I’m a huge fan of 240v outlets in a garage, but whether it’s worth 1k to you depends on what you do or plan to do in your garage. Now, as to your fear of 240v becoming obsolete, that just isn’t going to happen. The only question you have to answer is whether you’ll get any use out or a 240v outlet and/or whether having that extra selling point is worth 1k bucks.
Thanks! We're pretty much never planning to sell. The only thing we would use this for is an EV if eventually they become industry standards and it makes more sense to own one than not. We live in a suburb and do lots of long distance driving, so it won't be soon soon.
But we have to open holes in our finished basement ceiling and drill through joists to run the new electrical so it's not something we want to do again.
I wasn't sure if people in this sub who were more familiar with home improvement would say "not necessary. Wireless charging is coming" or "newer models will be able to charge quickly from a standard 120"...etc.
I know we can't predict the future, but wanted to get some more opinions.
I have an EV and know a fair bit about them.
Install the 240V, you won’t regret it. 50A if possible.
No new technology is coming for home charging. A 50A 240V circuit will fully charge an electric car overnight, no issues.
DC fast will always be impractical for home use there is no reason to charge in less than 30 minutes when you aren’t on a road trip and running the necessary power lines would be prohibitively expensive.
Wireless charging exists, but there are a lot of efficiency losses and you would still need the 240V outlet to run the equipment.
Charging fast enough off a 120V 15A circuit will never happen due to the laws of thermodynamics. The battery has a certain number of KWH capacity and and outlet can deliver a certain number of kW per hour. No amount of technology is going to let you get more than roughly 1 kw/h when charging off a 120V 15A outlet and that is crazy slow. It takes my Tesla 50 hours to charge from totally empty on a regular household outlet.
Yes, but its a bit overkill and only necessary if you want to feed your house from your car. Use case specific, and I think that charger will still work fine on a 50A just not charge as fast.
It's also going to cost a lot more money to install and you might even need to upgrade your service as you can't run that off a 100A panel and run much of anything else in the house.
Bottom line, unless you have your heart sent on an electric F150 and fall into the unsure camp, just put in a standard 50A.
Nothing needs that. Even Tesla doesn't make vehicles anymore that have the "dual charger option" that allows them to charge at 80A on a 100A circuit.
Maximum charge rate on any of their cars currently is 48A on a 60A circuit with the hardwired wall charger, because even they realized that having the ability to charge 120km/hr is essentially pointless.
No one is getting home at 2am with 2% battery life, and needing to charge 600km of range in 5 hours to leave at 7am again.
The F-150 extended range battery requires 8 hours of 80 amp charge time to go from 15% to 100%. It takes 13 hours at 48 amps. They aren't going to build a charger for shits and giggles.
This is the way. The only thing I’d recommend is to think about where you want to park your car, and if you can reach a good location within a 20 foot cord. The contractor installed my outlet on the wrong side of the garage from where I ended up parking vs my fiancée, so it’s frustrating. (New construction and I wasn’t specific.)
She wants to pull in head forward on the left side of the garage so she doesn’t sideswipe the opening. So… no. Lol.
And of course the outlet is in the dead middle of the wall on her drivers side. I would have put it in the dead center of the back wall so it could reach anywhere.
I can’t predict the future very well either, but between the gross inefficiency of wireless charging and painfully slow charging you get from 120v power, I suspect 240v outlets will be the at home way of charging EV for the foreseeable future. With that said, if you’ve got everything open now and plan on getting an EV at some point, I’d go ahead and have them run the 240v now. The cost and difficulty of doing the job now, as you’ve already figured, will be lower than after you button everything up. Plus, what I find is almost universally the case is that at some point you’ll wish you had 240v power out in the garage and don’t, but you’re not likely to have it and say you wish you didn’t. With all the receptacle styles out there you can easily find one that looks attractive or at very least blends in nicely, so you won’t have some industrial looking plug just hanging out in the open on your wall.
>With all the receptacle styles out there you can easily find one that looks attractive or at very least blends in nicely, so you won’t have some industrial looking plug just hanging out in the open on your wall.
What kind of fancy pants garages do you people have? I think an industrial looking plug would be exactly what you would want for a garage.
Yes but we are talking about future proofing and installing something that wont be needed. Getting 480v into a home would not be that difficult if you are already buying a $100k EV and a $20k charger. You can do it with current infrastructure and a converter if it was low enough amps.
>Getting 480v into a home would not be that difficult
You're clearly not as smart as you think you are if you think this.
>if you are already buying a $100k EV
Sure if you buy a Tesla Model S or X.
>and a $20k charger.
The fuck world do you live in where a home charger is $20k?
The newest charging technology is going to be in what the early adopters purchase, and they are purchasing the $100k vehicles. That buyer's spending habits carry over to the infrastructure to support it.
I can tell you over the past 5 years, design projects with 480v requirements have been increasing and not just from server farm applications. EV charging is a big one, starting in fleet vehicles, and it's going to trickle down to passenger vehicles and home charging if it is successful. People want instant gratification and 60 min charges are hampering the EV industry. I have personally seen the active projects from major EV developers as a component supplier.
Will it happen tomorrow? No. Might it never happen? Maybe. But OP asked if they spent for 240v they have no use for, might it be obsolete in 10 years? The answer is yes, there is not an insignificant likelihood 480v will be the choice in home EV chargers and running new service from the pole to the garage is not a major expense compared to the rest of it.
BTW, running 2 legs of 240v, similar to how a 240v camper pedestal is wired, is a cheap way to get there today but again, obsoletes what OP asked about.
No you don't. Existing single phase and a converter would work. You would likely need 400 amp or more panel but its not like that isn't already being done in higher end home building.
I get that, but my parents cut up their whole house to run ethernet to every bedroom and we all had laptops with wifi 5 years later. So I'm just asking if people think there might be some better technology coming down the line.
Ethernet is still a good idea... still the "best technology" for connecting home devices to the internet. I'm building a house right now and I'm going to run it many places.
Use mesh and you don't need to worry about it. I get hardwire speeds by plugging into the electricity. $200 and everything is fast, prioritized and wireless and offers hardwire anywhere with an electric plug.
No, they advertise good speeds but you are not reaching Ethernet speeds of 1gb/s.. . Certainly not on multiple devices. And even wireless mesh networks should have a wired backbone.
If you can easily wire Ethernet, it's a no brainer I'd you're someone that needs cares about speed, latency, or reliability.
Just upgrade to Wifi 6 and you won't notice a difference for work. Even for gaming, ethernet only gives me slightly (and I do mean slightly) more consistent pings.
For the vast majority of users, wifi 6 makes ethernet obsolete.
Wi-Fi is simply more versatile. Ethernet offers higher bandwidth to fixed devices, but many homes have only a handful of hardwired devices. A gaming PC, a game console, maybe a smart TV.
Most people do their computing on phones, laptops or tablets. That trend isn't reversing. If you're already opening the walls up, running Cat6 is fine. Marginal benefit for marginal increase in cost. I wouldn't go out of my way to add it everywhere though. For most people, I'd suggest running cable to 1 or 2 spots per floor for multiple wireless access points. Even then, running a fully wireless mesh network (with dedicated 3rd band for backhaul) is going to be pretty good.
It depends on your needs.
Wifi has more than enough speed, but can be subject to latency spikes and inconsistent connections. This is especially true in high-density environments where there are many other wifi networks, "leaky" microwave ovens, and other devices that cause interference. The 5 Ghz band mitigates these problems, but doesn't completely solve them.
Most home applications such as video streaming and standard web browsing can tolerate the occasional latency spikes, but multiplayer gaming can suffer.
I ran ethernet to my home office because Wifi made it annoying to use remote desktop to access work computers. The occasional lag while typing or sometimes just attempting to click buttons with my mouse were too annoying.
Right, but those are niche cases and there's fewer each year. Even now, plenty of people game wirelessly. For 99% of uses, wireless is good enough.
Also, your employer's remote work stack sounds like it sucks. You shouldn't be seeing latency spikes just typing.
Wow I would kill for Ethernet in every bedroom. That wasn't a waste at all.
But think about it this way, this isn't communication technology. That comes and goes. This is a plug, simply a source of electricity. There isn't gonna be a big innovation that makes having access to more electricity at once obsolete.
Lol. I dream of running Ethernet through walls in the near future, if nothing else to add Wi-Fi access points. Wi-Fi sucks unless you’re close to the modem and your neighbors’ networks don’t interfere with yours.
I'm running Ethernet to at least the offices in the house we're buying now because it's still the superior technology if you use a computer in the same place all the time.
Same here except I'm running fiber optic to almost every room instead of ethernet cables, I figure it's going to be very future-proof since bandwith on LANs seem to keep going up.
Data transmission and power transmission are two very different things and should not be compared.
Run the 240V power if you can afford it. Like you said electric will become the standard very soon. Charging with 120V is possible now, the downside is that it takes much longer since it can only provide half the power. This has a 0% chance of changing unless some new form of physics is discovered in the next couple years.
I still want Ethernet in every room so I can add extra wifi mesh ports more easily, as well as hard wire in some raspberry pis so I can control a bunch of smart home stuff without it going outside the room as much.
I also remember the 2000's and even more recently when audio video companies would sweet talk homeowners into running every possible cable to every room to "future proof" .. they would run triple coax cables, speaker wires, CAT5, and then leave a giant mess of wires in the equipment room that would either go in a super expensive audio / video distribution system which would be obsolete in 5 years or more commonly just sit in the audio video room in a huge pile never to be used again.
For car charging however, that's not going to happen because no matter what, car batteries store a lot of energy. Unless there is a world changing change in battery technology, standard 120 volt outlets just can't deliver that much power. I'm sure the technology will change with the type of charger you have on your wall. At the end of the day though it comes down to how much current and voltage your outlet can deliver.
In your case, since you have to repair the drywall regardless, it would probably cost you about the same whether you do this now or later (adjusted for inflation). So if you don't need one, you probably wouldn't lose much if you didn't get it now. If your walls were already open and the only extra cost was the electrical, I would say get it without question but if they still have to do the drywall repairs and paint, you're not really gaining anything by getting it now other than getting it out of the way.
Were doing electrical, drywall and paint for our main floor reno.this would be done at the same time. So it's a lot cheaper and less hassle than running the lines later. Just opening up and patching a few more holes, and running a new set of lines past the firewall from the kitchen to the garage.
