Jon_E
Well-known member
I just realized how cheap 3/4" EMT was, as I'm planning on starting my own electrical distribution in the garage soon. For the price, it's not worth even thinking about 1/2" conduit.
I would run two outlets to each location, on separate breakers. Reason being over the years I may setup a shop light for something I'm working on and if you pop a breaker with one circuit you have no light and no tool. I would run 20A breakers. #12 minimum, for the longer runs you may need to upsize to account for voltage drop. Cheaper & faster to overbuild a little now than redo it later. Just don't go crazy.
In a modern panel the legs are not across from each other but side by side. I really tend to use as much common stuff as I can, common 4x4 boxes and some deeper ones for specific devices, gfci and welder plugs. Depending on the location and machines may simply run another pipe for welder, in that case often a 10 wire unless I was going to run a 250 mig wide open.
This building is not so huge as to worry about V drop, the runs are short and just because there is a 20A breaker on a 12 doesnt mean that is the normal applied load, most of it way less from tools with factory supplied cords and 15A ends. The main reason for mwbc is pipe fill and wire savings from long runs.
I did one the other day, had a mwbc and a couple with their own neutrals due to gfci, yes, the run is 60 ft but most load is 5A and any more and even that is intermittent. Its on 24 minutes 1/4 loaded and not 24 hrs fully loaded.