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That's a nice looking workshop. And seconding the trench spade for 2' x 9'
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Jun 25, 2016 09:55
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Laminator posted:Looks nice. FTFY
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Jun 25, 2016 16:10
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I've started work on electrifying the workshop. First step: dig a trench to carry the cables. After some discussion in the Don't Burn Your House Down thread, I've decided to go with a PVC conduit, which means 18" from the top of the conduit to the ground. So I'm digging a 20"-deep trench. Pavlov is helping. Swinging a mattock is hard work, guys.  Initially I was considering trying to dig under the sidewalk, but after a few attempts I've decided that's probably not going to work well. Plus I'm considering digging a second trench to carry water out to the workshop (not plumbing, just so I can have a hose in a more convenient location). Can't share the trench -- the building inspector said they need to be at least 12" apart. So the new plan is to rent a concrete saw, cut the sidewalk into sections, and hopefully be able to re-place the sections after I've dug the trench. If not, I'll have to pour a new sidewalk slab. Last weekend, after digging in the dirt for awhile, I decided I was sick of it and wanted to install the new gate I'd built. Surely that will be a straightforward and easy task! So I ripped the old gate out, and discovered it was using this as a support post:  That bit of pressure-treated wood on the left there is the tail end of the fence between me and my neighbor, and it was actually nailed to that hunk of rotten crap as its only support.  With said neighbor's assistance, I got the rotten wood removed, and tried to dig a post hole to support a new post. Unfortunately I didn't make it more than about 4-5" down before running into existing concrete. Still, better than nothing; got a 4x4 anchor bracket and some concrete: We got the post put into the bracket, and also secured it to the neighbor's gate post (which is much more securely installed than mine was) with some 3/8" threaded rod and a couple of 10" lag bolts. That post is not going anywhere...I hope. Which is good, because I'd estimate my new gate weighs on the order of 60-70 pounds. All those bolts and nuts made for an irregular mounting surface, though, so I took a pressure-treated 2x4 and drilled matching holes in it, then screwed it on top of the post to serve as a facade, and mounted the gate to that. Unfortunately, that changed the size of the opening the gate was going to fit into, leaving it about a half-inch too narrow. So I took my other 4x4 post (which was going to get the latch installed on it), and ran it through my bandsaw. Anyone need a 1/2"-thick, 3.5"-wide, 6'-long strip of pressure-treated douglas fir?  But with that done, the rest of the installation was straightforward.   I'm satisfied. It looks a hell of a lot better than the old gate did, that's for sure.
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Jul 30, 2016 20:46
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Initially I was considering trying to dig under the sidewalk, but after a few attempts I've decided that's probably not going to work well. Plus I'm considering digging a second trench to carry water out to the workshop (not plumbing, just so I can have a hose in a more convenient location). Can't share the trench -- the building inspector said they need to be at least 12" apart. So the new plan is to rent a concrete saw, cut the sidewalk into sections, and hopefully be able to re-place the sections after I've dug the trench. If not, I'll have to pour a new sidewalk slab. Have you considered a putting in a yard hydrant? You can have a freestanding hose hookup somewhere in your yard if that's all you need.
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Jul 30, 2016 22:24
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kid sinister posted:Have you considered a putting in a yard hydrant? You can have a freestanding hose hookup somewhere in your yard if that's all you need. That's basically what I'm thinking of doing; the location would be on the outside corner of the workshop, which is pretty close to the center of the yard. The plan is to replace my current hose hookup (which is at the back of the house, so any hose hooked up to it has trouble reaching anything useful) with a T junction, leave a port on the T open, and run pipe from the other port out to the outside of the workshop as a hose hookup. It wouldn't necessarily be connected to the workshop at all, just placed adjacent to it.