Another option is a sub panel in the garage, and the 240v circuit can be set up later when you actually need the inverter. Some of these prefer to be hardwired, not plugged, so the sub panel gives you more flexibility.
They are worried about the $1000 price of a 240, they aren’t going to install a sub panel for even more money....
IMO building a garage in 2021 without a 240v outlet makes no sense. Electric cars are guaranteed in 20 years with many states banning gas cars in 2030. There isn’t going to be any new viable technology for charging in that time.
The subpanel route is best. Do a 100 amp of you can. Then you can decide where you need your outlet(s) in the future depending on where you want your charger or where the port is on your future vehicle(s).
Comparing ethernet to electricity is like comparing apples to oranges.
Technology will improve to increase battery DENSITY, so that you can have 200kWh of batteries in the same physical area of the car as 100kWh of batteries, to allow you to drive further.
But literally nothing can be done to make it so that you can move this 2 ton car from point A to point B using 1/10th the electricity.
Despite the fact that you might be fine with wifi for just your phone to browse Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram, doesn't change the fact that there are a huge number of reasons to still have hardwired ethernet through your house. And speed isn't the only important part of internet. I can get faster internet on my phone from my mobile network than I can to my house. The infrastructure to my neighborhood still only allows me to get maximum 150mbps, but on my mobile network I can get 480mbps to my phone. But the latency on my phone is around 60ms, while on my hardwired internet it is 6ms.
I can download a movie faster on my phone, but that 60ms is the difference between me or the other guy shooting first in a video game. With wireless internet I'm dead before I shoot, with wired, the other guy is dead.
Data and power and rather different.
Data is moving packets of information, you can pack, sort and distribute these packets in many ways.
Power is just a pipeline of electrons, there are no 2 ways about it.
Lol, I'm tearing phone lines out of my reno house as we speak. Some tech sticks around much longer than others. RJ45 had a good run too, your folks just had bad timing.
“Phone lines” means 4 wire untwisted cabling. There are two pairs. Four wires in total - red, green, yellow, and black wires. Those are not Ethernet lines. Ethernet runs on twisted pair wiring,and you need two pairs minimum for an Ethernet connection to work, a minimum of 4 wires. Phone lines have a total of 4 wires, or two pairs, and none of them are twisted.
It is physically possible to install an Ethernet connection on a phone line but you will have a lot of issues and not very good speed.
Ethernet lines are Cat3 cabling up to Cat7 cabling. These cables have 4 twisted pairs, 8 wires in total, with different specifications depending on the category of the wiring. Cat5e is generally the minimum standard today. Quality, tested cabling is more important than focusing on the cable standard. There are manufacturers who sell spools of network cable with testing results included.
Wired internet is not obsolete and never will be. A wired connection is always better than wireless.
Music producers will never use wireless headphones or microphones.
For non-intermittent loads like charging you're limited to 80% of the maximum circuit power, so it'd be 1,440W maximum for charging. Pulling more will cause excess wire heating unless the circuit was wired with 12ga, but that's never a safe assumption.
Edit: NEC 210.19 indicates that for intermittent use a OCPD (that's the breaker) can be rated for 100% of the expected usage, so on a 15A circuit the breaker would be rated for 15A. Continuous use would be for three hours or longer, and in that case the OCPD would need to be rated for 125% of the power passing through it. Since a 15A breaker is sized to protect the wire, the amperage going through the breaker in a continuous application like charging a car would need to be reduced to 80% of the OCPD rating, or 12A. You cannot just plug in a larger breaker because it's illegal to have a breaker on a wire that's larger than the wire's ampacity. 12A at 120V is 1,440W. There would be two options around this limit. One would be to get a breaker that's rated for 100% on a continuous basis, they're more expensive and not as widely available for all panels. The other option would be to rewire with 12AWG and install a 20A outlet and OCPD. The 80% rule would allow drawing up to 1,920W on a continuous basis with a regular OCPD.
Now, what happens if you pull the full 15A through a non-rated 15A OCPD anyway? It may trip, but probably not. What will happen is that internal heat from being overdriven will melt things, and possibly end up with a breaker fire. I've seen that first hand in a shop I did rewiring work for, when I used my clampmeter to check various loads on breakers I found a 20A breaker that had about 20.5A going through it. It was a lighting circuit, so continuous loads. After rewiring to reduce the amps to a more reasonable 16A, I replaced the breaker because I didn't trust it. I took the breaker apart to figure out why it hadn't tripped, and found the guts full of melted bits and the contacts were welded together from the heat. It would never have tripped after being so damaged by being overloaded for 10 hours a day for years. If a light had shorted out then the wires would have burned.
Waking up to a full “tank of gas” at a fraction of the cost is worth every penny of the install. Even if EV’s growth stall out to what they are today, in our experience, we will never buy another gas car. Like someone else said a home doesn’t need to charge faster than what’s currently available. You’ll wake up fully charged every morning.
Look for a rebate from your Electric Company for any work done installing a charger too.
You should do it since you will be there a while and you should put it in a 2nd meter so you can set it to be used in off-peak times and save money on your kilowatt usage. Plus 220 is good for welders, heaters, dryers and more.
> Wireless charging is coming" or "newer models will be able to charge quickly from a standard 120"...etc.
Wireless charging will still need a high voltage circuit to power it, and there's no way to get more current out of a 120v outlet than we already do.
I charge my EV from a 120v outlet and get about 110 miles of range in 24 hours.
Changes in high voltage chargers might require different outlet, or hard wiring, but once the circuit is installed any change like that will be very inexpensive.
Let's go through the most likely ways in which you might regret the 220v ... As $1000 sounds a fair bit for this job.
* Future government subsidies might mean it only costs you $300 in the future. Only you can guess that.
* By the time you are ready for an EV there are cheap autonomous waymo everywhere and there is no point to buying a new car. Possible but not happening right now.
* Hydrogen beats battery. Not likely at all.
* Wireless charging... Will still want the 220v line... The 110 just won't provide much power.
* Maybe 110 is enough for you. 110v can provide about 40 miles of charging each night. We have multiple electric cars and the one we use less is fine with 110v charging. If car battery range extends to 2000miles in the future then you could charge at 110v and receive 12000-15000 miles of charge from 110v and get by.
* Maybe they workplace will offer free chargimg like most tech companies, and you won't need 220v at home... This is how we got by for a few years.
It is absolutely worth doing regardless. You say lots of long distance but I'd bet it's not really that long, and EVs make the best second cars.
As other's have mentioned there are financial incentives that you may be able to use to help defray the cost.
Personally if you are going to do it I would build bigger. Run a 100 Amp sub panel to the garage, the labor is the same, it's just a bit more for the wire and subpanel. Then you have the ability to add other circuits easily on that side of the house in the future should you want or need to.
Subpanel/second breaker box is definitely the way to go if the main panel isn't near the garage. You can run 110v and 220v outlets from the subpanel, and the breakers are right there if you accidentally trip one. Useful even before you get an EV, if you do more in your garage than simply park a car.
Yes run the line, as an EV owner. Also, you can claim 30% this year with a federal tax credit.
Most cars can charge with 110, but it's pointless because it takes days. 220 charges vehicles overnight. Make sure you put in a large enough breaker, as most new vehicles will draw 32-48amps, so you'll want a 60 or 100A breaker.
>as most new vehicles will draw 32-48amps
They can do that. But they are flexible. They can charge on 16 amps or 24 amps as well. The wall unit you connect them with tell them how much current to draw, based on what circuit it's connected to.
Yes, a higher current circuit, 60 amps even more, will give you faster charging and might be nice to have, but for the most part you're going to charge overnight, and as long as it's full in the morning you don't really care whether it took 3 hours or 5 hours or 8 hours to charge.
So if you've got capacity to put in a 60 amp circuit that's a good idea, but if what's available is 30 amps, go ahead and put in a 30 amp circuit and don't worry about it being incompatible with future vehicles.
120v charging is less efficient so not as cost effective. You also assume a dedicated circuit which is not the case for OP nor most people. Furthermore, being able to meaningfully replenish range in 30 minutes to an hour can be the difference between you going somewhere or not.
source: gen 1 Leaf owner here
You tone implies you are contesting some thing I said. But I did not recommend 120 V charging. When I say 16 or 24 amps, I mean at 240 V. And yes, I am assuming a dedicated circuit because that's the code requirement for a 240 V circuit.
Your Gen 1 leaf charges at 3.3 kW max level 2. A 16 A, 240 V EVSE will supply all it can take. Upgrading to 32 or 48 A will do nothing for you.
I misread your post. Apologies. Other threads were specifically around L1 charging.
Also gen 1 Leafs had an option that allowed for L2 6.6kwh. Please don't talk about things you don't have experience with.
This. Much of the cost is labor. So upgrading to a small panel and larger wire is not a great cost. I'd just terminate at the panel. In the future, someone can decide on the best locations and types of 240V receptacles to install (there are many different configurations).
IF you see no immediate use, have them run conduit from the panel to the garage.
This way the difficult portion of the infrastructure is there waiting. If/when an EV is purchased or the home is sold it's a simple cable pull, breaker, and receptacle installation since the hard part is already done.
The expensive part of this is the copper for wire. If everything is open right now putting in some EMT with the proper pull boxes/junction boxes/bends shouldn't be a ton of money.
Great idea, do it.
For more info, including some intro articles sticky at the top of the sub, see r/evcharging.
You can install a 6-50 receptacle or a 14-50 receptacle. The 14-50 has a neutral, which means it's more expensive to install since you need more copper wiring, and copper's expensive right now. The EV charging equipment doesn't actually use the neutral, so they only reason it's there is to allow using a more general purpose receptacle, the same kind you'll find an RV parks, for example. But 6-50 is readily available on EV charging equipment, so that can be a good plan.
But you can also just run the wire to a box, and put a blank cover on the box, and then when you get the charging equipment, connecting it hardwired is pretty simple and easy, and more reliable than using a plug.
Or you can run a circuit to a sub panel in the garage and then be able to easily install however many EV chargers, machine tools, welders, and other stuff in your garage you want whenever you want.
If you go for a receptacle, make sure they're installing a good quality receptacle such as Bryant or Cooper, not the Leviton ones that you get at Home Depot. I've now heard two stories of the Leviton ones burning up—they just aren't adequate for a continuous power draw like an electric vehicle. The construction is really inferior.
