Powering a detached garage
 

I've got a detached garage that's about 50' from the house, and about 150' away from the utilities shed (house is located a few hundred feet from the main road). Would it be better to run a subpanel via the main house or attach directly from the source in the electrical shed? Or does it really matter in the long run? I'll be running probably six fuses (one 220v for a compressor, and the rest scattered for different things like lights, a garage door opener, and various plug outlets both internal and external).

Sorry, I haven't worked in Langley before, but what do you mean by "utilities shed"? Is this your own property where your electrical meter is installed?

If your service is big enough to support what you need for a sub panel I would just come off of the main panel to make things easy.

I don't know a lot about this, but I know someone who did this...

He had to contact the city and they required him to have another utility poll installed. like....a full on, power poll in his back yard. He had to have it wired separately from his house.

You MAY want to give the city a call...the last thing you want to do it "finish" your project only to have the city drive by and make you take it all down.

There's already a power pole in my yard, along with my own transformer. :p Because the house is set so far back from the main road and because there's multiple buildings on the property, they had to do this.

I should clarify that currently each building on the property has it's own main fuse panel, all connected to a master quick throw disconnect box in the utility/electrical shed.

I was also talking with another member on here privately and it seems that running a sub-panel from the house is probably the best option at the moment. There are plans to build a proper workshop/garage in the future deeper into the property and that will have it's own dedicated line straight from the pole, but in the meantime I'm just looking for the cheapest way to power the existing garage. I know shit is going to go wrong with my car soon and I'd rather be able to fix it in the comfort of my own garage than pay shop fees to have someone else do it. :okay:

This is in Salmon Arm. The two existing buildings never had an inspection completed because the city inspectors couldn't be bothered to come. Apparently there's some existing law that if they don't come after X-amount of days, it's considered to have passed inspection. Besides, technically my property doesn't exist if you attempt to search by address on pretty much any website out there, including Google and Apple Maps. :dizzy:

well, thats good news.

congrats on the move! hopefully you get it figured it :)

I don't see it being a problem running power to the garage from the house, just get it done professionally as electricians would have the proper deadends and power drops necessary. IIRC power lines are not allowed to be buried unless its done through proper conduit as well.

I have some experience building/electrical and I built my own garage in a much smaller setting with permits.

I'd say go with a sub panel in the garage by pulling power of your home with a buried cable. Hopefully you have room on your existing home panel to support a douple pole breaker. I'm a little hazy with calculating house loads but I'd say a 60 amp breaker on the house. Cable to the garage should probably be a 4gauge cable due to the length.

With the sub panel in the garage you'd be free to add whatever circuits you'd need.
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Sub panel for sure on a garage, anything else won't be enough

Do all the trenching and initial work yourself and just get them to pull the cable and install the panel
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Easy if your panel has space. Dig a 2' deep trench, have both walls open enough to get the cable through.

Your electricians should size it out for aluminum teck cable. They drop it in, mount new sub panel, hook up cable with penetrox of course. And boom, done.