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Jul 30, 2016 23:05
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Interesting your not allowed to share a trench with the water and power- thats one thing we're allowed to do here, but we also have to dig the power down a minimum of 600mm too, where as water can be "kick some dirt over the pipe" close to the surface if you like repairing it regularly. I've got common trenches at home- power is down at 600mm in sand, with 150mm of sand and a warning tape over that, then 50mm of sand, 90mm stormwater and 25mm supply water over that, sand over that then soil backfill. We've also got trenches at work that have an 11KV power cable at 600mm, then at 400mm 3x 100mm water lines, then at 300mm a 40mm reticulated supply, and thats all legal. Your inspector said you cant run em side by side and have to be 12" apart- Find out whether 12" of VERTICAL separation in the same trench is good enough. Also, when you put your conduit in, dont do what I did and cheap out. I put in 1" conduits and then ran a 10mm2 cable through it to the shed. I really should have put in a 1.5 or 2" conduit because now if i ever want to upgrade my service to 3 phase and put 3 phase out into the shed, i need to run a new conduit out there!
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Jul 31, 2016 00:34
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Ferremit posted:Your inspector said you cant run em side by side and have to be 12" apart- Find out whether 12" of VERTICAL separation in the same trench is good enough. Also, when you put your conduit in, dont do what I did and cheap out. I put in 1" conduits and then ran a 10mm2 cable through it to the shed. I really should have put in a 1.5 or 2" conduit because now if i ever want to upgrade my service to 3 phase and put 3 phase out into the shed, i need to run a new conduit out there! I thought about vertical separation. Thing is that the water pipe also has to be 12" below grade, so to maintain the required separation, the electrical conduit would have to move even deeper. Normally the electrical would "only" need to be 18" below grade. Might still be worth doing, depending on if it's easier to dig a new trench down to 12" or to deepen an existing trench down to 24". It gets kind of hard on the back to dig something out that's two feet below ground. The water isn't part of the workshop project, so it doesn't need to be inspected or anything. Doesn't mean I don't want to follow the rules though. And yeah, I'm planning to use 2" PVC. And I'll be running three-phase from the get-go (3x 6-gauge THHN plus an 8-gauge grounding wire...and a string). Should be plenty of room there.
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Jul 31, 2016 00:52
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While you're digging a trench think about dropping another conduit in there for some cat5/6 out to the shed. I didn't do that when adding power to mine and now I've gotta re-dig a 15m section to stick more conduit in.
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Aug 1, 2016 02:42
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MrPete posted:While you're digging a trench think about dropping another conduit in there for some cat5/6 out to the shed. This was also brought up in the "don't burn your house down" thread: you get a lot of interference in your network cables if they're running alongside high-voltage lines. Recommended spacing is, you guessed it, 12". Fiber optic would work fine though. Personally my plan is to just improve wireless coverage in my house. A properly-positioned wireless repeater will be able to reach the workshop from the kitchen, through three sets of windows.
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Aug 1, 2016 03:41
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Oh yeah, forgot that bit. I have the power down about 600mm like Ferremit so it's not really an issue for me. I did think about the wireless option but the shed is clad in iron so signal is very iffy. If you ever want to keep a small machine outside for doing sort of offsite backups you'll thank yourself for putting in cable.
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Aug 1, 2016 04:00
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In the colder parts of the US, you've got to bury any water pipes below the frost line, so they don't freeze up and possibly crack every winter.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:30
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I thought about vertical separation. Thing is that the water pipe also has to be 12" below grade, so to maintain the required separation, the electrical conduit would have to move even deeper. Normally the electrical would "only" need to be 18" below grade. Might still be worth doing, depending on if it's easier to dig a new trench down to 12" or to deepen an existing trench down to 24". It gets kind of hard on the back to dig something out that's two feet below ground. Hold the phone! You get 3 phase at your house?
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Aug 3, 2016 01:25
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It's burgin' time! 
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I heart bacon posted:Hold the phone! You get 3 phase at your house? Erm. I confused 240V with three-phase. You have two hot lines (at opposite phases) and one neutral line. Three lines clearly means three phases, right? 
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Aug 3, 2016 02:03
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5 wires in my house, 3 phases, neutral and earth.
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Aug 3, 2016 11:45
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I heart bacon posted:Hold the phone! You get 3 phase at your house? Yeah, doesn't everyone?