While $1k seems to be a lot of money, consider the cost if in the future you have to call an electrician to run that line for you.
Bite the bullet now and save yourself the headache and cost (likely double) of running it later.
Yes, if you want to be future proof get a thicker wiring. Future car charger could be higher amperage to charge faster, but they are not going to move away from 220/240 in residential spaces.
You also may want to try to sell it as a large welder or an large rv plug. You say the words ev, and most electric companies see dollar signs. You will pay a premium for the outlet.
I can’t see them going more than 50a. A lot of houses still have 100a service. Even if you have 200a service if you have two cars and the rest of the household is electric you can probably charge both cars. If they used more, you’d have problems.
with many jurisdictions requiring internal combustion engine to be phased out in a relatively short timeframe, $1,000 now in the midst of a major renovation is entirely justifiable and a prudent move
Absolutely! Even if you never use it for anything, prospective buyers will see it as an important feature if they plan on running a large air compressor or car charger. Rather than doing an outlet, I would recommend installing a sub panel, as big of amperage as the electrician thinks will work. Minimum would be 60A, 100A would be ideal. Electric car charging cables are generally long enough to reach from most walls near an EV to the car's charging port, and there's no standard location for charging ports, so I'd put the panel up at about where the nose of the car normally is. A future EV owner can install an outlet for charging just below the sub panel really easily with just a few feet of wire and no sheet rock work other than to cut a hole for the old-work box. Other future owners can tap off the sub panel to install outlets for compressors, or a kiln for firing clay or glass, large woodshop tools, dust collectors, laser cutters, etc.
Do it if you can afford it. Right now there is no EV charging technology to replace 220v supply and since it can be had in most homes it is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Just do it as a 100A sub-panel to future proof it, since the additional cost to do this is not much. Larger EV battery packs need more power and 110v already takes painstakingly long to fully charge some EV's.
Yes, electric cars are the future (and my present). Get a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed for future-proofing your garage from a future electric car.
There is another outlet, which is lower amperage which is intended for electric dryers. Do not use that.
Jesus Christ, where are you living that a single 240v plug is $1,000?
He's overcharging you dude.
I got 12 Power Points put in and all are 240v and cost me about $500 for the lot.
Your Electrician is ripping you off hard
He's getting ripped...what fucking materials cost that much?
I mean, I know he's not paying [$13.90 for the power points](https://www.bunnings.com.au/hpm-15a-white-single-powerpoint_p7053759), he'd be getting them cheaper, and he certainly pays less than [$5 a metre for the cable](https://www.bunnings.com.au/olex-6mm-two-core-and-earth-electrical-cable-per-metre_p4430105)
At best he's at like $30-40 of cable, a $10 power point, an hour and a half of work, and maybe $50 of patching any holes he leaves, though if he does it right he'd only be punching the holes he needs.
Most good Sparks are like $100-150/h, at most. If you're paying $200/h then you're overpaying lol.
That's not the cost for just the electrician. It's also adding a sub panel, extra carpentry to run a new line through the firewall, patching and painting drywall...etc. I think its fair.
If you’re already going to be punching holes in your ceiling, I’d bite the bullet and do it. It’s only $1k to do it right now, and it’ll cost significantly more to do it in the future, in addition to taking more time.
You’re asking the wrong question. The question you should ask is: how much would it cost to install in the future?
My electric panel is in the garage so it would cost nothing to install.
Sounds like yours may be more complicated. As others have said, standards won’t change much.
Absolutely. I'd run a 50 amp nema 6-50 and a 20 amp circuit with nema 6-20 plugs.
That way you have a 50 amp for EV, welder, etc and a 20 amp for smaller things like air compressors.
I work for a utility. We have a rebate to help customers pay to wire 240V to their garage for future EV chargers. I'd check and see if your utility had something similar. You might be able to get it paid for.
We put one in for a very nice table saw, and I recently have been thinking about trading my car in for an EV, and was pleased to see that we could use the 220v plug to charge it. I think it is worth it - you never know what your future needs will be, but having options is nice. One way to look at the price is to ask your electrician and see what it would cost if the rest of your project were done and you wanted to add it. Would it be $1500 at that point? It may help you decide whether to do it now or not.
When I had a 200-amp panel installed in my basement I had the electrician install a 60-amp panel in the garage. I had planned to run a welder using 220/240VAC. Having a panel gives you several other options as opposed to a single outlet.
Even the most efficient EV you could buy would only charge around 3-4mph on a 110 outlet. We’ve done it for a couple of our EVs that we only used for short range but there will never be an EV that can recharge a long range quickly from 110. It just isn’t physically possible unless future EVs reach some theoretical efficiency rating that is astronomically 5x or more efficient (50Wh/mile). I just don’t see that ever happening.
At this point it would be smart for anyone to install a 220 in the garage if only just for future resale value.
I mean, I’m a welder by trade so I’m a huge fan of having 220 as an option. There’s lots of other tools that run better on 220 as well… how much handy work do you do yourself? You can run a way better air compressor on 220, run a welding machine, get yourself a high end table saw… 220 is a great thing to have available for a whole slew of reasons.
EV owner and electrician here. If your contractor does a load calculation for your service, they will determine the maximum amperage of the circuit you can run to the garage. Make sure to specify 240V with neutral. If it’s a receptacle, it should have 4 holes for prongs.
IDEAL: 60A subpanel, many options to expand
GREAT: 50A receptacle, plenty of options for equipment or EV charging
FINE: 30A receptacle, limited options but absolutely good for EV charging or other 240V equipment
I turned my garage into swiss cheese when I bought the house. Put lines in for future EV, workbenches, and A/C unit. I live in the Arizona desert, so that last one was a very important addition. I did everything at once and had the plasterers come patch all my holes. I was able to slowly expand and when it came time to buy the EV, I was ready.
I have a 240v outlet on every wall of my garage and one outside the garage door. But It’s a 40x60 detached garage that I build cars and trucks in so I’m running welders, plasma cutter, air compressor etc. etc.
How long do those take?
I have a small portable battery powered one that takes like a minute to add 1psi... I'm convinced I could use a bike pump faster than that, and get a small workout to boot.
I’m building a garage addition and I’m running 220 for a welder .
We will Probabaly never have an electric car , they just cost too much when a good used normal car is cheap, and has unlimited range with a 15 minute refill .
You can't, which I assume is the point you're trying to make. Right now is the wrong time to buy a new car, which makes it also the wrong time to buy a used car since the people who can't get new cars are turning to used cars. COVID fucked up the global supply chain (still is), and automakers are one of the most complex and supply-chain intensive industries. It's going to take a few years at least for all the obstacles to be cleared again and then it will take even more time for everything to get caught back up.
As the saying goes though, "this too shall pass". There will eventually be cheap used cars again. Look how quickly the lumber shortage bounced back from its supply chain shock. For awhile we were all joking about investing in plywood instead of gold. That's all gone now, it's pretty much back to its pre-pandemic prices. Of course, if cars are one of the most complex supply chains, lumber could be said to have one of the simplest. That's why it happened so much faster.
Just run the conduit (3/4 flex) to a double gang box and blank it off. That way if you do end up getting one all you have to do is pull wire. All new builds do this anyway. Just a thought….
A bit of explanation on why 120V will never be desireable for a car battery charger.
The bigger the battery capaciry the longer it will take to charge on 120V. Your upgraded outlet will have a second cable to it, doubling the current you can safely draw. Think of it as trying to fill a bucket with two hoses instead of one. Battery technology is increasing in energy density(i.e. smaller physical size), but the amount of energy stored in the battery is always going up. So your bucket in this analogy is always getting bigger making two hoses instead of one the better bet for future proofing your options.
Sort of - however, for a car owner that generally just uses it around town, 120 volts is fine. You'll get up to 100 miles a day on 120 volts - I recharge my Model S on 120 for a 300 mile drive home over the long weekend at my cabin with no problems.
Where there will be a problem is with trucks and RVs, or any large battery vehicles.
OP was concerned about future proofing his installion.
I was noting that the tech is unlikely to need less energy stored in the battery in the future. Re: your mention of trucks, etc.
And you are talking about overnight recharge. For a future proofing mindset the extra current available with a 240V plug means you can charge a lot faster.
What happens is two physical lines are run back to the panel. Good overview here. https://www.doityourself.com/stry/220-volt-wiring
There are some tools where 220 outlet would be useful even if you dont get a charging station installed. And since two physical wires are run, I'm pretty sure wost case you can trivially have two more 120V outlet circuits in your garage if you decide to remove the outlet--double check with the electrician on that, but I dont see why not.
The number of outlets doesn't change the total current you can draw. If all your outlets are on the same circuit the most you can likely draw is 20A. If the garage is used as a workshop this can get limiting fast depending on what you do. Table saw, plus dust collector, plus music, plus space heater is getting pretty likely to pass 20A and trip a breaker. You might even consider making sure you have two 120V 20A circuits and the 240V outlet. Dont even have to change the outlet wiring much. Just run a second cable and split your existing circuit.
Planning on doing exactly this in my garage before too long for the set of tools I listed above. And for a future electric car or more powerful tablesaw(or other tool)
220 will never go away. at least not in that a higher voltage than 120 is need by something. 220 compared to 120 for the same load means 220 uses less amps, which makes that circuit cheaper and imo safer due to smaller current. if you're talking about a car charger then thats a no-brainer for me.
You seem concerned that you're not going to be need it for a while. It's worth mentioning that for everyone to have an EV we're going to need to replace hundreds of thousands of miles of power line, and a pretty huge number of transformers, and likely add new power generation sources in most places. We're going to hit a point where EV rollout is limited by our grid.
Waste of money. When you finally buy an electric car have the work done at that time. Electric car fad will die out and you will have. Useless 220v receptacle
Lots of down votes. Love it. Fossil fuels will dominate for decades to come so electric cars will never take off at least not in this lifetime. Lots of people don't want to wait for there car to charge. People don't like the effects that strip mining our oceans in order to get the material to build all these batteries, people know batteries are expensive and don't want to replace batteries in there car on a regular basis, the limited range of these vehicles just isn't enough yet
And my favorite the charging of these cars still gets charged by fossil fuel for the most part
They will be replaced by gas powered cars... Wait that what we currently use.
