Well
I finally got around to wiring the garage. I had to dig about a 50 ft. trench
that was about two feet deep to bury the wire that I needed for 50A service
out there. That was a nightmare. The whole yard is clay, and it was about
95 degrees that day. I was exhausted. It took me about 5 hours to dig the
trench and then another 3 hours for Leah and I to run the wire and glue the
conduit together. About an hour of that, I spent punching an inch and a half
hole through 18 inches of brick to bring the line into the basement. That
stunk! But it turned out really well and now I have all the juice that I need
out there.
A
picture of the 50 ft. trench and me after digging it all. I was pooped!
Here
is just a quick picture of the connection where it goes into the house and
the cool sub panel that John Sanchirico talked me into. I am glad I did it
this way. It looks really good and makes hooking everything up really nice.
I still need to run the few wires for the outlets, but that will be easy.
What
the garage looks like inside
I
got around to finishing up the garage wiring finally. It came out great! Dad
was here on business, so he stopped by and helped out all weekend. That made
the job go a lot smoother. Here are some pictures of the 220V outlets that
we put in for the welder and air compressor. There is a bunch of stuff in
this one area here. The two top outlets are the 220V outlets. Below those,
we put a switch for the two overhead lights and another 110V outlet. It is
so much nicer in there now, a far cry from the one outlet and no lights garage
that I used to work in.
Just
a couple of more pictures of both sides of the garage. I bolted this vise
stand down to the cement and welded the whole stand together to make a good
sturdy working vise. Dad put up some boards and hooks to help get the garage
a little more organized. I also
decided that I am going to cut up that buggy trailer and make it into something
more manageable, probably a small motorcycle trailer and a custom
tow bar for the buggy. The trailer as it is now is bent, cracking, falling
apart, too heavy, and too big to do anything with. Time to make something
new out of it. There is some really good steel in it that will work well for
building those two things.
Just
a few more pictures of some other things. The phone, which really is nice
to have out there, and the button for the garage door opener that I have inside
the house now. We always used to have to hold the remote for the garage door
out the window or something to open or shut the garage from the house. It
is nice to have the button inside now. I just ran the phone wire along with
the big electrical cable out to the garage. Since the phone wire had 4 wires
in there, and you only use two for the phone, I used the other two for the
garage door opener switch.