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Aug 3, 2016 13:04
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My neighbours have 3 phase into their house, I've got it about 6M from my meter box and its just a new trench for a bigger conduit and a new meter and its on. which I may have to do... between the house, workshop, spa and AC im getting VEEEEEERRRRYYYY close to the 65A meter isolator breaker tripping point. Pretty much if the AC is on, the Spa is heating, the house is occupied and i strike an arc on the MIG welder i'll trip the main breaker...
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Aug 4, 2016 10:36
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Ferremit posted:My neighbours have 3 phase into their house, I've got it about 6M from my meter box and its just a new trench for a bigger conduit and a new meter and its on. At what voltage? And also why is it 65 amp service instead of 100?
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Aug 6, 2016 15:56
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220v/50hz single phase in Australia, so our we get a lot more bang for buck out of our amps. Tho the neighbours 3 phase means they get access to either 3x 220v/50hz @ 65A each or they can get a 400v/50hz supply which they need to drive their AC unit.
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Aug 7, 2016 00:03
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Ferremit posted:220v/50hz single phase in Australia, so our we get a lot more bang for buck out of our amps. That must be a pretty beefy AC unit. My experience with 3 phase has only been industrial and it's mostly 480 volt.
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Aug 7, 2016 02:54
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It is- Mines on the absolute limit of what you can run off single phase (14KW heating, 12.3kw cooling, 28A start current and 17A constant running) and theirs would be half as large again.
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Aug 7, 2016 04:50
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Ferremit posted:220v/50hz single phase in Australia, so our we get a lot more bang for buck out of our amps. In the US, our main service is split phase 240v, so your 65A service has basically the same capacity as a 60A service in the US (which hasn't been standard since the '50s or so). Three phases of that would be on par with the 200A service that's common these days... so that is pretty crazy if you need more to run your AC. Also kind of weird that you add a 400v service instead of just upgrading to 100A.
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Aug 8, 2016 04:15
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It's a bit hard to calculate with 3-phase and I am not sure how they do it in australia. I have a 3x25A hookup for my household. It's sent as 3-phase and the maximum that can then be taken out of the entire hookup in 3-phase mode is more like 400V @ 75A. I think that is equivalent more or less to a 150-200A single phase hookup. Any single plug is limited to usually 16A @ 230V for single phase or 16A @ 400 volts for 3-phase. That usually suffices to run even very large professional welding machines with, and basically any heavy duty kitchen machinery.
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Aug 8, 2016 09:36
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Oh I see, I misunderstood. So it's a delta wye with 220v phase to neutral and 400v phase to phase. I kind of assumed you'd jump to a 3 phase compressor motor from there, but I guess since most residential equipment is single phase you get better economies of scale if you stick to single phase but at a higher voltage.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:43
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I dunno what his particular situation is like but over here I'd say most residential equipment above a certain size tends to be 3-phase. Almost all electric or induction stoves for instance, space heaters and AC's above a certain size. We have a heatpump that heats our house and it's 3ph driven, as is the induction stove top. The oven manages with 1ph though. I know of, but not sure if it's common anymore, old electrical heating elements that would be setup with 2 of the 3 phases and that basically works like 400V single phase in practice. My DC stick welder is setup like that actually, uses a 3ph plug but doesn't draw from one of the phases.
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Aug 9, 2016 12:21
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This was also brought up in the "don't burn your house down" thread: you get a lot of interference in your network cables if they're running alongside high-voltage lines. Recommended spacing is, you guessed it, 12". Fiber optic would work fine though. Personally my plan is to just improve wireless coverage in my house. A properly-positioned wireless repeater will be able to reach the workshop from the kitchen, through three sets of windows. You don't get "a lot" of interference. You'll MAYBE be limited to 100baseT instead of gigabit when running cat 6. You can also just run shielded cat6 and not worry at all. Put two conduits in. You will be happier later. Also, what crazy place is this where you're required to have separation for water and power? We share trenches all the time. 12" above the trench is two different flagging tapes.
