Upgrading Electric Supply to Detached Garage Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[Sifal]

Hello,

I would like to upgrade the electrics in my garage (new house) as the current ones are geriatric and almost certainly not fit for my purposes. However, the garage is about 25-30 metres from house, in a row of other garages.

I need to be able to run machinery (lathe, mill, etc) and power tools in the garage. I may also want to weld in their at some point. For this I need adequate, stable supply and more wall sockets (currently there is only one - a powered door opener is plugged into it).

I am a little perplexed as to where the supply for the garage is coming from exactly. It doesn't seem to be connected to the house's consumer unit (none of the CU switches cut supply to garage)

If any of you fine folk were able to look at the accompanying images and shed any light on the method of connection that would be great.

Also, as I understand it, I want a 6A lighting circuit and a 30A socket circuit and mini consumer/breaker unit... sound right? So, the most important question is, assuming the cable that runs to the garage is connected somewhere sensible in the house, will it be suitable to upgrade all the garage end stuff... or do you think I will need to lay a new cable (probably not possible with all the stuff in between house and garage.

I have more photos of various bits closer up and could take more if required. Thank you so much for any help and advice you're able to give.

Electrics in house

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Supply coming into garage

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Electrics in garage

IMG_2363_web.jpg

[ericmark]

Finding out how supplied is no one without that info you can’t really proceed simple test is turn off your whole supply and see if garage still supplied.

For high powered machinery you may need permission from your supplier, Any machine which could cause your neighbours supply to dip would not be favoured by your supplier. There is normally some small print which requires you to declare any non domestic use.

Welding sets are often not permitted because it can cause a visible dip in the supply voltage, the same applies to other commercial plant.

It is possible that a general supply which lights the access and other general supplies also supplies the garage and is part of the service charges to the property in which case you can’t really use anything other than a battery charger in the garage.

So step one is to find how the garage is supplied.