code-complianceelectricalelectrical-panelfoundationshed
I have a 12'x16' shed which has been leveled using concrete blocks but otherwise sits on the grass/dirt. It's about 100' from the house. I live in Georgia. I'd love to add some lights and outlets to it.
Can I run an underground electrical wire to it, ending in a 60 amp sub-panel? Or does the shed need to be more permanent with, perhaps, a poured concrete foundation in order to do that?
Personally, I would dig the topsoil out from under the blocks—preferably down to mineral soil so that almost all of the concrete is buried. This makes less of a step up for wheeled equipment and less space for critters and weeds to grow underneath. I put mine very close to the ground on concrete blocks with slots for 2 inch wide lumber and concrete screws through the joist into the block to keep the wind from lifting it up:
The kind of concrete block you are using is plenty strong, though I don't see anything to keep your shed from moving, for example from strong wind, heavy rain, or leaning livestock.
The strength of the joists is the next weakest link in this design. Some more support in the middle could be overkill, but it is unlikely to be so.
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!
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.)
240V to the shed is a better bet than 120V to the shed given the size of your feeder and your loads:
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 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.
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.)
Best Answer
Yes, the national electric code allows wiring in structures like your shed.
If you plan on using UF wire for the run buried 24” deep you need to bring the wire up in conduit so the wire is protected. If you run conduit, the conduit only has to be buried 18” for PVC. If you run rigid or intermediate metal it can be buried 6”. Burial depths are listed in the NEC 300.5.
With the conduit option, we normally pull thhn as it is dual rated as thwn. (Conduit in ground is considered a wet location.) You would not want to pull UF wire in conduit, and Romex or NMB is not allowed. You might consider aluminum wire at that distance for the feeder depending on what your load is.
Anything more than a 20 amp multiwire branch circuit will require a panel in the shed. There are very small panels that will provide 4-6 circuits but these may be undersized: if you want lights on 1 circuit, outlets a second circuit, possibly a welder or air compressor a double pole circuit... and you are out of room for breakers. So it ends up being better to go with a larger panel (100 amp 20+ circuits). The cost will be close to the same as the smaller panel but you can feed it with 60 or 40; that is fine.
Remember your receptacles in your shed require GFCI protection--even light circuits in the ceiling--if plugs are used. However, lighting circuits that are hard-wired do not require GFCI protection.
With more information, we can help with the wire size or provide additional information.