Wiring to detached garage.... again.

[hillbill9889]

First time poster here, lots of great information and I have read a lot here to give me plenty of information and ideas. I know many similar questions have been asked, hence the again piece.

Building a 36 x 40 garage, pictures below. I am at the point where I am doing the electrical now. I have 200 amp service to my house which is about 75 feet away. I intend to run a 100 amp subpanel out to the garage. Copper is pretty darn expensive and everything I read says aluminum is perfectly fine for this type of installation. I would prefer direct burial if possible but not worried about a conduit either. From the local electrical supply shop, I can either get 2-2-2-4 direct burial or 1-1-1-3 and put it in conduit. While I doubt I will ever draw 100 amps out here, I keep reading that due to voltage drop, the larger cable would be preferred. So, to my questions.

1) 75 foot run, buried 24", add in the actual run up the side of the garage and the house to the box adds about another 20 feet. So for this run, sounds like 1-1-1-3 really would be the best option but put it in schedule 40 conduit since I can't find direct burial right?

2) I think I saw only one post on it but it did concern me, when using aluminum, are there special breakers that need to be used at my main panel and maybe a special subpanel? The inside wiring won't be aluminum of couse, only the main feed.

3) If I use 1-1-1-3, do standard breakers/lugs support that size cable or do I need to be concerned with that?

Thanks in advance.

Oh, and pictures....









And, want to see a garage built in 1 minute?

 

[mrb]

#2 AL has to be breakered @ 90 amps. I would do that and call it a day as opposed to messign with the larger cable.

 

[Gary S]

If I were doing this, I'd bury conduit and run copper in it. In fact, that is what I did for my garage.
I'll never understand why people will spend $40000 on a garage and refuse to spend $400 on copper wire and get it right.
I'm sitting here looking out my window right now and watching the city electrical crew spending hours trying to find the underground break in their aluminum wire for the street lights. This is the second day they are working on it. Copper in conduit wouldn't have given up like this. Aluminum is very brittle with vibration or temperature change. Copper handles it much better.

 

[dave67fd]

You need to check your local codes on meter types, disconnect/non disconnect. Also consider direct connection from the power lines instead of running from the house. Power companys typicaly only charge a small fee for a site review and have free line hook-up up to 100' or more. You won't have all the additional costs from running underground from the house.

 

[Aceman]

I'll never understand why people will spend $40000 on a garage and refuse to spend $400 on copper wire and get it right.

I agree.

But I also have no problem with aluminum in conduit either. In these hard times folks want more bang for their buck. We've been using aluminum more than ever these last couple years. We used to use copper almost exclusively. Now we're using mostly aluminum on longer pulls to save the customers money.

 

[hillbill9889]

Thanks for the replies. I have decided on the 1-1-1-3 buried in schedule 40 conduit. The 100' of wire I got for $1.68/foot, the copper would have been 4 times as much. As the other poster said, significant savings on the wire alone there.

Also found out that the breakers do support both Al/Cu so no problems there.