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sub panel in the house and garage

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bobbu

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My box in the house is completely full, I need more cct's in the house and I want to put a panel in the garage. I think I have to change my box in the house to one with more breakers, since I don't think I can have the main box feeding 2 sub panels. Am I correct ( hopefully I'm wrong)????
 
You need someone who knows the system and regulations in your country. This means that it is a good idea to click on the link at the top of the page (UserCP) and fill in your location.

Mike.
 
With some brands of panel you can buy dual breakers that include two circuits in a single breaker. This allows you to add circuits to a full panel, if the panel only uses standard 1-circuit-per-breaker breakers.
 
Change one of the circuit breakers for the largest rating available.

Buy a metre or so of suitably large cable for that rating. Feed a secondary circuit breaker box from that cable and wire it into the large circuit breaker.

Now you can put what you want within reason on the secondary circuit breaker box, including the circuit that you had to disconnect to find room for the large circuit breaker.

You could run a big cable to the garage and have a circuit breaker box there.

The primary circuit board in my house has just one circuit, rated at 80 A. That feeds two circuit boards, one for the house and one for the garage.
 
Hi,

Here in Canada (well at least in my province) the household voltage is 120/240 volts. The 120 volts is for lights, TV, small appliances, etc. The 240 volts, when electric energy is used for those, is for water heater, kitchen stove, cloths dryer, electric heating and other heavy appliances.

The breaker box is fed by 3 wires: black, red and white, plus a bare ground wire. Black and red gives 240 volts, black and white 120 volts and red and white another 120 volts.

Now, I am not aware that a 120 volts only breakers box is available. So you will probably need 2 spaces on on your main box (because 240 volts need a double breaker) for each secondary box you want to feed, a total of 4 in your case.

Would it be legal? I don't know. It would probably depent on what kind of installation you have actually.
 
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You can have as many subpanels as you want, as long as they are properly installed.
However, it is often the case that the main panel is already loaded close to its limits.
If you only need a couple of outlets, you can generally find a breaker that feeds
some seldom-used or lightly loaded outlets, and tie into it.
A single-pole subpanel (i.e. 120v only) is acceptable if the neutral and ground are
extended correctly, but is generally not done since most panels are double-pole.
 
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