does this make sense? (upgrades and changes)

[frank_c]

Just bought this house in May of last year. Doing some demo in the basement and I keep finding things I don't like...like the duplex outlet in the ceiling that had EIGHT wires attached to it (hot/neutral, two wires to an outside light, two wires to an outlet in the pantry, and two wires that fed the garage) and no true grounds anywhere.

There's an old Square D panel for most of the house, then a 100 amp 12 space Siemens sub that feeds the addition that went up in the early 90's. Everything from the sub looks like it's done correctly. Well, other than the dryer outlet that was connected with part of an extension cable and was hanging unsecured from the bottom of the sub. I fixed that shortly after I moved in.

So the plan and the question...I want to put a bigger subpanel in place of the 12 space one. Not so much to add anything, but to split up some of the circuits as they are now. I already found the conduit that went to the garage and put it on a separate breaker in the sub. There were four black wires running to the garage, I pulled a new white and green through and now have outlets with grounds out there. The PO has the basement tied in with the living room, I want to split those up and get them properly grounded.

The other issue is that the main panel is over the washer, and I don't think I want it there. The existing sub is next to the dryer with plenty of open floor in front of it. I'm thinking that once I got everything split up and run to the new sub that I would upgrade the service and have it run to the sub and use it as the main, and get rid of the old Square D panel. Hence the question, does this make sense?

The old sub would then be re-purposed to the garage, and I'd run a new line out there.

Thanks for any input...

 

[jvitez]

With any major changes like this, the most important thing is "Don't just do something. Stand there!" You should do a proper load calc as per NEC rules, whether you plan on an inspection or not. Decide what extra loads you may want down the road. Plan ahead. Do you have adequate power for your calculated load right from the start? If not, plan and save for a service upgrade, and then comes all the rest of the changes/upgrades/fixes.

If the calc is adequate for what you already have, then carefully decide on each change. Any loadcenter whether main or sub needs to have 30" of free space side to side and 36" clear space in front of the panel for safe access. You'll have to move the washer if it's right in front of the main panel. If the main load center is OK, just keep it and do one of two things.

You could use tandem breakers to add circuits to either panel if the panel allows them, and split things up as you want. If not, you could either replace the subpanel with a another that has more circuit spaces, or simply add another subpanel down stream of the first subpanel to get more space. Or both. You should be able to run tandem breakers in most Siemens panels that I'm aware of, at least the ones sold in Canada. Put in one double pole breaker, and add a second sub panel in the garage. Or buy a large subpanel, replace your Siemens one with it, and use the Siemens on in the garage, however you feel makes sense for what you want to do.

Keeping the Square D main panel is certainly the easiest if the load calc works out OK. Do all your changes down stream.

 

[frank_c]

The SD panel is old, like ancient old. one row of breakers, and the door is missing. I'll have to see if I can find a date on it. It's pretty much full.

I'm planning on doing the load calcs before I redo anything. I do have a pile of musical gear that i occasionally play with so that will be part of the plan and part of why I'd like to separate the basement from the living room circuit. For now it's just me here so there aren't any issues like "don't run the dryer while I'm welding" or anything, but who knows down the road.

 

[smithbd2]

I would have 2 or 3 different licensed electricians look it over and give you an estimate on re-wiring the house and upgrading the service. Hard to tell from here what other issues you may have, that they could point out while giving you an estimate. Just guessing from what little information I have, you will be in the $3500 range, but there are a lot of factors that could change that price. In TN I have to install hard wired smoke detectors if I swap out a service, that will change your price.
Not sure of your set up, but at my house I upgraded to a 400 amp service, 200 amp panel in the house and a 200 disconnect beside the meter base, that feeds a 200 amp panel in the shop. A little overkill, but I will never have to upgrade again, and can run about anything I want to. Also everything is on the same meter, so only one meter fee, and I changed from overhead to underground. It helps that I could do all the work myself, so that kept the price down.