I am currently in the process of converting a carport to a closed in garage. I have pretty good knowledge of wiring in the lights and the outlets as well as running the wire. I have never wired in a breaker box before, have added new circuits though. I currently have a 100 amp breaker box inside my house so I do not believe that I can just add a sub panel as I'm pretty much full up on breakers. So what my thought is, install a completely separate panel to the garage. On my meter pedestal, there is currently two separate breakers, one that is 100 amp and runs to the house, and another that is 50 amps that used to run to a hot tub. I no longer have the hot tub and was just going to use that breaker and wire to run to the new breaker box in the garage. First off, is this even legal to do and up to code? Second, would this wire that ran to the hot tub be large enough to run to the garage, i am not sure on what gauge the wire is( it have four wires total, red, black, white, and ground) the distance the wire will run is maybe 10 or 15 feet from the meter to the garage? I do not plan on running mulitple large tools at the same, largest thing I would think that I would run would be an air compressor, or maybe a welder.

Hello all, Location: USA - Southern West Virginia - Raleigh County My electrical knowledge lacks when it comes to commercial high voltage. My experience is with residential, and light commercial. My father is opening up a restaurant, and the grill line is a 480V single phase unit. It came form the Ford Motor plant's cafeteria in Detroit circa 1960s. It consists of 3 appliances. One is (2) 8" cook-top "eyes" (unknown wattage, probably around 1kw or less each), a flat top griddle that is 9kw, and a grill totaling 8.1kw. All 480V single phase, totaling just under 20kw total. All of the local businesses on the nearby poles are operated on standard 120/240 single phase power. The cost for the power company to come and install a new pole and transformer for 480V service would be over $15K. That was just not an option. The engineer that came out advised us to purchase a transformer and wire it backwards to boost 240V to 480V. We sized and purchased a [B]GE 9T21B9106[/B] 25kva single phase general purpose transformer. From the factory it's 480V primary (H1-H4) and 120V (X1-X3 or X2-X4) or 240V (X2-X3) on the secondary. Our solution was to wire it 240V on the primary, and get 480V on the secondary. Is this even copacetic with the NEC regulations? I couldn't find anything in article 450 that says you [I]can't[/I] wire a transformer backwards to boost voltage. My limited education tells me a transformer doesn't care what way it's working, as long as the conductors and over current protection are within specs. Obviously sufficient labeling and warnings will have to be applied, although honestly I'm not sure what specifically will have to be applied. Here's the other item that I think may be an issue, or may not. This transformer does not have terminals for the connections, but wire leads. It is using 6AWG on the primary, and what appears to be 2 or 3AWG on the secondary (no visible markings on the leads). Obviously 6AWG is not sufficient for the 100A, however is there any provisions or exclusions for the wire leads since this is only 12inches from the transformer coils? I mean, the wires wrapping around the core certainly aren't 6AWG or more. From my calculations (that I may be incorrect on) I'm using a 100A breaker on the primary (now to be) 240 input, and the secondary output (now 480) will be comprised of 4 fused dis-connects for each cooking appliance (disconnects rated at 600V 30A each, not sure what size fuses we will be putting in for each one yet). My plan is to use 2AWG to feed from the 100A breaker to the transformer. Going with 2AWG (good for 130A in THHN correct?), incase we need to go higher than 100A breaker size. The transformer will be located less than 15ft (wire length) from the panel feeding it. The cook top will be approximately 35 ft (wire length) from the transformer. If you need any further information please let me know. I've tried to cover all my bases, and provide all relevant information. Relevant Info: Transformer Spec Label: [IMG]http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMlgxNjAw/$%28KGrHqZHJB%21E9%21gT%212N8BPdcTYwkow%7E%7E60_57.JPG[/IMG]