Is this a good idea?

[IllIllIll]

I bought a new house (built in 2007) this spring & I only have one outlet in the garage. The garage walls are finished with drywall & painted. I want to do as much work as possible myself to add additional outlets in the garage. I don't want to have to redo the drywall & dropping the wiring from the attic will be a giant pain because the attic has a floor already.

So I was thinking about taking my circular saw & setting the blade depth to the thickness of the drywall. Then cutting a slice of drywall out about 2 inches wide about 4 feet high along the the three walls. Then drilling a 7/8" hole through each of the studs to run the wiring. Then feeding the wires through the studs where I prepared it & mounting the electrical boxes. Then hiring an electrician to finish the wiring install to the boxes & the circuit panel outside. After inspection passes. Then I will cover up the hole in the drywall with a 3 inch wood trim. That will keep me from having to fix the drywall & repaint the walls. I was going to paint the wood trim a complementary color.

Here is a picture of what I'm trying to say.

Does any one see any problems with doing it this way?

 

[Falcon67]

How about this - mount an extension box (metal box with no back) on top of your existing outlet and running conduit and boxes down the wall surface mounted on the drywall. You could center the outlet boxes over the studs for secure mounting. Zero cutting.

Also, if you have access to the top wall plate in the attic, you can drill into the wall cavities, cut holes for old work boxes and fish wire down to the boxes with a fish tape. A junction box at the top of the wall where the wire drops to the existing outlet could be used to tie in the feeds. More wire, less wall damage.

 

[hidollartoys]

Your idea will work just fine.

 

[murph78]

looks like a good idea to me.

 

[slopecarver]

if your garage isn't insulated now would be a good time for that too, cool idea though!

 

[APEowner]

If it were me I'd do the fishing through the top plate that Falco67 suggested. However, your idea will work. I would suggest however that you use a drywall saw and/or a utility knife to cut the drywall. The Skill saw is faster but it makes such a huge mess that your time savings will be used up plus some with the cleanup.

 

[creativecars]

Just a thought, If you do as you incicated, but make the cut about 12" high to make drilling and installing boxes easier, replace the drywall, then put up a 2' wide strip of peg board around the area (or whole garage) to cover it all up. I would tape and mud the seams but it would not have to be perfect. Be sure to space and frame out the peg board. Now might be a good time to think about a built in work bench too. Good luck

 

[mrb]

is this an attached garage and is the drywall you intend to cut out on a wall thats adjacent to living space? If so, you would have to properly repair the drywall as its part of a code required fire seperation.

 

[IllIllIll]

How about this - mount an extension box (metal box with no back) on top of your existing outlet and running conduit and boxes down the wall surface mounted on the drywall. You could center the outlet boxes over the studs for secure mounting. Zero cutting.

Also, if you have access to the top wall plate in the attic, you can drill into the wall cavities, cut holes for old work boxes and fish wire down to the boxes with a fish tape. A junction box at the top of the wall where the wire drops to the existing outlet could be used to tie in the feeds. More wire, less wall damage.

I don't want to run surface mounted conduit. I will have to sell this house in a few years & I want it to look finished. In the attic there is a floor over the garage & there is a bunch of stuff stored up there. I'd have to move all that stuff first & then get the floor up. Plus the roof slopes down on both sides of the garage so it would be a pain to do those walls.

 

[mpire]

I installed some bead board on the bottom of the wall in my garage in a few places. It really classed it up a bit.

 

[Falcon67]

I don't want to run surface mounted conduit. I will have to sell this house in a few years & I want it to look finished.

Then you unscrew the boxes and conduit as a unit, remove the extension box, replace the existing outlet and cover, putty the screw holes, paint and leave. It's what I've done in many areas in my existing shop and when I move out about half the outlets and all the conduit will be coming with me LOL. I'm not buying it all again for the next shop. Just saying it's a lot of work for what sounds like a temp setup. I can dig not moving the junk in the attic, but that is a cleaner way to do it. Yes - what you propose will work, it's just a lot of mess and fuss with the wall. I have the same problem in our next house, so I'll mount some of my conduit box outlets on the wall until I get another building up. Then pop those temps off the wall.

A pic might be better if I had one. For example, I have a run that is about 12' long with 7 outlets including one switched outlet. The run gets the feed from an existing wall outlet in about the center. There are a total of 8 screw holes in the wall holding it in place - two in the back of each 4" box. Almost zero damage to the wall for installation or removal. I used 3/4 conduit and the thinner 4" square boxes so it's all nice and stiff, no need to strip the romex, no intermediate clamps for the conduit and it's fairly low profile. To pull it, I'd just kill the circuit, loosen the outlets, unhook the center feed, pull the screws and lift the whole assembly off the wall as a single unit. Put an outlet in the wall box, cover with a plate and done.

 

[IllIllIll]

is this an attached garage and is the drywall you intend to cut out on a wall thats adjacent to living space? If so, you would have to properly repair the drywall as its part of a code required fire separation.

Yes the one wall is adjacent to the house, so I guess that means I'll be better off fishing the wires through the wall from the attic. That's going to be a pain. I guess I'll have to rip up part of the attic floor & drill down into the wall cavity after all. I'll just put the insulation in the garage ceiling & the outside walls if they're not already insulated while I'm at it.

