I ran about 90 feet of direct burial 14/2 wire from an existing breaker box from a 20 amp breaker to my new breaker box also 20 amp. I had everything done but now it is tripping the breaker in the new shed and the original breaker box. It was told it was from a voltage drop because the wire is not long enough. Is there anyway to correct this without running new wire and digging everything up? I also have the option to run the original line out from a 220 breaker but don't know if that will fix it or if I need to add some form of voltage converter to the breaker so I run the additional plugs with out burning them up or causing damage. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Electrical – Reducing voltage drop to shed
electrical
Related Solutions
Fatter is better
Upsizing your conduit now costs pennies compared to having to dig it up and replace it later, so I'd put the fattest Schedule 80 PVC you can in now -- at a bare minimum, I'd go with 2", with say 3" being an even better choice if possible. This will also make your pull job easier than if you used the smallest possible conduit -- it might even save you a call to the electrician and their truck o' tools!
Also, don't try to stuff a nasty ol' SE cable down that conduit -- you're using more fill than you need as SE cables are made with fatter ground wires than strictly necessary, and the jacket is simply going to hamper your pull, as well. It might mean you have to hit up the supply house or order in the appropriate XHHW-2 single conductors, but you'll be thanking yourself that you did when you are doing the pull!
4AWG Al will do the job, but you probably want fatter wire than that as well, or to go to 240V
While putting 60A through 4AWG Al XHHW-2 with 75°C terminations is within the NEC's ampacity limits, it does yield a 6.5% voltage drop, which is well in excess of the 3% limit recommended for feeders. Staying at 120V means you have to go up to a whopping 1AWG for aluminum conductors to get the voltage drop close to 3%; 240V gives a major advantage here, allowing you to run over the 4AWG with a voltage drop less than 2%.
Speaking of aluminum -- unless your AHJ is ridiculously fearful/uninformed and requires copper for everything, which I have heard of in some towns, modern aluminum is fine for a feeder -- breaker and panel lugs in loadcenters are all aluminum-rated these days, and the AA-8k series alloys used for aluminum building wire these days aren't nearly as ill-tempered as the old EC grade stuff. Still, it's essential that you torque the lugs to the breaker/loadcenter manufacturer's torque specification (an inch-pound torque wrench with a screwdriver bit adapter will do the job) in order to produce a long-lived connection as aluminum isn't as forgiving of overtorqued connections as copper is; never mind that the 2017 NEC requires the use of torque tools these days! (See 110.14(D) for details.)
Speaking of 240V...
240V to the shed is a better bet than 120V to the shed given the size of your feeder and your loads:
- Your 20A 120V blower motors clock in at 1.5HP apiece -- motors this size should be able to be rewired for 240V, or at least available in 240V versions.
- Modern LED drivers and fluorescent ballasts are available in 120-277V universal voltage options, so that takes care of your lighting
- Fans are definitely available in 240V as well -- if nothing else, you can get condenser fan motors and use those
This leaves the stock tank heater and possible convenience receptacles as 120V loads; that, and any GFCI protection itself you want as two pole GFCIs require a line neutral as the electronics inside run on 120V. Given that, I'd run a neutral + 2 hots and ground, so that both 120 and 240V loads can be accommodated, while keeping the amount of 120V load down . More specifically, I'd go with 1800W max for the stock tank heater -- this leaves you with 15A on the other side for the convenience receptacle if you wish one, 20A for both blowers when wired for 240VAC, and another 5A@240VAC for the lights and fan, allowing us to get by on 40A total. Of course, if you're stuck with a 120V fan, that will increase things a bit unless you can get away with a smaller stock tank heater.
However, since you're stuck with 120VAC for the blowers, the best plan is to run 240VAC anyway as that gets you two opposite legs -- stick one blower on each leg, with the fan + lights + receptacle on one leg and the stock tank heater on the other. This again gets you down to 30/40A of 240VAC, which is a cakewalk for 1AWG aluminum and eminently possible on the 4AWG.
Livestock hate tingly electrical feelings
Livestock don't put up well with stray currents that us humans tend to shrug at -- their longer gait means that they get more step potential than us humans do, and they aren't as good about voicing their displeasure about the situation to the electrician either.
This means that your grounding system is rather critical. If I were you and I was building this barn from scratch, I'd use a full equipotential grid in the style of a swimming pool's, laid into the barn slab and exothermically welded to the slab reinforcing steel as well. Since that horse is likely out of the barn already though, I'd use an equipotential ring ground electrode consisting of a circumferential trench just outside the barn footings, dug to the footing depth, the water table, or bedrock, whichever comes first. Into this trench goes appropriate reinforcing steel as well as copper wire mesh (again, you can get this stuff for pool equipotential bonding) formed into a vertical I-shape and exothermically welded to the rebar. A 6 AWG bare copper "tail" is exothermically welded to the mesh near where the feeder enters, and concrete is poured around this all. The tail then serves as your grounding electrode conductor and attaches to the ground bar in the structure's subpanel; it doesn't need damage protection either provided it's run along the barn wall.