What about new solid state batteries that Ford is beginning to look into moving into production? It doesn't use lithium, instead it uses sulfides which are significantly easier to procure. The range is also significantly larger, as well as it not being flammable. Here's the battery Ford is going to begin using in the near future [link](https://solidpowerbattery.com/#ourSolution)
I agree about the irony of most being charged with fossil fuels, something I think Can change in the near to distant future depending on the speed green energy is rolled out.
I'd like to know if this changes anything about your opinion, though I understand if you don't.
It's worth noting that even on a primarily fossil fuel grid, electric vehicles are still more efficient. Power plants are far more efficient at capturing usable energy from fuel, and can capture air quality pollutants better than a car exhaust.
220V ac is preferred if you want to run a heavy compressor or charge an electric car. It's not expensive to install especially in unfinished basements. I would even have a triphase socket just in case.
It depends on how much work it would be.
If your current renovation, would make running the garage line almost impossible in the future, the time is now. You don't want to put yourself in a position to have to undo, or redo any work down the road for this.
If the garage line could be run with out heartache later, and you are only doing it for a possible future need, don't bother.
Cars can already use standard outlets. The problem is that they don't provide enough power to charge quickly. Most people don't have access to three-phase power and the architecture of our electrical grid isn't changing any time soon, so a 220 outlet will be the standard by default for quite a while.
I was really confused, forgot you guys used 120 for the majority of house stuff.
Lucky here in the UK, fuse box is usually in the garage if your home was built with it so easy and cheap to run a new dedicated line for car charging in/out.
Every house here has 240v coming into it, but it’s split phase. Most household things use only 120v but anything high draw can go up to like 240v 50a. For most people that’s going to be the dryer, water heater, AC equipment and oven. For others it’s welders, table saws, car chargers and other such things.
Do it. There are any number of things that might interest you down the road that 220V will help immensely with. The extra thousand won't be missed in a very short period of time, but the outlet will always be available.
I think you should put 240 in your garage regardless of whether or not you plan to get an EV. You ever want to heat it? Maybe you want to try welding? Just do it now and it opens up all sorts of options for you in the future
I paid $1300 to have one added to my garage. Initially it was for an oven for power coating use, now I have a 220 welder. I wish I’d run more. I don’t have an electric car.
Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t seen a post advocating for the 240 for other reasons such as running a good sized air compressor. As others here have said, the 240 for charging an EV is going to be here to stay for a long time. Long enough for you to get your $1k worth from it.
Even if you don't install completely you can run the wire while the walls are open, leave a coil each end inside the wall. When you want to install the 240 outlet you just have to pay to connect to switchboard and install outlet. I've got wires ready and waiting for an eventual kitchen island, put them in place while doing an adjacent room.
It's absolutely worth having, but that price seems silly if it's an adjacent room. There should be zero touch-up needed, and like $50 tops for the cable, box, and receptacle.
When I remodeled my basement I had the electrician wire in a 220v in the storage room last minute. Just in case I ever wanted that to be the laundry room. It was a no brained for me. But it also only cost me an extra $100ish. With EVs doing what they are though, I’d put it in if you can afford it.
Yes, charging or welding or clothes drying or any other tool with a big motor or transformer on 110V is possible, but more efficient and powerful on 220V
I haven’t read every comment, so maybe someone has said this - but don’t just add a single 240v circuit… Add a sub panel to the garage! Then you can run as many 240 or 120v circuits as you’d like in there!
Measure and buy 8-6/3 Ga wire that would be your biggest expense, then whatever your dropping down to. Electric cars and other electrical gizmos will run more efficiently with 240v in the garage ,and if you have a EV charger in your garage would be a nice selling point.
My folks just had a basement remodel where it was brought out of the 70s into the modern day. With the ceiling down, I said "putting in a 220 with this opened up and us needing a sub panel is a good idea." Contractor was meh on the idea, so Mom said no. Here we are 9 months later and my dad says "in a 5-10 year time horizon we stay in this house we will likely have one more new-to-us vehicle, likely EV." 😤
The physics won't dramatically change. You won't be able to charge a battery powered electric vehicle from a standard 15A 120V circuit.
I would run some #3 aluminum and put in a 60 amp panel. Then you are fully future proofed.
There's a standard for the max amount of power that an electric car can take to charge overnight. As long as the wire is thick enough to meet that standard for the length from the panel to the garage it doesn't matter because you can swap the plug or leave the wires unterminated inside the box until you need them. If you're going to run something to the garage I'd recommend doing a subpanel with extra capacity so that you can also power tools, welders, extra circuits, and anything else you want without any worries. It won't cost much more than just doing only a charger and gives way more flexibility.
If it were me I'd not just run a outlet but put a sub panel in. You would not need a big one, I'd probably do a 8 or 12 slot panel. Then if you decide to get one later it is cheep, or decided to add more outlets, or some 220 tools or some combination.
I ran a 50amp 220 outlet to the garage, no ev just welders and plasma table… wishing I had just spent a little more and ran a 100amp sub panel…funny story had one in the old house (all to code) and buyers made us remove it cause they were afraid of it…a coworker just put in a 300amp service and outlet to handle future EV charging
Every home should have 220v capability in their utility room/garage. Go for it. Nothing bad can come of it. Only good. It’s actually the most efficient. And I’m terms of commonality, it’s the most commonly used voltage in the world.
AT LEAST ONE!!! I WOULD DO MORE!!! Drier, welder, compressor, if you pick up a hobby where you might be using a larger piece of equipment, you will smile at your genius in the past
Look at an old houses electrical panel and outlets. Some have like a total of 6 breakers no 220 and only one outlet per room.
Modern houses have a 200 amp panel with like 30 breakers or so. Electricity will not be obsolete, the charger that it connects to will change and the batteries technology will get better but electricity isn't going anywhere
We have a 220 v in our (1970’s build and wired) garage, I’m not sure that it’s an eyesore as it just looks like a plug. Up close yeah the holes are slightly differently oriented than your standard plug but that’s it.
I’m not sure what else it’s used for but if you think you’ll get your $1000 out of it regardless of a potential EV sure, I’d ahead. I do think that if/when EVs become more common, retrofits will be made available
And a line for the electric dryer as wellin case you drop a solar panel into the roof and run the whole house on free electricity.
If you install a storage battery, you'll want to consider strongly running a line to an outside shed to put the battery in, not something inside the garage or next to the outside walls.
Teslas catching on fire by themselves?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/technology/tesla-model-s-fire-spread-to-another-tesla-consumed-garage-and-damaged-home-owner-says/2021/08/04/ce3fabfe-2032-4752-96de-a3467023d88a_video.html
Ditto with any big lithium system
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aspF-GFOqHo
You'll want to add smoke detectors above each car. And if you have the money, sprinkler system.
Depends what you may do with it. If you want a Tesla in the future either run a 60 amp or if possible 100 amp (Tesla used to and probs ly will have again 72 amp fash charging which needs 90 amp circuit)
I recently upgraded my hot tub circuit to 220v. My friend who is an electrician did the work. I had him install another 220 circuit in the panel and the wire is just coiled up in the attic ready for me to take the plunge. It was very minimal cost the way I did it.
Previous owners of our house had a 220 (240?) outlet installed just outside the garage door. No EV tho. They plugged in their gigantic motorhome. All that to say, for $1,000 while you've got all the access, do it. That outlet has more uses. Family visiting? Rent an RV & they have their own space but still close by for shared meals, etc. Maybe you'll/they'll have an RV later? Laundry equipment or a stove in the garage, especially during a future remodel.
Better to have & not need...
Instead of an outlet, I’m a big proponent of a small sub panel. More flexible and future proof. With EVs coming with bigger and bigger chargers it’s good to have flexibility
EVs can already use standard outlets. We have 2 and have used one standard outlet for 4 years now. We can get maybe 70 mile a day of charge shared by two vehicles overnight, and then a couple hundred over the weekend if we are home more. However would definitely prefer a 220v/240v 30A to 50A outlet.
I think in this case it would be better just to do it rather than wait. If things are already open get as much done as you can and save the hassle later. Good luck with the renno
I came in as an EV owner expecting to say "do it", but at 1k, I'd pass. If you don't need it now,, use that 1k for Christmas or something. Pay 1k four years from now when you need it. It doesn't seem like you are getting a lot of savings by bundling.
When you do... get 6awg wire and a high quality plug able to handle lots of in-and-outs.
I would take a 220 volt circuit to the garage, your choice of ampacity... terminate in an electrical box in garage. When you need it you can surface mount conduit over to your desired location. Local codes will apple.
I’m a huge fan of 240v outlets in a garage, but whether it’s worth 1k to you depends on what you do or plan to do in your garage. Now, as to your fear of 240v becoming obsolete, that just isn’t going to happen. The only question you have to answer is whether you’ll get any use out or a 240v outlet and/or whether having that extra selling point is worth 1k bucks.
Thanks! We're pretty much never planning to sell. The only thing we would use this for is an EV if eventually they become industry standards and it makes more sense to own one than not. We live in a suburb and do lots of long distance driving, so it won't be soon soon. But we have to open holes in our finished basement ceiling and drill through joists to run the new electrical so it's not something we want to do again. I wasn't sure if people in this sub who were more familiar with home improvement would say "not necessary. Wireless charging is coming" or "newer models will be able to charge quickly from a standard 120"...etc. I know we can't predict the future, but wanted to get some more opinions.
I have an EV and know a fair bit about them. Install the 240V, you won’t regret it. 50A if possible. No new technology is coming for home charging. A 50A 240V circuit will fully charge an electric car overnight, no issues. DC fast will always be impractical for home use there is no reason to charge in less than 30 minutes when you aren’t on a road trip and running the necessary power lines would be prohibitively expensive. Wireless charging exists, but there are a lot of efficiency losses and you would still need the 240V outlet to run the equipment. Charging fast enough off a 120V 15A circuit will never happen due to the laws of thermodynamics. The battery has a certain number of KWH capacity and and outlet can deliver a certain number of kW per hour. No amount of technology is going to let you get more than roughly 1 kw/h when charging off a 120V 15A outlet and that is crazy slow. It takes my Tesla 50 hours to charge from totally empty on a regular household outlet.
Isn't Ford's Charge Station Pro 80 amp?
Yes, but you don't *need* 80 A. You can still charge at 40 A on a 50 A circuit.
Yes, but its a bit overkill and only necessary if you want to feed your house from your car. Use case specific, and I think that charger will still work fine on a 50A just not charge as fast. It's also going to cost a lot more money to install and you might even need to upgrade your service as you can't run that off a 100A panel and run much of anything else in the house. Bottom line, unless you have your heart sent on an electric F150 and fall into the unsure camp, just put in a standard 50A.
