wiring electrical to a sub panel outdoors

I have 2 locations in th back yard I need wiring. I ran three 8 guage wires to a barried junction box (water tight) and then I ran another three 8 guage wires from my upper patio down to the same junction box and ran the six wires total up to a conduit the Rose Garden attached to a 4x6 post how do I wire the six 8 guage wires to a sub panel.

Also on the posts on the patio and the rose garden I want to put a 4 gang outlet on the post

 

Were the wires installed in a conduit? If not they should have been. also for a subpanel you need 4 wires in the feeder, not 3.

Why did you run two feeders to the same box?

 

the wires are ground, white and black and yes they are in conduit and they are also burried 18 inches in the ground.

 

You only have wires enough for a 120 volt subpanel. Was that your intention? Usually subpanels are 120/240v.

 

How are the wires connected in the water-tight J-box?

What are you trying to do? Is the subpanel live, and are you trying to use it to feed the two 4-gang outlet boxes?

Side note: #8 AWG copper conductors are rated for up to 55 amps. That's a lot of load. Also, #8 AWG wire is too large to attach directly to 15 or 20A receptacles - but we can deal with that later.

 

Perhaps the OP could provide more detail about their project and a better plan can be formulated. This does not sound too well thought out.

 

Interesting!!!!I’m interested to know how the conductors came together before the underground junction? Sounds like you ran them in two separate conduits?

 

Its for 120 volt sub panel and it is for 2 4 gang outlets one on the uper patio and one for the rose garden. It is in one single conduit.

 

You would be much better off to install a 120/240 subpanel fed with a 4 wire feeder. Twice the capacity for very little in extra cost. If you already have 6 wires to the subpanel location you can easily do this.

Check the sticky thread or search subpanels to get more info.

 

@ pcboss
what if the conductors where ran in separate conduits. Wouldn’t this make it a parallel circuit. Which is a violation??

 

The first thing I think of is that the #8s are too small to parallel. The would need to be 1/0 or larger.

 

Exactly!! So this would mean he can’t use the six conductors to serve a 120/240 panel, unless they are grouped, and installed in a single conduit from point A to point B.

I guess it goes back to my first question.

edited to add: 120/240

 

how do I upload a picture?

 

http://www.doityourself.com/forum/el...-pictures.html

 

Three wires from the subpanel to one yard location and three wires from the subpanel to another yard location would provide 120 volts to each location. For 8 gauge (anything smaller than 4 gauge) wires you must use white for neutral and green (or bare) for ground. Connect the black wire to a breaker in the subpanel, connect the white wire to the neutral bus bar and the green (or bare) wire to the ground bus bar.

For both 120 and 240 volts you would need to run a fourth wire of at least 10 gauge, green or bare. while the three 8 gauge wires are typically red black white or black black white. The pair of hot wires for each location must be connected to a double wide double breaker with handles tied togehter and positioned in the subpanel so that hot to hot measures 240 volts.

These 8 gauge wires must have breakers not exceeding 20 amps unless you have sub-subpanels out in the yard at the far ends.

(A "sub-subpanel" is wired the same way as a subpanel, i.e. with grounds and neutrals kept separate, and ground rods required. The term "sub-subpanel" is not standard.)

 

Thomas Mackey | Facebook

......................................................................................

 

Thanks AllenJ thats what I needed to know. I tried to upload a picture but was unable to. We also need to put a grounding rod in as well.


I have 3 light poles, water sprinkler computer, pond, a fountain and a pool cover all on a single 15 amp circuit. Now they all don't run all at the same time but the possibility they could. Thats why I needed to run extra outlets so I could sever the pond and the and the foutains and have dedicated outlets.

 

This is the way I have the wire run though the conduit

 

You can just splice all the conductors in the junction box once. You do not need to take them out and back in the horizontal conduit shown above.