Electric to garage stopped working (detached)


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Old 08-30-14, 07:54 AM
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Electric to garage stopped working (detached)

I have a detached garage which is approx. 15 yrs old. There is a breaker box in the garage. The electric was run from the beaker box in the house, buried to the garage. A few months ago all the electric to the garage stopped. I believe there is a break (possibly caused by my dog digging under the deck) Any idea how I can find and repair this? I really don't want to have to get out in winter and manually open the garage, and I am TIRED of needing a flashlight to find anything out there... Thank you
 
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Old 08-30-14, 08:49 AM
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If the dog can dig up the wires it is too shallow and never met code and should be replaced.

There is equipment to find underground breaks but it is not cheap enough to buy for a DIY. I don't know if it can be rented.
 
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Old 08-30-14, 09:25 AM
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My recommendation would be to abandon the old cable in place. Like PCBoss I doubt it is burred the required 24" if the dog dug it up. It may not even be the right kind of cable. Is the outer sheath gray?

I'd recommend you run new conduit buried 18" minimum. You will need four wires (THWN) sized to the breaker supplying the garage. Probably easier to then trying to find the fault and fix the old cable assuming it is even code compliant.
 
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Old 08-31-14, 06:21 PM
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Are you *sure* your garage is wired directly from your panel in the house? When the power in my detached garage went out suddenly I found out (luckily) that the feed to the garage gets there via an externally mounted GFCI outlet. The GFCI in that outlet had tripped so all I had to do to get the garage power back on was to hit the reset button on the outlet.
 
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Old 08-31-14, 06:31 PM
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Borisf, he has a subpanel according to his post so it is unlikely it is connected to a receptacle.
 
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Old 09-01-14, 04:18 AM
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Not knowing your understanding of electrical systems but did you try resetting the breaker from the panel in the house where the incoming line from the sub in the garage is located? If you have and it won't reset did you turn it completely off (all the way to the off position). Sometimes when a breaker trips depending one may think they are resetting it but in fact just not turning it off all together and then back on again to reset it properly. Might be an obvious fix. Also did you check the main breaker in the panel in the garage following the same procedure?
 
 

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