard that the top breakers are any better off then the ones on the bottom and that could be easily metered both w/ draw and no draw on the circuits.

The high current breakers are often placed near the top of the box (or near the main breaker). The idea is to reduce the voltage drop on the panel's bus bars from the high current loads.

If you have access to home run the circuits
I would not use a sub panel.

It is best to reduce the length (and end-to-end resistance) of the AC cables from component to component. So a single heavy cable run from the main breaker to a central location in or near your A/V rooms then to a junction box or breaker box or a sub-panel is much, much better than several home runs to the main panel.

polrbehr

+1 to the advice speedskater offered, I agree totally with that logic.

An 8 space/16 circuit sub-panel (lugs only, no main breaker) can be had from HomeD for about $10.

leftwinger57

Speedskater we agree that full size breakers are the way to go. The sub panel debate all depends on the length of runs and maybe I'm wrong but I doubt were talking about 12k square foot house. I think this all depends on the actual size of the new house which Ender never mentioned. Yes you can pick out all sorts of stuff at Home Depot but it adds up quick and if an electrician does it and he's not a personal friend that $10 sub panel just flew out the window real quick like. You have the sub panel, the feed what gauge I don't know,new work boxes, connectors, wire nuts, romex, romex staples, recepticles,plates, permits, and your friendly elecrtician's fee.

polrbehr

leftwinger57 wrote: »

Speedskater we agree that full size breakers are the way to go. The sub panel debate all depends on the length of runs and maybe I'm wrong but I doubt were talking about 12k square foot house. I think this all depends on the actual size of the new house which Ender never mentioned. Yes you can pick out all sorts of stuff at Home Depot but it adds up quick and if an electrician does it and he's not a personal friend that $10 sub panel just flew out the window real quick like. You have the sub panel, the feed what gauge I don't know,new work boxes, connectors, wire nuts, romex, romex staples, recepticles,plates, permits, and your friendly elecrtician's fee.

Of course, you are correct as well. I should've added that I used to do this for a living, and in fact installed 2 such sub-panels when
I finished my basement and garage a couple years ago.

The runs back to the panel would have only been 50' or so, but when I did the basement I had the huge advantage of having an unused 50amp electric stove line just hanging there (6/3 Romex w/gnd) since we converted to propane when we bought the house. I also had a sizable piece of 6/3 just laying around, so again it was a lot more cost-effective than a bunch of 25' home runs when I did my garage.

I still like a subpanel for DIYers though, a lot easier running and hooking up circuits to a panel that's known to be "dead" rather than poking around a live 200A main panel (which is likely crowded and snarled up anyway)

EndersShadow

The house is 2060 square feet. Here are some pics that better explain where I would be doing this in.

Here is the house and the two rooms in question. Note they are BOTH totally on the other side of the house.



Here is the breaker in the Garage



Here is where I want to put the dedicated lines for the HT.



Here is where I want to put them in the office. I also mocked up where I "could" have a subpanel near both, however I think its a bit too far from the original breaker to work, but am not the expert.

leftwinger57

Looks very nice and really spacious. Is it a slab or do you have a basement? If so is it finished or unfinished? The loft you speak of is usually an open living space, do you have any attic scuttles or hatches that go from garage to the side you want all the work done. These hatches are found mostly in the garage (didn't see it) or MBR closet. I think any way you look at this it's going to be one PINTA job.

Hofy

It doesnt look like you have a basement, so that makes it even harder. You may get lucky and have conduit feeding up out of the panel into the attic. You will not be able to tell this until the panel cover is removed. I work with an electrician for 6 years and seen that most of the fees come from labor, and is usually well earned!

SDA1C

EndersShadow wrote: »

The house is 2060 square feet. Here are some pics that better explain where I would be doing this in.

Here is the house and the two rooms in question. Note they are BOTH totally on the other side of the house.



Here is the breaker in the Garage



Here is where I want to put the dedicated lines for the HT.



Here is where I want to put them in the office. I also mocked up where I "could" have a subpanel near both, however I think its a bit too far from the original breaker to work, but am not the expert.

Dude! You need some Goodwill furniture or kids or something...that's entirely to sanitary LOL!

On a more relevant note. I am about to install a dedicated and have been doing some serious research. So far, Ive figured out, the bigger the cushion the better the pushin' but I'm not sure it directly relates to the topic at hand... lol!

EndersShadow

LOL..... thats the stock pic from the sale ad.

It sure as heck aint how my stuff normally looks hehehe...

rpf65

First off I would like to congratulate you; You know your limitations.

Calling an electrician is probably the smartest thing you can do, and I'll give you a small piece of advise concerning every contractor you call. I don't care what they do, electrical, plumbing, a/c, etc. they will all be very close in price. Your looking at $60 to $90 per man hour in labor cost, depending on where your at, and whomever you hire. Sometimes it's better to spend the extra, trust me.

As far as the electrical outlets go, looks like the run will go into the attic, down the walls. Best guess will be 2 people, 6 hours or so, and a lot of wire. Your looking at $1k in labor alone. Trust me, the holes in the sheet rock will be for you to take care of. Call it $100 for repair and paint if you can do it yourself, and triple that if you can't.