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Aug 13, 2016 19:39
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:You don't get "a lot" of interference. You'll MAYBE be limited to 100baseT instead of gigabit when running cat 6. You can also just run shielded cat6 and not worry at all. Put two conduits in. You will be happier later. Thanks for the advice. That all sounds reasonable. As for the water pipes, I'm just repeating what the inspector told me. 
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Aug 14, 2016 04:20
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A little over a month ago, I left my previous job, went on vacation, and then decided to spend some time enjoying my workshop instead of working on it. So far I've made a workbench, a box joint jig, and some curtain hangers, and gotten started on a bookshelf. All that by running tools off of a heavy-duty extension cord that goes out to the house. I'm also making progress on finding a new job, and it's looking like that might start up soon, so it's time to get back to work on the workshop while I still have a flexible schedule for stuff like getting inspections done. When I left off, I'd dug most of a trench for burying the electrical supply line, but had stopped where I needed to cut through the sidewalk, which prospect I found a little intimidating. I shouldn't have. Today I went to the hardware store, bought a diamond sawblade for my circular saw, and went to town (carefully) on the sidewalk. It was straightforward -- just make cuts in .25" – .5" increments, and wear gloves, goggles, a respirator, and hearing protection.  When I'd started this, I'd vaguely hoped that it might be possible to salvage the chunk of concrete I was removing, but I knew that was optimistic. It had to come out in chunks. Commence bashing at it with a sledgehammer to create cracks, and then wedging a cold-forged chisel into the cracks to separate out the chunks. My hammer-swinging arm is pretty well worn out now.  And then time to start digging. My target depth is 20" -- enough to get a 2" PVC pipe to 18" below ground at all points along the run. I didn't quite make it before running out of steam, so that'll have to be finished tomorrow. Technically since I'm going to be pouring in new concrete to replace what I removed, the section under the sidewalk only needs to be 6" underground, but I'd rather remove more dirt than I need to, instead of adding a bunch of angles to the wire run.  Bonus points: I gave Pavlov a bath yesterday.  At least he's happy.EDIT: the inspector was at the building office, so I stopped by to get my plans updated to use PVC conduit underground instead of RMC, which is what I'd had specced earlier. I also brought up the possibility of running a water line through the same trench, and he said there was no problem so long as the water line was at least 12" below grade. Awesome; now I just have to learn how to properly do a buried water line. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Sep 20, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 21:37
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Dunno what you lot use over there, but for here we'd just run metric poly pipe. Literally comes on a roll, you unroll it, bury it and then hook the ends to what you want. http://www.philmac.com.au/Products/Pipe-Fittings/Compression-for-Water-Metric-Poly-Pipe And its good for something rediculous like 1600kpa so you can even use the poo poo for compressed air lines!
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Sep 21, 2016 13:28
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Ferremit posted:Dunno what you lot use over there, but for here we'd just run metric poly pipe. Literally comes on a roll, you unroll it, bury it and then hook the ends to what you want. Yeah, the buried water line is not a problem. I can just use PEX or CPVC or something. It's the exposed portion of the run that's trickier. I spoke with the inspector on the phone this morning, and he said a) exposed electrical conduit has to be RMC (rigid metal conduit, which is hard to work with), and b) exposed water pipes have to be copper. I'm not super scared of copper; I've done soldering in the past, though I'll have to buy new tools and supplies. But it's a lot more expensive than a plastic pipe would have been. Oh well. The RMC is more of an issue; I've never worked with it, it's heavy, and the tools for working with it appear to be a) specialized, and b) expensive. Specifically, I can't see how I can avoid getting a thread cutter, aside from having someone else cut and thread the conduit for me, which requires me to have all of my measurements precise and exact ahead of time. Measuring things is hard.