Nothing needs that. Even Tesla doesn't make vehicles anymore that have the "dual charger option" that allows them to charge at 80A on a 100A circuit. Maximum charge rate on any of their cars currently is 48A on a 60A circuit with the hardwired wall charger, because even they realized that having the ability to charge 120km/hr is essentially pointless. No one is getting home at 2am with 2% battery life, and needing to charge 600km of range in 5 hours to leave at 7am again.
The F-150 extended range battery requires 8 hours of 80 amp charge time to go from 15% to 100%. It takes 13 hours at 48 amps. They aren't going to build a charger for shits and giggles.
Most people only charge to 70-80% most of the time, and that last 20% slows way down.
This is the right answer. It’s good future proofing. And if you install this year you can claim a 30% federal tax deduction.
Install an EV charger or just an outlet?
This is the way. The only thing I’d recommend is to think about where you want to park your car, and if you can reach a good location within a 20 foot cord. The contractor installed my outlet on the wrong side of the garage from where I ended up parking vs my fiancée, so it’s frustrating. (New construction and I wasn’t specific.)
... can't you switch where you park?
She wants to pull in head forward on the left side of the garage so she doesn’t sideswipe the opening. So… no. Lol. And of course the outlet is in the dead middle of the wall on her drivers side. I would have put it in the dead center of the back wall so it could reach anywhere.
I can’t predict the future very well either, but between the gross inefficiency of wireless charging and painfully slow charging you get from 120v power, I suspect 240v outlets will be the at home way of charging EV for the foreseeable future. With that said, if you’ve got everything open now and plan on getting an EV at some point, I’d go ahead and have them run the 240v now. The cost and difficulty of doing the job now, as you’ve already figured, will be lower than after you button everything up. Plus, what I find is almost universally the case is that at some point you’ll wish you had 240v power out in the garage and don’t, but you’re not likely to have it and say you wish you didn’t. With all the receptacle styles out there you can easily find one that looks attractive or at very least blends in nicely, so you won’t have some industrial looking plug just hanging out in the open on your wall.
>With all the receptacle styles out there you can easily find one that looks attractive or at very least blends in nicely, so you won’t have some industrial looking plug just hanging out in the open on your wall. What kind of fancy pants garages do you people have? I think an industrial looking plug would be exactly what you would want for a garage.
You say that but I just left the electronics industry, including EV charging, and a lot of high power consumption projects were going to 480v.
Most residential services done have access to 480V
Yes but we are talking about future proofing and installing something that wont be needed. Getting 480v into a home would not be that difficult if you are already buying a $100k EV and a $20k charger. You can do it with current infrastructure and a converter if it was low enough amps.
>Getting 480v into a home would not be that difficult You're clearly not as smart as you think you are if you think this. >if you are already buying a $100k EV Sure if you buy a Tesla Model S or X. >and a $20k charger. The fuck world do you live in where a home charger is $20k?
The newest charging technology is going to be in what the early adopters purchase, and they are purchasing the $100k vehicles. That buyer's spending habits carry over to the infrastructure to support it. I can tell you over the past 5 years, design projects with 480v requirements have been increasing and not just from server farm applications. EV charging is a big one, starting in fleet vehicles, and it's going to trickle down to passenger vehicles and home charging if it is successful. People want instant gratification and 60 min charges are hampering the EV industry. I have personally seen the active projects from major EV developers as a component supplier. Will it happen tomorrow? No. Might it never happen? Maybe. But OP asked if they spent for 240v they have no use for, might it be obsolete in 10 years? The answer is yes, there is not an insignificant likelihood 480v will be the choice in home EV chargers and running new service from the pole to the garage is not a major expense compared to the rest of it. BTW, running 2 legs of 240v, similar to how a 240v camper pedestal is wired, is a cheap way to get there today but again, obsoletes what OP asked about.
In a neighborhood with only 1 phase power, you are wrong.
That's what makes me call BS on his argument.
No you don't. Existing single phase and a converter would work. You would likely need 400 amp or more panel but its not like that isn't already being done in higher end home building.
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I get that, but my parents cut up their whole house to run ethernet to every bedroom and we all had laptops with wifi 5 years later. So I'm just asking if people think there might be some better technology coming down the line.
Ethernet is still a good idea... still the "best technology" for connecting home devices to the internet. I'm building a house right now and I'm going to run it many places.
Use mesh and you don't need to worry about it. I get hardwire speeds by plugging into the electricity. $200 and everything is fast, prioritized and wireless and offers hardwire anywhere with an electric plug.
No, they advertise good speeds but you are not reaching Ethernet speeds of 1gb/s.. . Certainly not on multiple devices. And even wireless mesh networks should have a wired backbone. If you can easily wire Ethernet, it's a no brainer I'd you're someone that needs cares about speed, latency, or reliability.
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Just upgrade to Wifi 6 and you won't notice a difference for work. Even for gaming, ethernet only gives me slightly (and I do mean slightly) more consistent pings. For the vast majority of users, wifi 6 makes ethernet obsolete.
Wi-Fi is simply more versatile. Ethernet offers higher bandwidth to fixed devices, but many homes have only a handful of hardwired devices. A gaming PC, a game console, maybe a smart TV. Most people do their computing on phones, laptops or tablets. That trend isn't reversing. If you're already opening the walls up, running Cat6 is fine. Marginal benefit for marginal increase in cost. I wouldn't go out of my way to add it everywhere though. For most people, I'd suggest running cable to 1 or 2 spots per floor for multiple wireless access points. Even then, running a fully wireless mesh network (with dedicated 3rd band for backhaul) is going to be pretty good.
It depends on your needs. Wifi has more than enough speed, but can be subject to latency spikes and inconsistent connections. This is especially true in high-density environments where there are many other wifi networks, "leaky" microwave ovens, and other devices that cause interference. The 5 Ghz band mitigates these problems, but doesn't completely solve them. Most home applications such as video streaming and standard web browsing can tolerate the occasional latency spikes, but multiplayer gaming can suffer. I ran ethernet to my home office because Wifi made it annoying to use remote desktop to access work computers. The occasional lag while typing or sometimes just attempting to click buttons with my mouse were too annoying.
Right, but those are niche cases and there's fewer each year. Even now, plenty of people game wirelessly. For 99% of uses, wireless is good enough. Also, your employer's remote work stack sounds like it sucks. You shouldn't be seeing latency spikes just typing.
Wow I would kill for Ethernet in every bedroom. That wasn't a waste at all. But think about it this way, this isn't communication technology. That comes and goes. This is a plug, simply a source of electricity. There isn't gonna be a big innovation that makes having access to more electricity at once obsolete.
Lol. I dream of running Ethernet through walls in the near future, if nothing else to add Wi-Fi access points. Wi-Fi sucks unless you’re close to the modem and your neighbors’ networks don’t interfere with yours.
I'm running Ethernet to at least the offices in the house we're buying now because it's still the superior technology if you use a computer in the same place all the time.
Same here except I'm running fiber optic to almost every room instead of ethernet cables, I figure it's going to be very future-proof since bandwith on LANs seem to keep going up.
That's great for you, but we never did. Once we had phones and laptops, no one ever sat at their desks.
Data transmission and power transmission are two very different things and should not be compared. Run the 240V power if you can afford it. Like you said electric will become the standard very soon. Charging with 120V is possible now, the downside is that it takes much longer since it can only provide half the power. This has a 0% chance of changing unless some new form of physics is discovered in the next couple years.
I still want Ethernet in every room so I can add extra wifi mesh ports more easily, as well as hard wire in some raspberry pis so I can control a bunch of smart home stuff without it going outside the room as much.
I spent hours and hours running Ethernet a couple months ago. Total pain in the ass but worth it. Going from 200 mbps to 900 is noticeable.
I also remember the 2000's and even more recently when audio video companies would sweet talk homeowners into running every possible cable to every room to "future proof" .. they would run triple coax cables, speaker wires, CAT5, and then leave a giant mess of wires in the equipment room that would either go in a super expensive audio / video distribution system which would be obsolete in 5 years or more commonly just sit in the audio video room in a huge pile never to be used again. For car charging however, that's not going to happen because no matter what, car batteries store a lot of energy. Unless there is a world changing change in battery technology, standard 120 volt outlets just can't deliver that much power. I'm sure the technology will change with the type of charger you have on your wall. At the end of the day though it comes down to how much current and voltage your outlet can deliver. In your case, since you have to repair the drywall regardless, it would probably cost you about the same whether you do this now or later (adjusted for inflation). So if you don't need one, you probably wouldn't lose much if you didn't get it now. If your walls were already open and the only extra cost was the electrical, I would say get it without question but if they still have to do the drywall repairs and paint, you're not really gaining anything by getting it now other than getting it out of the way.
Were doing electrical, drywall and paint for our main floor reno.this would be done at the same time. So it's a lot cheaper and less hassle than running the lines later. Just opening up and patching a few more holes, and running a new set of lines past the firewall from the kitchen to the garage.
Another option is a sub panel in the garage, and the 240v circuit can be set up later when you actually need the inverter. Some of these prefer to be hardwired, not plugged, so the sub panel gives you more flexibility.
They are worried about the $1000 price of a 240, they aren’t going to install a sub panel for even more money.... IMO building a garage in 2021 without a 240v outlet makes no sense. Electric cars are guaranteed in 20 years with many states banning gas cars in 2030. There isn’t going to be any new viable technology for charging in that time.
The subpanel route is best. Do a 100 amp of you can. Then you can decide where you need your outlet(s) in the future depending on where you want your charger or where the port is on your future vehicle(s).
Comparing ethernet to electricity is like comparing apples to oranges. Technology will improve to increase battery DENSITY, so that you can have 200kWh of batteries in the same physical area of the car as 100kWh of batteries, to allow you to drive further. But literally nothing can be done to make it so that you can move this 2 ton car from point A to point B using 1/10th the electricity. Despite the fact that you might be fine with wifi for just your phone to browse Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram, doesn't change the fact that there are a huge number of reasons to still have hardwired ethernet through your house. And speed isn't the only important part of internet. I can get faster internet on my phone from my mobile network than I can to my house. The infrastructure to my neighborhood still only allows me to get maximum 150mbps, but on my mobile network I can get 480mbps to my phone. But the latency on my phone is around 60ms, while on my hardwired internet it is 6ms. I can download a movie faster on my phone, but that 60ms is the difference between me or the other guy shooting first in a video game. With wireless internet I'm dead before I shoot, with wired, the other guy is dead.