Been suggested in a previous post to run to a separate breaker box. You'll need 6 AWG for a 60 amp box, that stuff isn't easy to work with. Best guess, add about $500 for the extra breaker box. Good side, everything is interior, so they can run straight romex. If you have a basement, probably 50 feet less wire, and an hour less labor.

Personally I would go with runs from the breaker box to where ever it is you want to go. Just another guess here, but probably a 200 amp breaker box. Anything can be overloaded, but it's a very rare instance that a 200 amp box will be overloaded in a residential setting. I've seen 4 sub-panels hooked up to one of those guys with no problem.

I would also do a stand alone conditioner/surge protector. Just a gut feeling here, but I think that the plug/breaker panel units are just inferior. No proof, but lets face it, they can put a lot more conditioning/protection in a 6x8 inch box that a 1x2 inch box.

Moose68Bash

Isn't it great how much knowledge the guys on this Forum have, and how freely they share it!

I only wish I could offer as much as I receive!

F1nut

Damn nice garage!

leftwinger57

Looks like rpf65 put it more suscinctly than I did. Yes it's a great garage but it might not help in your plan. In my old work we could pull mouldings, do carpet runs and do stuff work electricians can't get away with. Even w/ the toughest slab house we could get wires all around, contact the windows,find our panel closet, mount a siren and a few keypads.All this before the wireless revolution. We would of course replace all mouldings and you would have a working alarm system in about 4/5 days. Ranches w/ attics and basements were the easiest to do.Splits like yours are very hard.Like RP said this will cost an arm and a leg and a few more body parts so get a bunch of estimates and see if it's even possible within a resonable time frame and electricians do not paint repair sheet rock or sometimes don't even lay tarps down. Let us know how it's progressing and get pix as the work proceeds both for us but more importantly for you and insurance co.

EndersShadow

Given the amount of work, its not going to happen ANYTIME soon.. This is a last item on my list type thing.

I need to wire the whole house with Ethernet (going w/ Cat6) first as its not wired at all. That's going to take a LOT of time and be a PITA but its going to be worth it.

Without wiring most of my HT gear wont work so well since I network for my audio.

hochpt21

First thing on your list is to get your systems set up so you can jam some tunes while you do the rest of your work

EndersShadow

hochpt21 wrote: »

First thing on your list is to get your systems set up so you can jam some tunes while you do the rest of your work

LOL... yeah not so much, mostly because REFUSE to let the movers touch my HT and 2 channel gear, so its going to get moved last by me.

hochpt21

Good idea.

When we moved into our house last year, the sellers were kind enough to let me move some 'important' stuff in early as they were doing the finishing touches on cleaning up. You should have seen the look on their faces when the 'important' stuff was all my audio gear, speakers and 300 albums :cheesygrin:

EndersShadow

hochpt21 wrote: »

Good idea.

When we moved into our house last year, the sellers were kind enough to let me move some 'important' stuff in early as they were doing the finishing touches on cleaning up. You should have seen the look on their faces when the 'important' stuff was all my audio gear, speakers and 300 albums :cheesygrin:

House is already vacant, seller's were already moved into their new house in CO before we even saw it the first time. When we take possesion on the 1st of March, we plan to paint the first weekend we have it, then move most of our stuff the second weekend. Then we can slowly move the rest as we dont have to be out of our apartment until April 5th so we have over a month to move.

I will prob be taking a couple days off anyway to do some moving myself to save some money (and then bank some of it in my PP account for audio upgrades :biggrin:).

hochpt21

Take the neighbors a fruit basket so they can keep an eye on the house when you have a bunch of stuff there, but aren't totally moved in yet.

Moose68Bash

EndersShadow wrote: »

Given the amount of work, its not going to happen ANYTIME soon.. This is a last item on my list type thing.

I need to wire the whole house with Ethernet (going w/ Cat6) first as its not wired at all. That's going to take a LOT of time and be a PITA but its going to be worth it.

Without wiring most of my HT gear wont work so well since I network for my audio.

EndersShadow,

You have my sympathy with pulling Cat 6 throughout your house, but it is worth it, to be sure.

When we moved into our house, which had been built before houses were wired for ethernet and wireless was still not available, I decided to pull Cat 6 into every room that I could access. I used it for a four-line phone system as well as for Internet access for each room.

Every run was a home-run to a 24-port switch in the basement for ethernet and to a distribution panel I had to "kluge" for the telephone system so that I could literally mix and match use of each run for either voice or data simply by unplugging and replugging the cable in either the switch or distribution panel.

I pulled about 1,500 feet of Cat 6, using my wife and then 8-years-ol daughter as helpers. Lots of interesting stories.

It works! (For us, that was a surprise and a triumph!)

I'm sure you'll have a much easier time.

Enjoy!

zane77

For an easier and cheaper option to Cat 6 cable look into power line Ethernet adapters. I use these in my home that wasn't wired for Ethernet and they work extremely well. Way faster than the internet connection to my home and I have fiber directly to the house. Unless your going to be transferring huge amounts of data between computers in your house I don't see much advantage. I use the power line adapters for my two Hoppers and three Joeys along with internet connections to a couple of computers and never have a problem.