Electrical - Surface wiring help

[Silver Bullet]

I want to add some wiring circuits for outlets in my attached/finished garage. I was figuring on just running some surface wiring to surface mounted boxes but I have never run them before. Can you run more than 1 romex through the conduit? Are there advantages/disadvantages of metal conduit over PVC conduit? I'm really only looking to add 2 or 3 circuits so I was wondering if I could run say 3 romex lines through a larger conduit to a junction box and then run individual conduits from there to each circuit. I'm hoping some of you electrical gurus can school me.

 

[crazyboy]

You don't run Romex through conduit, you would run thhn. You would be able to mix the circuits in the conduit as long as you do not go over the fill rating as specified in the nec code. Metal conduit will be more up to handling any abuse that would be thrown at it, and also provides another means of ground back to the panel, but it is harder to work with than pvc.

 

[Charles (in GA)]

You really don't even want to think about trying to pull Romex thru conduit, been there, done that, twice, once with metal conduit, once with plastic. Both were absolute bears. Don't even try it, all the lube in the world won't help the situation, use individual THHN wire pulled thru. short runs you can tape the ends of the white black ground and push them thru easy. Get past 25 feet or so and you will need a tape to pull with.

As far as romex in conduit, the code says to calculate fill, you take the major diameter of the ellipse (cross section) of the romex and use that to calculate the area of the cable (thus assuming it is round), and depending on the size of conduit, one romex will fill it to where you cannot add another.

You might consider BX, thats the flexible metal jacketed cable, with the proper end fittings and boxes, it works OK. A friend of mine did his whole shop with it.

Charles

 

[Mr_fixit]

Better yet, find someone to get the Romex wires in the wall.

 

[jamm]

I'm really only looking to add 2 or 3 circuits

I'm not an electrical guru, but to clarify. Are you trying to add 2-3 circuits or 2-3 outlets. It makes a big difference as you can have numerous outlets on one circuit. It might help if you specify what you will be using the outlets for as it will determine the wire and breaker size required.

AS for my choice, I'd run romex in the wall. It will take a little more wire but you won't have to mess with bending conduit or the cost of it.

 

[Silver Bullet]

I did mean 2 or 3 circuits not outlets. One circuit will be just for my compressor (small one but I wanted to keep it on it's own circuit). The other circuit or two would just be for some general outlets for tools, etc from time to time. The garage is finished and running through the walls would be tough without hacking the hell out of the walls. Charles, is it up to code to run BX mounted on the surface like you suggested? The runs would not be that long and mostly out of sight (along the wall behind bench & other stuff) so I don't care about how BX looks I just didn't think it was OK to leave BX exposed on the surface like that. Thanks for all the input.

 

[parish8]

you dont want to do bx or flex, looks like ****. emt is easy to work with and you can get pre bent elbows for the corners if you dont want to buy/borrow a bender.

it would look something like this.

there are a couple of things you can do to make it easier than what is in that pic. one is to use prebent elbows. you will need an extra coupling or two. the other is to use "mini's" to hold the pipe in place. a mini holds the pipe off the wall so it lines up with the holes in the boxes. with minis the only bends you will probably need are for the corners.

mounting the boxes on the wall, pulling the wire, puting in the devices. thats all easy. the hard part could be how to tie it into your electrical panel. if your panel is surface monted then you just go into the side and that is easy but it is likely in another room and/or flush mounted. if that is the case then you have to figure out how to get to that box.

are there open spaces for more breakers? i usualy run 3/4 for this type of stuff. its no harder to install, cost is just slightly more and it leaves you more room to work with when it is time to pull the wire.

 

[wilbilt]

You can use Wiremold boxes , raceway and fittings. It looks a little nicer than EMT, but is somewhat expensive.

http://www.wiremold.com/www/commercial/products/index_family.asp?major_system_id=1#1

 

[Silver Bullet]

Thanks for all the tips, especially the "minis".

 

[sharkytm]

This also ties into my questions, thanks for the info.