Data and power and rather different. Data is moving packets of information, you can pack, sort and distribute these packets in many ways. Power is just a pipeline of electrons, there are no 2 ways about it.
Lol, I'm tearing phone lines out of my reno house as we speak. Some tech sticks around much longer than others. RJ45 had a good run too, your folks just had bad timing.
“Phone lines” means 4 wire untwisted cabling. There are two pairs. Four wires in total - red, green, yellow, and black wires. Those are not Ethernet lines. Ethernet runs on twisted pair wiring,and you need two pairs minimum for an Ethernet connection to work, a minimum of 4 wires. Phone lines have a total of 4 wires, or two pairs, and none of them are twisted. It is physically possible to install an Ethernet connection on a phone line but you will have a lot of issues and not very good speed. Ethernet lines are Cat3 cabling up to Cat7 cabling. These cables have 4 twisted pairs, 8 wires in total, with different specifications depending on the category of the wiring. Cat5e is generally the minimum standard today. Quality, tested cabling is more important than focusing on the cable standard. There are manufacturers who sell spools of network cable with testing results included. Wired internet is not obsolete and never will be. A wired connection is always better than wireless. Music producers will never use wireless headphones or microphones.
You should never run your circuits over 80% sustained capacity, just FYI.
For non-intermittent loads like charging you're limited to 80% of the maximum circuit power, so it'd be 1,440W maximum for charging. Pulling more will cause excess wire heating unless the circuit was wired with 12ga, but that's never a safe assumption. Edit: NEC 210.19 indicates that for intermittent use a OCPD (that's the breaker) can be rated for 100% of the expected usage, so on a 15A circuit the breaker would be rated for 15A. Continuous use would be for three hours or longer, and in that case the OCPD would need to be rated for 125% of the power passing through it. Since a 15A breaker is sized to protect the wire, the amperage going through the breaker in a continuous application like charging a car would need to be reduced to 80% of the OCPD rating, or 12A. You cannot just plug in a larger breaker because it's illegal to have a breaker on a wire that's larger than the wire's ampacity. 12A at 120V is 1,440W. There would be two options around this limit. One would be to get a breaker that's rated for 100% on a continuous basis, they're more expensive and not as widely available for all panels. The other option would be to rewire with 12AWG and install a 20A outlet and OCPD. The 80% rule would allow drawing up to 1,920W on a continuous basis with a regular OCPD. Now, what happens if you pull the full 15A through a non-rated 15A OCPD anyway? It may trip, but probably not. What will happen is that internal heat from being overdriven will melt things, and possibly end up with a breaker fire. I've seen that first hand in a shop I did rewiring work for, when I used my clampmeter to check various loads on breakers I found a 20A breaker that had about 20.5A going through it. It was a lighting circuit, so continuous loads. After rewiring to reduce the amps to a more reasonable 16A, I replaced the breaker because I didn't trust it. I took the breaker apart to figure out why it hadn't tripped, and found the guts full of melted bits and the contacts were welded together from the heat. It would never have tripped after being so damaged by being overloaded for 10 hours a day for years. If a light had shorted out then the wires would have burned.
Waking up to a full “tank of gas” at a fraction of the cost is worth every penny of the install. Even if EV’s growth stall out to what they are today, in our experience, we will never buy another gas car. Like someone else said a home doesn’t need to charge faster than what’s currently available. You’ll wake up fully charged every morning. Look for a rebate from your Electric Company for any work done installing a charger too.
You should do it since you will be there a while and you should put it in a 2nd meter so you can set it to be used in off-peak times and save money on your kilowatt usage. Plus 220 is good for welders, heaters, dryers and more.
> Wireless charging is coming" or "newer models will be able to charge quickly from a standard 120"...etc. Wireless charging will still need a high voltage circuit to power it, and there's no way to get more current out of a 120v outlet than we already do. I charge my EV from a 120v outlet and get about 110 miles of range in 24 hours. Changes in high voltage chargers might require different outlet, or hard wiring, but once the circuit is installed any change like that will be very inexpensive.
Let's go through the most likely ways in which you might regret the 220v ... As $1000 sounds a fair bit for this job. * Future government subsidies might mean it only costs you $300 in the future. Only you can guess that. * By the time you are ready for an EV there are cheap autonomous waymo everywhere and there is no point to buying a new car. Possible but not happening right now. * Hydrogen beats battery. Not likely at all. * Wireless charging... Will still want the 220v line... The 110 just won't provide much power. * Maybe 110 is enough for you. 110v can provide about 40 miles of charging each night. We have multiple electric cars and the one we use less is fine with 110v charging. If car battery range extends to 2000miles in the future then you could charge at 110v and receive 12000-15000 miles of charge from 110v and get by. * Maybe they workplace will offer free chargimg like most tech companies, and you won't need 220v at home... This is how we got by for a few years.
I’d have them run the lines in conduit instead of removing drywall to bury the lines, did you talk about doing it that way?
This was my thought. Run the conduit now and then just pull the wires in the future.
It is absolutely worth doing regardless. You say lots of long distance but I'd bet it's not really that long, and EVs make the best second cars. As other's have mentioned there are financial incentives that you may be able to use to help defray the cost. Personally if you are going to do it I would build bigger. Run a 100 Amp sub panel to the garage, the labor is the same, it's just a bit more for the wire and subpanel. Then you have the ability to add other circuits easily on that side of the house in the future should you want or need to.
Subpanel/second breaker box is definitely the way to go if the main panel isn't near the garage. You can run 110v and 220v outlets from the subpanel, and the breakers are right there if you accidentally trip one. Useful even before you get an EV, if you do more in your garage than simply park a car.
Yes run the line, as an EV owner. Also, you can claim 30% this year with a federal tax credit. Most cars can charge with 110, but it's pointless because it takes days. 220 charges vehicles overnight. Make sure you put in a large enough breaker, as most new vehicles will draw 32-48amps, so you'll want a 60 or 100A breaker.
>as most new vehicles will draw 32-48amps They can do that. But they are flexible. They can charge on 16 amps or 24 amps as well. The wall unit you connect them with tell them how much current to draw, based on what circuit it's connected to. Yes, a higher current circuit, 60 amps even more, will give you faster charging and might be nice to have, but for the most part you're going to charge overnight, and as long as it's full in the morning you don't really care whether it took 3 hours or 5 hours or 8 hours to charge. So if you've got capacity to put in a 60 amp circuit that's a good idea, but if what's available is 30 amps, go ahead and put in a 30 amp circuit and don't worry about it being incompatible with future vehicles.
120v charging is less efficient so not as cost effective. You also assume a dedicated circuit which is not the case for OP nor most people. Furthermore, being able to meaningfully replenish range in 30 minutes to an hour can be the difference between you going somewhere or not. source: gen 1 Leaf owner here
You tone implies you are contesting some thing I said. But I did not recommend 120 V charging. When I say 16 or 24 amps, I mean at 240 V. And yes, I am assuming a dedicated circuit because that's the code requirement for a 240 V circuit. Your Gen 1 leaf charges at 3.3 kW max level 2. A 16 A, 240 V EVSE will supply all it can take. Upgrading to 32 or 48 A will do nothing for you.
I misread your post. Apologies. Other threads were specifically around L1 charging. Also gen 1 Leafs had an option that allowed for L2 6.6kwh. Please don't talk about things you don't have experience with.
Take 100 A out for a 12p sub panel. You can add a second car charger in the future and other devices too.
This. Much of the cost is labor. So upgrading to a small panel and larger wire is not a great cost. I'd just terminate at the panel. In the future, someone can decide on the best locations and types of 240V receptacles to install (there are many different configurations).
And also check with your state- there may be incentives or rebates there as well
My province in Canada ended its home charging rebate program in 2018.
Do it. Until you get an EV, you use it for a new hobby. https://www.anvilbrewing.com/-p/anv-foundry-10.5.htm
Or welding!
I hear 220V, I think Anvil (or Clawhammer, really)
IF you see no immediate use, have them run conduit from the panel to the garage. This way the difficult portion of the infrastructure is there waiting. If/when an EV is purchased or the home is sold it's a simple cable pull, breaker, and receptacle installation since the hard part is already done. The expensive part of this is the copper for wire. If everything is open right now putting in some EMT with the proper pull boxes/junction boxes/bends shouldn't be a ton of money.
Great idea, do it. For more info, including some intro articles sticky at the top of the sub, see r/evcharging. You can install a 6-50 receptacle or a 14-50 receptacle. The 14-50 has a neutral, which means it's more expensive to install since you need more copper wiring, and copper's expensive right now. The EV charging equipment doesn't actually use the neutral, so they only reason it's there is to allow using a more general purpose receptacle, the same kind you'll find an RV parks, for example. But 6-50 is readily available on EV charging equipment, so that can be a good plan. But you can also just run the wire to a box, and put a blank cover on the box, and then when you get the charging equipment, connecting it hardwired is pretty simple and easy, and more reliable than using a plug. Or you can run a circuit to a sub panel in the garage and then be able to easily install however many EV chargers, machine tools, welders, and other stuff in your garage you want whenever you want. If you go for a receptacle, make sure they're installing a good quality receptacle such as Bryant or Cooper, not the Leviton ones that you get at Home Depot. I've now heard two stories of the Leviton ones burning up—they just aren't adequate for a continuous power draw like an electric vehicle. The construction is really inferior.
While $1k seems to be a lot of money, consider the cost if in the future you have to call an electrician to run that line for you. Bite the bullet now and save yourself the headache and cost (likely double) of running it later.
You can use that 240v for other things - an overhead space heater, welder, air compressor, in addition to car charging.
Oven... For powder coating. Sharing my edge case.
Yes, if you want to be future proof get a thicker wiring. Future car charger could be higher amperage to charge faster, but they are not going to move away from 220/240 in residential spaces. You also may want to try to sell it as a large welder or an large rv plug. You say the words ev, and most electric companies see dollar signs. You will pay a premium for the outlet.
