Landscape / garage wiring project

I'm going to wire up a few receptacles, switches, circuits and fixtures for my garage and landscape and wanted to get a little feedback first if possible. Here's the plan:

New circuit - 20 amp GFCI breaker 12/2 romex pvc conduit on a finished garage wall. This will be for a couple small undercabinet lights over the workbench and two duplex receptacles spaced evenly above my 7 foot long workbench.

New circuit - 20 amp GFCI breaker 12/2 romex to be run along framing members / unfinished wall cavities in the garage. This will supply power for two exterior wall lights outside the garage and two GFCI receptacles to be mounted on the exterior of the garage (one receptacle primarily for the low voltage transformer to accommodate the landscape lighting I will be doing in phase 2 of this project, the other just for general use - I figure go with the 20 amp breaker if I want to plug in power tools outside.

Tap into existing circuit used for bedroom receptacles / switches and add a GFCI covered outlet on the exterior wall of the house, for a second low voltage transformer. May need to use a bigger electrical box to add this connection, will take a look. The load on this circuit can run kind of high from time to time depending on whether the vacuum is plugged in or the stereo is on, etc., but the circuit has not tripped before. So the addition to this circuit would be a 75 watt VOLT brand transformer and 9 or 10 3 watt LED spotlights for the garden beds (total 27 - 30 watts).

Does the low voltage transformer itself typically use any additional power beyond what the landscape lights would draw? Per the manufacturer website: •Only draws as much electricity as needed to illuminate the bulbs you have -- e.g. a 75w transformer will only draw 40w of power if you only have 40 watts of bulbs hooked to it. The 75w refers to the maximum capacity.

I have vinyl siding - what's the best way or alternatives to drilling the hole to mark the location where the wire will run through to the outside? I included a link to the recommended method by familyhandyman. How to Add an Outdoor Outlet | The Family Handyman

Please let me know if it seems like I'm missing something or if there are other considerations I should have, thanks!

Dan

 

Best practice is to use individual conductors not cable in conduit.Always a small loss of power in a transformer over and above the load but not significant.Drilling a hole is the most accurate. You can use a siding mounting box for the outside receptacle. The outside receptacle must be weather proof and have an in-use cover.Only allowed if the garage is attached or has no electrical.

Example:


http://www.amazon.com/Arlington-DBVR.../dp/B004K1G0UY

 

Thank you very much for the response. I like Arlington Industries products, not sure I like the big hole in the siding / sheathing, but it's an option. It's an attached garage and I've heard elsewhere what a PITA it is to run romex through conduit so yes will likely be stripping back the jacket first.

Dan

 

NO. It is not acceptable to remove the wires from the sheath. They are not rated for that. You would use THHN/THWN individual wires.

 

Thank you for catching that! THHN / THWN it is then. I will be transitioning from romex to THHN and will use a j-box to splice. I could not find the NEC section that indicates how high up a finished garage wall the conduit must be (I thought it was 7 or 8 feet?). Also, since there will be a switch for some undercabinet lights on this circuit, would I need to run conduit out of the light switch box to the spot under the cabinet, even if it's a very short run? I have attached an image with a crude markup of what the layout will look like. Lastly, the undercabinet lighting would be drawing very few amps - would it be permissible / advisable to run a higher gauge cable (e.g. 14 or 16 gauge depending on the light selected)? Thank you.

 

I started running cable for the wall lights / outdoor receptacles circuit today - it was a pain to get it started since the spot where I drilled the hole put the cable behind the garage wall (no choice since no room to work with). I attached a pic of the cable coming out of the wall - I will run this up the finished wall before running across some framing members, etc. I know that it's not code to run cable on a finished garage wall but I don't really have much of a choice unless I change the configuration significantly. There's a white cable already running on the wall as you can see (TV cable) which hasn't been an issue but I would like to be code-compliant if possible. Any thoughts? Thanks

Dan

 

Your GFCI protection is provided by the GFCI circuit breaker. You don't need and should not install additional GFCI receptacles on a GFCI protected circuit. All you need is a 15 amp weather resistant duplex receptacle for the exterior of the garage.

 

Yes, I don't know why I wrote that, you are correct I will be using regular receptacles with the GFCI breaker. It just seems like to be in accordance with code, technically I should throw a jbox where the wire comes out of the wall and run conduit with conductors up the very short (approx. 2 foot) run before throwing another jbox and transitioning back to 12/2 NM cable.

 

Just put a surface mount box and use a 2 foot piece of PCV conduit to sleeve the NM. It's done all the time and is perfectly acceptable. No reason to transition to individual conductors.

 

Just sleeve the cable like Ray said. No need to put extra splices.

 

Ok, that makes sense. Per the attached pic should I just throw a 90 elbow and another short piece of PVC until it reaches the framing member and then just have it come out of that (maybe an LB connector against the framing member would be good?).

Just realized that code calls for Schedule 80 PVC conduit for NM cable, but I can only find Sch. 40 locally - I would think the Schedule 40 would be more than sufficient for this purpose though. Thank you much

 

A elbow would be nice but is optional. You do need to secure the conduit near the top.

 

Yes, that makes sense to me also, thanks!

 

No, they need to be weather resistant. As far as I know, all weather resistant receptacles are also tamper resistant, but not all tamper resistant receptacles are weather resistant. They will be marked with a "WR".

http://www.cooperindustries.com/cont..._twr_broch.pdf

 

Yes, I did catch that from the previous post - thank you for the additional info. and link, both very helpful!