I used to live in the country, , then the entire city moved around me,

If you do the grunt work of burying the cable (unless it's really far and you need to get a trencher in there to do it), it shouldn't be too expensive to have an electrician make the final connections at the panel and in the garage.

I have painted cars before using a gas compressor and vowed never to do that again. Ever.

-Chris

Darrel thats happening in so many places...uhh!!

chris wrote:If you do the grunt work of burying the cable (unless it's really far and you need to get a trencher in there to do it), it shouldn't be too expensive to have an electrician make the final connections at the panel and in the garage.

I have painted cars before using a gas compressor and vowed never to do that again. Ever.

-Chris

BINGO! There are plenty of electricians who don't like to do the digging. Some welcome "sweat equity" so they don't have to pay a helper to do the donkey work. Over the years, we did lots of work that required a licensed electrician by law. Most times we installed the boxes and wire and had an electrician make the connections, which saved a lot of money. There were other times when no one had time, so we did all the work ourselves, then had an electrician inspect and "sign off" on the work. Nothing illegal about it, it was the same as if he hired guys to do the work.

Thanks all for the many replies and suggestions. Electric it will be!

R/Doug

Alright a little jerry rig for 220V without having to run wire or pipe.

*** turn of the main breaker ***

1) purchase a 2 pull 20 amp breaker and a 220v receptacle

2) Go to the panel board with the breakers that powers your garage. find the circuit that is wired to the receptacle in your garage.

3) A single pole breaker has 3 wires that feed it. 1 - hot, 1- neutral, 1- ground. The panel board is built with 2 copper bars along with connection lugs for the wires. With a single breaker you will see 1 BLACK colored wire going from the hot pole of the panel board to the breaker, and 1 WHITE wire hooked to the breaker coming from neutral side of the panel. Also a green ground wire that is connected to a grounding bar.

4) remove the single pole breaker. At the panel hook up the loose end of the Black & Green ground wire to the new 2 pole breaker. Then take the white wire that is hooked to the other neutral pole, and move it to the same side of the panel that the black wire is on. Now connect the other loose end of the white wire to the new breaker.

5) Go to the original 120v receptacle that you just wired a new breaker to and install a 220v receptacle. Wire up the black ,white, and green wires to the plug. 220v does not need a neutral so there is no need to pull any more wire.


You now have a 220v receptacle. Just be sure to mark the white as a hot wire in case someone else does electrical work at your house.

I see two problems. First, a lot of people are going to find 14/2wg wiring meaning they are going to have a white, a black and a copper ground. They do this and they will end up with a 220v outlet with no ground, since they used the three wires for the outlet.

Second, that same 14 gauge wire you just turned into a 220v circuit, I know you said 20A breaker but gosh golly I just bought this 7.5HP compressor and it calls for a 70A breaker...so what happens when they drop in a 70A breaker at the panel and plug in their new 7.5HP compressor out in the garage?

You just created a whole-house fire starter.

Best bet is if someone isn't sure what they are doing, don't rig up anything you won't find in the code book -- call a qualified electrician.

Chris is right. In addition, there are factors that determine which gauge wire should be used, due to voltage drop.
The only electricity I have to my garage is a 220 line for my big compressor. The wiring is 50 years old and starting to cause problems. As soon as the snow is gone, I'm planning on rewiring. To be on the safe side, I'll be using using #4 HTTN, which is code for a 100 amp service. That should handle any voltage drop.
Just to make sure, I called one of the electricians I used to work with. He said that #6 wire is more than sufficient if I'm just going to use the compressor. He added that since there's a 200 amp service to the house, by using #4 wire, I could install a sub-panel so I can install one or two 110v outlets.
At the moment, I use a 50' extension cord for tools. It's 10 gauge, so even when I use welders, the breaker doesn't trip like it did when I used a 14 gauge extension cord.

The 20amp breaker was simply just an example. How would they have a 220v receptacle with no ground? If you have 3 wires already ran to the original 120v plug, one is neutral, one is hot and one is the ground. All you are simply doing is making the neutral wire(white) hot at the panel since 220v does not need a neutral. So you have 2 hots and a ground now @ the receptacle.

Right, I was thinking an appliance like a dryer which does require a neutral. I do all my 220V runs with 4-wire just to make them as versatile as possible.

Regardless of that point, converting a 120v circuit to a 220v should really include an amperage rating calculation and figuring out correct wire gauge. You can only go up to a 3HP motor with that 20A circuit and it needs to be on 12ga wire.

If you have to run new wire based on the load rating - then that's what you need to do, there's no shortcut that will be safe.