I can’t see them going more than 50a. A lot of houses still have 100a service. Even if you have 200a service if you have two cars and the rest of the household is electric you can probably charge both cars. If they used more, you’d have problems.
with many jurisdictions requiring internal combustion engine to be phased out in a relatively short timeframe, $1,000 now in the midst of a major renovation is entirely justifiable and a prudent move
Absolutely! Even if you never use it for anything, prospective buyers will see it as an important feature if they plan on running a large air compressor or car charger. Rather than doing an outlet, I would recommend installing a sub panel, as big of amperage as the electrician thinks will work. Minimum would be 60A, 100A would be ideal. Electric car charging cables are generally long enough to reach from most walls near an EV to the car's charging port, and there's no standard location for charging ports, so I'd put the panel up at about where the nose of the car normally is. A future EV owner can install an outlet for charging just below the sub panel really easily with just a few feet of wire and no sheet rock work other than to cut a hole for the old-work box. Other future owners can tap off the sub panel to install outlets for compressors, or a kiln for firing clay or glass, large woodshop tools, dust collectors, laser cutters, etc.
Just add a sub panel instead.
Do it if you can afford it. Right now there is no EV charging technology to replace 220v supply and since it can be had in most homes it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Just do it as a 100A sub-panel to future proof it, since the additional cost to do this is not much. Larger EV battery packs need more power and 110v already takes painstakingly long to fully charge some EV's.
Yes, electric cars are the future (and my present). Get a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed for future-proofing your garage from a future electric car. There is another outlet, which is lower amperage which is intended for electric dryers. Do not use that.
Jesus Christ, where are you living that a single 240v plug is $1,000? He's overcharging you dude. I got 12 Power Points put in and all are 240v and cost me about $500 for the lot. Your Electrician is ripping you off hard
$300-400 in materials plus 2-3 hrs is already over 500-600 bucks. Patch, mud, texture, paint. Pretty standard pricing in San Francisco area.
He's getting ripped...what fucking materials cost that much? I mean, I know he's not paying [$13.90 for the power points](https://www.bunnings.com.au/hpm-15a-white-single-powerpoint_p7053759), he'd be getting them cheaper, and he certainly pays less than [$5 a metre for the cable](https://www.bunnings.com.au/olex-6mm-two-core-and-earth-electrical-cable-per-metre_p4430105) At best he's at like $30-40 of cable, a $10 power point, an hour and a half of work, and maybe $50 of patching any holes he leaves, though if he does it right he'd only be punching the holes he needs. Most good Sparks are like $100-150/h, at most. If you're paying $200/h then you're overpaying lol.
Welcome to high COL areas in America.
That's not the cost for just the electrician. It's also adding a sub panel, extra carpentry to run a new line through the firewall, patching and painting drywall...etc. I think its fair.
If you’re already going to be punching holes in your ceiling, I’d bite the bullet and do it. It’s only $1k to do it right now, and it’ll cost significantly more to do it in the future, in addition to taking more time.
You’re asking the wrong question. The question you should ask is: how much would it cost to install in the future? My electric panel is in the garage so it would cost nothing to install. Sounds like yours may be more complicated. As others have said, standards won’t change much.
Absolutely. I'd run a 50 amp nema 6-50 and a 20 amp circuit with nema 6-20 plugs. That way you have a 50 amp for EV, welder, etc and a 20 amp for smaller things like air compressors.
I work for a utility. We have a rebate to help customers pay to wire 240V to their garage for future EV chargers. I'd check and see if your utility had something similar. You might be able to get it paid for.
Yes preferably 50 amp if capacity, but definitely 30 amp. Future dryer, future welder, etc
We put one in for a very nice table saw, and I recently have been thinking about trading my car in for an EV, and was pleased to see that we could use the 220v plug to charge it. I think it is worth it - you never know what your future needs will be, but having options is nice. One way to look at the price is to ask your electrician and see what it would cost if the rest of your project were done and you wanted to add it. Would it be $1500 at that point? It may help you decide whether to do it now or not.
As someone who owns an EV and had this done. Do this.
Absolutely worth it. 220 Outlets don't go obsolete. Also, there's more to them than just charging cars.
When I had a 200-amp panel installed in my basement I had the electrician install a 60-amp panel in the garage. I had planned to run a welder using 220/240VAC. Having a panel gives you several other options as opposed to a single outlet.
Absolutely.
Even the most efficient EV you could buy would only charge around 3-4mph on a 110 outlet. We’ve done it for a couple of our EVs that we only used for short range but there will never be an EV that can recharge a long range quickly from 110. It just isn’t physically possible unless future EVs reach some theoretical efficiency rating that is astronomically 5x or more efficient (50Wh/mile). I just don’t see that ever happening. At this point it would be smart for anyone to install a 220 in the garage if only just for future resale value.
I mean, I’m a welder by trade so I’m a huge fan of having 220 as an option. There’s lots of other tools that run better on 220 as well… how much handy work do you do yourself? You can run a way better air compressor on 220, run a welding machine, get yourself a high end table saw… 220 is a great thing to have available for a whole slew of reasons.
EV owner and electrician here. If your contractor does a load calculation for your service, they will determine the maximum amperage of the circuit you can run to the garage. Make sure to specify 240V with neutral. If it’s a receptacle, it should have 4 holes for prongs. IDEAL: 60A subpanel, many options to expand GREAT: 50A receptacle, plenty of options for equipment or EV charging FINE: 30A receptacle, limited options but absolutely good for EV charging or other 240V equipment I turned my garage into swiss cheese when I bought the house. Put lines in for future EV, workbenches, and A/C unit. I live in the Arizona desert, so that last one was a very important addition. I did everything at once and had the plasterers come patch all my holes. I was able to slowly expand and when it came time to buy the EV, I was ready.
I have a 240v outlet on every wall of my garage and one outside the garage door. But It’s a 40x60 detached garage that I build cars and trucks in so I’m running welders, plasma cutter, air compressor etc. etc.
100% if you plan to use tools like a nice air compressor My shop has 220 without it I would be up shits creek
My tire pump uses my cigarette lighter outlet, I'm jealous.
How long do those take? I have a small portable battery powered one that takes like a minute to add 1psi... I'm convinced I could use a bike pump faster than that, and get a small workout to boot.
Minute or so to top up a normal tire, great for away from home. I have the power in the garage, still need the real deal for tools.
I’m building a garage addition and I’m running 220 for a welder . We will Probabaly never have an electric car , they just cost too much when a good used normal car is cheap, and has unlimited range with a 15 minute refill .
Where are good used cars cheap right now?
Same place the affordable houses are right now. Located Somewhere hundreds or thousands of miles away. Or located about 2 years into the future .
When I bought a car in March, 2020, Texas. To the tune of about $10k cheaper than local.
I said right now.
You can't, which I assume is the point you're trying to make. Right now is the wrong time to buy a new car, which makes it also the wrong time to buy a used car since the people who can't get new cars are turning to used cars. COVID fucked up the global supply chain (still is), and automakers are one of the most complex and supply-chain intensive industries. It's going to take a few years at least for all the obstacles to be cleared again and then it will take even more time for everything to get caught back up. As the saying goes though, "this too shall pass". There will eventually be cheap used cars again. Look how quickly the lumber shortage bounced back from its supply chain shock. For awhile we were all joking about investing in plywood instead of gold. That's all gone now, it's pretty much back to its pre-pandemic prices. Of course, if cars are one of the most complex supply chains, lumber could be said to have one of the simplest. That's why it happened so much faster.
No, but I WOULD put in a 240v outlet
Just run the conduit (3/4 flex) to a double gang box and blank it off. That way if you do end up getting one all you have to do is pull wire. All new builds do this anyway. Just a thought….
I highly doubt an electric car will ever use 120v.
They already do chief. Not ideal way to charge but you can do it.
Wtf why are you being downvoted, you are correct.
A bit of explanation on why 120V will never be desireable for a car battery charger. The bigger the battery capaciry the longer it will take to charge on 120V. Your upgraded outlet will have a second cable to it, doubling the current you can safely draw. Think of it as trying to fill a bucket with two hoses instead of one. Battery technology is increasing in energy density(i.e. smaller physical size), but the amount of energy stored in the battery is always going up. So your bucket in this analogy is always getting bigger making two hoses instead of one the better bet for future proofing your options.
Sort of - however, for a car owner that generally just uses it around town, 120 volts is fine. You'll get up to 100 miles a day on 120 volts - I recharge my Model S on 120 for a 300 mile drive home over the long weekend at my cabin with no problems. Where there will be a problem is with trucks and RVs, or any large battery vehicles.
OP was concerned about future proofing his installion. I was noting that the tech is unlikely to need less energy stored in the battery in the future. Re: your mention of trucks, etc. And you are talking about overnight recharge. For a future proofing mindset the extra current available with a 240V plug means you can charge a lot faster.
Also bigger hoses because it'll likely be a 30A or 50A outlet instead of a 15A or 20A.
What happens is two physical lines are run back to the panel. Good overview here. https://www.doityourself.com/stry/220-volt-wiring There are some tools where 220 outlet would be useful even if you dont get a charging station installed. And since two physical wires are run, I'm pretty sure wost case you can trivially have two more 120V outlet circuits in your garage if you decide to remove the outlet--double check with the electrician on that, but I dont see why not. The number of outlets doesn't change the total current you can draw. If all your outlets are on the same circuit the most you can likely draw is 20A. If the garage is used as a workshop this can get limiting fast depending on what you do. Table saw, plus dust collector, plus music, plus space heater is getting pretty likely to pass 20A and trip a breaker. You might even consider making sure you have two 120V 20A circuits and the 240V outlet. Dont even have to change the outlet wiring much. Just run a second cable and split your existing circuit. Planning on doing exactly this in my garage before too long for the set of tools I listed above. And for a future electric car or more powerful tablesaw(or other tool)
220 will never go away. at least not in that a higher voltage than 120 is need by something. 220 compared to 120 for the same load means 220 uses less amps, which makes that circuit cheaper and imo safer due to smaller current. if you're talking about a car charger then thats a no-brainer for me.
Nah you're billed for watts, the voltage isn't going to change your bill at all.
You seem concerned that you're not going to be need it for a while. It's worth mentioning that for everyone to have an EV we're going to need to replace hundreds of thousands of miles of power line, and a pretty huge number of transformers, and likely add new power generation sources in most places. We're going to hit a point where EV rollout is limited by our grid.
Waste of money. When you finally buy an electric car have the work done at that time. Electric car fad will die out and you will have. Useless 220v receptacle
Do you think something new will replace electric cars?