Needless to say, the feeder must have a separated equipment grounding conductor (I'd use the same 6AWG copper as was used for the "tail", pulled through the conduit with the rest of the wires), and the neutral/ground bond at the subpanel must get pulled, or else you'll find yourself in stray current HELL as the earth, your feeder EGC, and your feeder neutral all wind up in parallel if the subpanel is left bonded.
As to the stock tank? I'd run more of that 6AWG copper from either a bonding plate inside the stock tank (get a "Bondsafe 680" or equivalent from the nearest swimming pool people) if it's fiberglass/nonconductive or a solid connection (listed lug, exothermic weld) to the stock tank itself if it's metal to the outlet box for the stock tank heater, where we attach it to the ground wires there. Again, the basic idea here is to make it so everything's as close to the same potential as possible.
GFCI protection is better provided on individual branch circuits
Most smaller subpanels (100A and below) use a backfed main breaker architecture -- the main breaker is really a repurposed branch breaker. This is fine for ordinary breakers, but won't work with a GFCI in place of the submain -- trying to feed power into the LOAD end of a GFCI breaker is a good way to fry the GFCI's trip solenoid. As a result, it's better to put the GFCI protection, in branch breaker form, on the individual branch circuits that need it -- any convenience receptacles will need such protection, and it'd be wise to GFCI protect the stock tank heater as well. Putting the GFCI on the upstream end of a long feeder isn't wise either, because the leakage currents to ground on long feeders can be a bit on the significant side, contributing to nuisance tripping.
Last but not least -- the QO260 and HOM260 accept up to 2AWG wire -- so you can use a short length of 4AWG aluminum or copper as a pigtail between the breaker lugs and an AlxCu rated mechanical connector, such as the Polaris connectors you mention. Note that the Polaris connectors that accept 1AWG require pretty heavy torque for a connector, so you'll need a torque wrench capable of 180 inch-pounds or 15 foot-pounds to tighten them. The liquidtight conduit is fine for a hardwired stock tank heater, although I'd run a dedicated ground wire inside it even if it is LFMC, and a typical NEMA 3R is fine for the loadcenter box no matter where you put it (I'd be leery of using a NEMA 1 enclosure inside a three-sided shed though, as sideways rain is a thing where I live.)
Use a fat conduit and appropriately sized THHNs instead
Direct-bury wire (UF) is vulnerable to excavation damage and difficult to upgrade if you want more power at the shed later. Hence, it's better to slap a fat PVC conduit in now while you're digging the trench for the first time -- conduit's cheap compared to the cost of renting a trencher. Inside the conduit, you'll use 3 THHNs of appropriate size and color for 2 hots and 1 neutral (voltage drop control will likely mandate a larger size than the 10AWG minimum you were thinking of) as well as an appropriately sized bare copper ground (10AWG for a 30A feeder, 8AWG for a bigger feeder up to 100A) wire.
Don't skimp on the subpanel either
Buying small electrical panels is penny-wise and pound foolish as a larger panel now is always going to be cheaper than upgrading later. I'd recommend a 100A/24slot subpanel at a minimum here (you can always feed a large subpanel with a small feeder, just not the other way around -- remember that the protecting breaker must be the bottleneck so it can keep you safe from overloads). You'll also need a main device (it can be a breaker or a molded-case switch) at the subpanel to serve as a disconnect switch for the shed in addition to the breaker in the main panel protecting the feeder. (That's so you, or the FD, can shut power to the shed off quickly if it catches on fire -- "firemen don't deal with wires" after all.)
Last but not least, you'll need a ground electrode (Ufer ground if you haven't poured the foundation yet, rod if you have and need something you can put in now) in addition to the grounding wire -- the grounding wire provides a fault path (safety drain) back to the source while the ground electrode dissipates built-up static charges, induced voltages from lightning, and the likes. Don't forget to pull the bonding strap or screw from the subpanel when you put it in!
Related Topic
- Electrical – Need help choosing wire for a detached garage
- Electrical – Have Shed/Man Cave & Need Unground Power Advice
- Electrical – Voltage drop for aluminum wire to detached garage
- Electrical – 12/2 connected to 8/3 wire with extra wires taped off. Is this legal
- Electrical – 220ft Feeder Run to Storage Shed
- Electrical – 30amp RV electric Help!
- Electrical – Want to run a new Electrical cable to new shed
Best Answer
You are using the wrong wire
For 20 Amp, you normally need 12/2 wire, not 14/2. 14/2 is for 15 Amp circuits. Do you need bigger wire (e.g., 10/2 for 120 V or 10/3 for 240 V)? I'm not sure, that depends on how much of an issue there really is with the voltage drop, and also depending on what equipment you are actually using (or planning to use in the future) at the end of the cable.