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Sep 21, 2016 16:46
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Today I spent like $500 on tools and supplies. Haven't done that in awhile! Purchases include a pipe threader and die, a pipe vise, propane torch, flux, solder, a bunch of pipe fittings, and 50' each of 1/2" copper pipe and 1" rigid metal conduit. The pipe, conduit, and fittings all came from Home Depot, so I then had the pleasure of getting it all home. In my long-suffering Civic.  Some comfort compromises had to be made. Good thing there aren't any high-speed roads between Home Depot and home. The pipes didn't stick out quite as much as it looks in the photo (perspective yay!) but still enough that I had the warning blinkers going for the trip.
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Sep 21, 2016 21:11
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:but still enough that I had the warning blinkers going for the trip. So your turn signals were ineffective, and nobody had a clue what you were doing.  Don't do that.
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Sep 21, 2016 21:23
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Geirskogul posted:So your turn signals were ineffective, and nobody had a clue what you were doing. I mean, it's a fair point; probably I should have toggled the warning lights at intersections. On the other hand, traffic was very light, so it didn't matter much. Noted for the future, though.
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Sep 21, 2016 21:31
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Jesus. Doesn't that generation of Civic have a trunk pass-through?
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Sep 21, 2016 21:37
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 Just...no. Unless you're a non-moving hazard to traffic, or you're a disabled vehicle actively trying to exit the roadway, you don't use them. What do you think you're gaining by flashing your lights all around? NOTHING. The red flag is there to notify people of the danger sticking out of your car. Otherwise love the thread, been following it for a long time.
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Sep 21, 2016 21:39
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Magnus Praeda posted:Jesus. Doesn't that generation of Civic have a trunk pass-through? Yes.
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Sep 21, 2016 21:39
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Magnus Praeda posted:Jesus. Doesn't that generation of Civic have a trunk pass-through? It does if it's not a hybrid! But they stick the hybrid battery pack behind the rear seat, so no passthrough. Geirskogul posted:Unless you're a non-moving hazard to traffic, or you're a disabled vehicle actively trying to exit the roadway, you don't use them. What do you think you're gaining by flashing your lights all around? NOTHING. The red flag is there to notify people of the danger sticking out of your car. Okay, noted. I guess I'm just learning by bad example here, then, since I've seen several in-motion vehicles using their warning lights for various reasons.
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Sep 21, 2016 21:46
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Looking good. That's too bad you couldn't use armored cable like Teck, then you wouldn't have to deal with conduit and all the tools. Rated for direct burial, can be exposed and you don't really need any special tools except for a hacksaw.
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Sep 22, 2016 02:18
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Meow Meow Meow posted:Looking good. That's too bad you couldn't use armored cable like Teck, then you wouldn't have to deal with conduit and all the tools. Rated for direct burial, can be exposed and you don't really need any special tools except for a hacksaw. Interesting; I didn't know about that product. But it looks to be pretty expensive, especially compared to the 3x 6-gauge THWN I'll be putting in the conduit I'm installing. And of course if you want to run something else like a fiber in the future, you have to dig up the trench again. That's probably not a realistic concern in my specific case, but I like the future-proofing aspect of conduit. In other words, it's definitely worth keeping that product in mind for potential future installations (like if I decided I wanted to install floodlights around the back yard or something) but for this specific job I don't regret gearing up for the rigid conduit. Not yet, anyway; once I start working with it I may have some regrets.  I'll be using generic armored cable indoors, since the workshop interior isn't finished, so the alternative would be bare Romex all over the place.
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Sep 22, 2016 03:04
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:It does if it's not a hybrid! But they stick the hybrid battery pack behind the rear seat, so no passthrough. I am wrong on the internet. There you go.
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Sep 22, 2016 04:40
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Ok so the RMC thing. I'd ask the inspector for a clarification, because running that is terrible. Here, rmc is required for slab rough in -but only for the concrete penetration-. So the electrician uses a female pvc adapter to go from pvc to a short piece of store bought threaded rmc (12" or so, whatever gets them the necessary height for the slab. Sometimes a rigid 90° is used). Then they adapt back to pvc or flex or whatever they need for that location. At the very least, he should allow you to run pvc in the ditch and adapt to rmc when you turn up the ends.
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Sep 22, 2016 04:55
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