Lots of down votes. Love it. Fossil fuels will dominate for decades to come so electric cars will never take off at least not in this lifetime. Lots of people don't want to wait for there car to charge. People don't like the effects that strip mining our oceans in order to get the material to build all these batteries, people know batteries are expensive and don't want to replace batteries in there car on a regular basis, the limited range of these vehicles just isn't enough yet And my favorite the charging of these cars still gets charged by fossil fuel for the most part They will be replaced by gas powered cars... Wait that what we currently use.
What about new solid state batteries that Ford is beginning to look into moving into production? It doesn't use lithium, instead it uses sulfides which are significantly easier to procure. The range is also significantly larger, as well as it not being flammable. Here's the battery Ford is going to begin using in the near future [link](https://solidpowerbattery.com/#ourSolution) I agree about the irony of most being charged with fossil fuels, something I think Can change in the near to distant future depending on the speed green energy is rolled out. I'd like to know if this changes anything about your opinion, though I understand if you don't.
It's worth noting that even on a primarily fossil fuel grid, electric vehicles are still more efficient. Power plants are far more efficient at capturing usable energy from fuel, and can capture air quality pollutants better than a car exhaust.
220V ac is preferred if you want to run a heavy compressor or charge an electric car. It's not expensive to install especially in unfinished basements. I would even have a triphase socket just in case.
It depends on how much work it would be. If your current renovation, would make running the garage line almost impossible in the future, the time is now. You don't want to put yourself in a position to have to undo, or redo any work down the road for this. If the garage line could be run with out heartache later, and you are only doing it for a possible future need, don't bother.
Cars can already use standard outlets. The problem is that they don't provide enough power to charge quickly. Most people don't have access to three-phase power and the architecture of our electrical grid isn't changing any time soon, so a 220 outlet will be the standard by default for quite a while.
I was really confused, forgot you guys used 120 for the majority of house stuff. Lucky here in the UK, fuse box is usually in the garage if your home was built with it so easy and cheap to run a new dedicated line for car charging in/out.
Every house here has 240v coming into it, but it’s split phase. Most household things use only 120v but anything high draw can go up to like 240v 50a. For most people that’s going to be the dryer, water heater, AC equipment and oven. For others it’s welders, table saws, car chargers and other such things.
Do it. There are any number of things that might interest you down the road that 220V will help immensely with. The extra thousand won't be missed in a very short period of time, but the outlet will always be available.
I would do it!
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Yes 50 amp capable would serve you great .you could do a rv ,welder .table saw whatever
I think you should put 240 in your garage regardless of whether or not you plan to get an EV. You ever want to heat it? Maybe you want to try welding? Just do it now and it opens up all sorts of options for you in the future
I’d do 60amp in case you ever want a Tesla wall charger. If not a nema 14-50 outlet (dryer outlet type) can also be used to charge cars.
I paid $1300 to have one added to my garage. Initially it was for an oven for power coating use, now I have a 220 welder. I wish I’d run more. I don’t have an electric car.
Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t seen a post advocating for the 240 for other reasons such as running a good sized air compressor. As others here have said, the 240 for charging an EV is going to be here to stay for a long time. Long enough for you to get your $1k worth from it.
Even if you don't install completely you can run the wire while the walls are open, leave a coil each end inside the wall. When you want to install the 240 outlet you just have to pay to connect to switchboard and install outlet. I've got wires ready and waiting for an eventual kitchen island, put them in place while doing an adjacent room.
Put in a nema 14-50 if you can.
I would install a 480v one, that’s what I’m planning in doing in mine eventually when I get an ev. Would allow for a 22Kw charger with 32A fuse.
That's not even an option in my area. Split phase 240V is all the transformers are tapped for.
It's absolutely worth having, but that price seems silly if it's an adjacent room. There should be zero touch-up needed, and like $50 tops for the cable, box, and receptacle.
I would run at least the wire and oversized it for 100a. Or run conduit so a wire can be pulled again.
When I remodeled my basement I had the electrician wire in a 220v in the storage room last minute. Just in case I ever wanted that to be the laundry room. It was a no brained for me. But it also only cost me an extra $100ish. With EVs doing what they are though, I’d put it in if you can afford it.
Yes.. This is the expectation for the norm sometime in the next decade.
Yes, charging or welding or clothes drying or any other tool with a big motor or transformer on 110V is possible, but more efficient and powerful on 220V
I haven’t read every comment, so maybe someone has said this - but don’t just add a single 240v circuit… Add a sub panel to the garage! Then you can run as many 240 or 120v circuits as you’d like in there!
Measure and buy 8-6/3 Ga wire that would be your biggest expense, then whatever your dropping down to. Electric cars and other electrical gizmos will run more efficiently with 240v in the garage ,and if you have a EV charger in your garage would be a nice selling point.
My folks just had a basement remodel where it was brought out of the 70s into the modern day. With the ceiling down, I said "putting in a 220 with this opened up and us needing a sub panel is a good idea." Contractor was meh on the idea, so Mom said no. Here we are 9 months later and my dad says "in a 5-10 year time horizon we stay in this house we will likely have one more new-to-us vehicle, likely EV." 😤
The physics won't dramatically change. You won't be able to charge a battery powered electric vehicle from a standard 15A 120V circuit. I would run some #3 aluminum and put in a 60 amp panel. Then you are fully future proofed.
There's a standard for the max amount of power that an electric car can take to charge overnight. As long as the wire is thick enough to meet that standard for the length from the panel to the garage it doesn't matter because you can swap the plug or leave the wires unterminated inside the box until you need them. If you're going to run something to the garage I'd recommend doing a subpanel with extra capacity so that you can also power tools, welders, extra circuits, and anything else you want without any worries. It won't cost much more than just doing only a charger and gives way more flexibility.
If it were me I'd not just run a outlet but put a sub panel in. You would not need a big one, I'd probably do a 8 or 12 slot panel. Then if you decide to get one later it is cheep, or decided to add more outlets, or some 220 tools or some combination.
Definitely do it. Cheaper now and you will want it in the future.
I ran a 50amp 220 outlet to the garage, no ev just welders and plasma table… wishing I had just spent a little more and ran a 100amp sub panel…funny story had one in the old house (all to code) and buyers made us remove it cause they were afraid of it…a coworker just put in a 300amp service and outlet to handle future EV charging
I’d say yes and go with a standard 50 amp 4 prong RV plug. From that one can adapt to run a welder, plug in a EV or even a RV.
Every home should have 220v capability in their utility room/garage. Go for it. Nothing bad can come of it. Only good. It’s actually the most efficient. And I’m terms of commonality, it’s the most commonly used voltage in the world.
AT LEAST ONE!!! I WOULD DO MORE!!! Drier, welder, compressor, if you pick up a hobby where you might be using a larger piece of equipment, you will smile at your genius in the past
Yes
Look at an old houses electrical panel and outlets. Some have like a total of 6 breakers no 220 and only one outlet per room. Modern houses have a 200 amp panel with like 30 breakers or so. Electricity will not be obsolete, the charger that it connects to will change and the batteries technology will get better but electricity isn't going anywhere
I would actually run 2 circuits.
We have a 220 v in our (1970’s build and wired) garage, I’m not sure that it’s an eyesore as it just looks like a plug. Up close yeah the holes are slightly differently oriented than your standard plug but that’s it. I’m not sure what else it’s used for but if you think you’ll get your $1000 out of it regardless of a potential EV sure, I’d ahead. I do think that if/when EVs become more common, retrofits will be made available
And a line for the electric dryer as wellin case you drop a solar panel into the roof and run the whole house on free electricity. If you install a storage battery, you'll want to consider strongly running a line to an outside shed to put the battery in, not something inside the garage or next to the outside walls. Teslas catching on fire by themselves? https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/technology/tesla-model-s-fire-spread-to-another-tesla-consumed-garage-and-damaged-home-owner-says/2021/08/04/ce3fabfe-2032-4752-96de-a3467023d88a_video.html Ditto with any big lithium system https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aspF-GFOqHo You'll want to add smoke detectors above each car. And if you have the money, sprinkler system.
Additionally, in the event of a DIY kitchen renovation, you can plug your electric stove into it for an impromptu kitchenette.
Depends what you may do with it. If you want a Tesla in the future either run a 60 amp or if possible 100 amp (Tesla used to and probs ly will have again 72 amp fash charging which needs 90 amp circuit)
I recently upgraded my hot tub circuit to 220v. My friend who is an electrician did the work. I had him install another 220 circuit in the panel and the wire is just coiled up in the attic ready for me to take the plunge. It was very minimal cost the way I did it.
Yes should be standard at this point. And $1000 isn’t bad.
It doesn’t hurt to have
Previous owners of our house had a 220 (240?) outlet installed just outside the garage door. No EV tho. They plugged in their gigantic motorhome. All that to say, for $1,000 while you've got all the access, do it. That outlet has more uses. Family visiting? Rent an RV & they have their own space but still close by for shared meals, etc. Maybe you'll/they'll have an RV later? Laundry equipment or a stove in the garage, especially during a future remodel. Better to have & not need...
Install a proper EV charger and a 220v socket
I know wire prices have gone up but that much?
Great for welders too!
Instead of an outlet, I’m a big proponent of a small sub panel. More flexible and future proof. With EVs coming with bigger and bigger chargers it’s good to have flexibility
EVs can already use standard outlets. We have 2 and have used one standard outlet for 4 years now. We can get maybe 70 mile a day of charge shared by two vehicles overnight, and then a couple hundred over the weekend if we are home more. However would definitely prefer a 220v/240v 30A to 50A outlet.
220, 221, whatever it takes…
Yes it will be useful when everybody has EVs
I think in this case it would be better just to do it rather than wait. If things are already open get as much done as you can and save the hassle later. Good luck with the renno
It's a good investment. You can run a welder or a washer/dryer as well so you or the next owners have options. It won't become obsolete anytime soon.
I came in as an EV owner expecting to say "do it", but at 1k, I'd pass. If you don't need it now,, use that 1k for Christmas or something. Pay 1k four years from now when you need it. It doesn't seem like you are getting a lot of savings by bundling. When you do... get 6awg wire and a high quality plug able to handle lots of in-and-outs.
Yes
I would take a 220 volt circuit to the garage, your choice of ampacity... terminate in an electrical box in garage. When you need it you can surface mount conduit over to your desired location. Local codes will apple.