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I am in deep trouble. I just bought everything one would need for a nice woodworking shop,table saw,band saw, jointer,planer,the works. Anyway now that they are all put together I am ready to check out the wiring,and what I found is trouble.I believe the house is only wired for 40amp. How much will this cost to get up to 110 and 220....OOPS

Thanks
dennis

you don't need to post the same question twice
if you want to change something, edit..
and if you dont like the answer that you got.
some body else will answer

Judging by your word choice in your question, you should find an electrician and ask what she thinks. If your house only has a 40 amp service you're needing a lot more than a change in your preaker panel. 40 amps may be the size of your house service but I doubt it. The next part of your question asks how to get to 119 and 220. That's a question about volts. You already have volts and they only come two ways in housing. Those are the two ways and there's a good chance you have both already. Not too long ago I looked at a township hall electical. It has a single wire 60 amp service. That means that it only has 110 volt service up to a maximum of 60 amps. I called the REC and suggested that their transformer up on that pole deserved a place in their museum.

Ask an electrician to advise you.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JdN:
Judging by your word choice in your question, you should find an electrician and ask what she thinks. If your house only has a 40 amp service you're needing a lot more than a change in your preaker panel. 40 amps may be the size of your house service but I doubt it. The next part of your question asks how to get to 119 and 220.
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huh??? the poster said "120 or 220" .Where do you get 119 ??? lol
And finding a female ("she") electrician may be rare, but possible... lol
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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hube,

I doubt that your house is just a 40 amp service, the fastest way to check your service amperage is to look at the main cutoff of your breaker box. Generally it will be 200 amps but if it is an older home it could be 100 or 80. When you refer to 110 and 220 you are refering to volts not amps, and I would say you have access to both. 110 runs all the evryday things we use such as lights, tv's, coffe pot, etc. 220 is used on bigger appliances like dryers or stoves, so if you have these you have access to 110 and 220. The diiference between 110 and 200 is that 110 is only connected to one of the two legs of power entering your home and 220 is connected to both. I think you should recheck to be sure you need an upgrade. But if you need your home rewired it could be pricey. An average rewire in my area (WV) in an average home (2000 sq ft) would probably cost about $3,000 to $4,000 including labor and materials. Hope this helped.]

Not to downplay the necessity of getting an expert to assess your situation and make a proper recommendation and doing some upgrades, one also can use some common sense in a shop. Assuming you are a one person operation, you will only run one machine at a time. Depending on what your lighting is all about, you can get by on fairly low power requirements, all other things being normal.

While I have lots of power in my house, I simply ran a 40 amp subfeed to my shop and installed an old mobile home panel. I have 8 breakers for convenience, but I rarely pull any more than 500 watts of lighting and 15 amp, 220 volts for my planer as a maximum. I've thrown a breaker only once and that was because I stalled a heavy rip on the table saw.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: coldicott,

i had a house with 100 amp service
i removed existing meter and replaced with a 200 amp service, hooked up the orginal house with a 100 amp breaker. that left me with plenty to use on my add on