Electrical wiring for shops, campers and new circuits in Logan County

A shop with one extension cord running out to it is a shop half used. Luke has fully outfitted a shop building with electrical and lighting, and wired the basketball court beside it too.

A shop job starts with what you plan to run out there. A few lights and a battery charger is one thing. A welder, an air compressor and a heater is another, and that decides how big a feed the building needs from the house.

Plenty of campers around here sit beside a house, for guests, for family or for the season. One set of Luke's photos is a camper setup: a camper outlet under a rain hood on the side of the house, a trench dug along the wall for the lines, and a wood deck with steps built onto the camper.

Campers come with either a 30 amp or a 50 amp plug, and the outlet has to match it. A camper plugged into the wrong outlet through an adapter, like a dryer outlet, can burn up things inside the camper, so it pays to get it right the first time.

Luke helped one family get power out to their lake for a fountain. Lines like that run underground, and the electrical code sets how deep by the kind of line: deeper for cable buried by itself, a little shallower for wire inside conduit, and deeper again where it passes under a driveway. Wherever it comes back up, it needs GFCI protection, since water is never far away.

Inside, new wiring is easiest while a wall is open. One of Luke's photos shows new cable run into a three gang switch box on a bare stud wall, the stage of a job right before the drywall goes up. In a finished wall, cable gets fished from the attic or the crawl space instead.

A photo of where the power starts, which is usually the panel, and of where it has to end up, plus a rough idea of the distance between the two. Tell him what you plan to run out there. That is enough to start the conversation.