 

[mrb]

Yes the one wall is adjacent to the house, so I guess that means I'll be better off fishing the wires through the wall from the attic. That's going to be a pain. I guess I'll have to rip up part of the attic floor & drill down into the wall cavity after all. I'll just put the insulation in the garage ceiling & the outside walls if they're not already insulated while I'm at it.

you can do as you originally planned, just replace the piece of drywall you cut out, mud and tape it, then hide that with your wood trim (I take it the walls are textured and thats why you are looking to the wood trim)

 

[snorky18]

Sounds like a good plan overall. I would probalby use a utility knife and a straight edge rather than a circular saw to cut the drywall. Much less mess, if you hit something you'll actually notice rather than cut right through.

 

[Falcon67]

Sounds like a good plan overall. I would probalby use a utility knife and a straight edge rather than a circular saw to cut the drywall. Much less mess, if you hit something you'll actually notice rather than cut right through.

Good thought - a circular saw and drywall will generate a Mt. St. Helens type dust cloud.

 

[IllIllIll]

you can do as you originally planned, just replace the piece of drywall you cut out, mud and tape it, then hide that with your wood trim (I take it the walls are textured and thats why you are looking to the wood trim)

I really didn't want to mess with drywall mud & tape & all that. I've never done any drywall repair before. Plus I didn't want to have to repaint all the walls to get the paint to match.

I was thinking if I used the trim to cover the hole in the drywall I could get in there later on & add more wires, 220v outlets, or pipe for my air compressor. Plus I would know exactly were the wires are so I wouldn't accidentally hammer a nail into the wires or something.

 

[cowboyjosh]

How about this - mount an extension box (metal box with no back) on top of your existing outlet and running conduit and boxes down the wall surface mounted on the drywall. You could center the outlet boxes over the studs for secure mounting. Zero cutting.

Also, if you have access to the top wall plate in the attic, you can drill into the wall cavities, cut holes for old work boxes and fish wire down to the boxes with a fish tape. A junction box at the top of the wall where the wire drops to the existing outlet could be used to tie in the feeds. More wire, less wall damage.

Could be a PITA running wire down, reckon since the house was built in 07 there are fire blocks to contend with in the wall if the garage is attached which it sounds like it is. I think he'd be better off with his idea of doing minimal drywall damage and covering, or your idea of conduit.

 

[cowboyjosh]

I really didn't want to mess with drywall mud & tape & all that. I've never done any drywall repair before. Plus I didn't want to have to repaint all the walls to get the paint to match.

I was thinking if I used the trim to cover the hole in the drywall I could get in there later on & add more wires, 220v outlets, or pipe for my air compressor. Plus I would know exactly were the wires are so I wouldn't accidentally hammer a nail into the wires or something.

FYI, if you wanted to add more wiring later, you'd have to keep enough room between any future 220 wiring and the 110 romex you plan on adding, you can't just keep shoving wiring and pipe into the small channel you are cutting into the wall.

Have you thought about instead of cutting a channel in the middle of the wall at 4 feet, cutting like 6 inches of drywall out at the base where the drywall meets the floor or footer all around your garage? You could then run wire to your content and then trim out after the wiring is run with a 2X as a base moulding or with some creative product as linked below (see link) that way you can keep drywall damage away from eye level and keep with your finished appearance and yet have access to the wall cavity for future wiring runs. Once you cut away the drywall around the base, use a fish tape or glo rod and fish wires up to the remodel boxes at 4 feet where you wanted to place the outlets.

http://www.texasgarages.com/diamond_plate.htm#moldings

 

[MattT]

A surface raceway system would be as easy as running conduit without looking as industrial.

http://cableorganizer.com/hellermann-tyton/infostream-raceway.htm

http://www.panduit.com/Products/ProductOverviews/SurfaceRacewaySystems/index.htm

 

[rodm1]

Sounds like a good plan overall. I would probalby use a utility knife and a straight edge rather than a circular saw to cut the drywall. Much less mess, if you hit something you'll actually notice rather than cut right through.

cut at a 45 and you will hardly have to putty it. Remember do the job to code.

 

[MrMark]

You can't get pipe in there anyway. And you wouldn't want to if you could. Pipe leaks.

What you are proposing is called a wiring trench. It is a common remodel technique. Just make sure you cut the trench at about 24 inches up so that you have enough room to bring your wires down into (or up into) the boxes. You realize that you are going to need the milwaukee right angle drill and 6 inch 7/8 auger, correct?

 

[IllIllIll]

I decided against doing the channel. I'm just going to get up in the attic & fish the wires down since I have to run wires up there to go to the ceiling lights anyway. I'm also going to blow in some fiberglass insulation in the walls & attic above the garage after I get the wires in.

I bought the most of the wire & the outlets this morning & I am going to rough in the wires later today. I'm going with three 110v quad-outlets boxes on each wall. The three 220v outlets are going only on the two walls closest to the breaker box as the thicker gauge wire to run outlets to the far wall will be too expensive for the limited use it would get. I'm moving my 220v air compressor to the other side of the garage from where I was going to put it. That will save me about $200 bucks on wire. Hopefully I'll get all the wiring done this weekend & can get the insulation in next weekend. Thanks for the help.