Electrical – Wiring for kitchen remodel – appliances, electric oven/microwave combo, fridge, 2 dishwashers

240vapplianceselectricalkitchenswiring

I am working on a plan for a kitchen remodel. The existing range is natural gas powered so it doesn't have a dedicated circuit (It's just plugged into a 15 or 20amp outlet). Other existing wiring includes a dedicated microwave circuit (15amp breaker but need to check wire gauge). This one I suppose can be used for the fridge (since the fridge currently doesn't seem to have a dedicated breaker).

The oven/microwave combination model I am looking at is KitchenAid KOCE500EBS (KOCE500E model, the BS is just a color code) or similar. The installation manual has these electrical requirements.
Electrical connection requirements

My breaker box has a 200A main breaker but I am basically out of room. There is a sub-panel wired right next to it (with a 40A double breaker) that I added for laundry and it has room for 4 single breakers.

What options do I have here? I'm thinking the best approach would be to offload a couple of 15amp circuits marked with red rectangle on the photo (provided I have enough slack – which I should for those bottom breakers) and wire them into a sub-panel. This would free up 2 neighboring boxes in the main panel for a double 40A breaker. Is this a good solution? If I cannot relocate those two 15amp breakers, can I wire for the oven from the sub-panel or do I need to beef up the sub-panel circuit (and by how much), since it already has washer/dryer? Should I be using an 8 AWG or 6 AWG wire to cover me for any future upgrades (say double oven)?

Thanks so much!
Dave

The photos of the panels are shown below.

Both panelsSub panelMain panelsub-panel wiring

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

Best Answer

Upgrade that tiny sub-panel. For under $200 you should be able to get a 30-space Eaton panel that will let you re-use all the breakers in your existing 8-space Eaton panel, plus wire and sub-feed lugs for your Siemens main panel. Speaking of which, that BR240 breaker in your main panel that feeds the pictured sub-panel is an alien - it does not belong in there. It may seem to fit, but bus stabs and breaker jaws have subtly different shapes and mixing incompatible types can lead to arcing and bus damage. If you keep the sub-panel as is, you need to replace that with a QP240.

Note, if you replace your sub-panel with a bigger Eaton unit, you can recycle that BR240 by moving it into the sub-panel and use it to feed the new oven.