It’s no secret that gas prices have been through the roof lately. That has motivated a lot more people to consider transitioning to an electric vehicle. My wife and I have had a Tesla Model 3 for a few years now and I personally love the car. Today I’m going to show you how to install an electric vehicle (Tesla) charger in your home in the event you decide to go electric. 

Disclaimer:

As with every video I do that involves electricity, I want to warn you that working with your electrical panel carries risk of injury or death and that I am not a licensed electrician. However, I have a lot of experience working with residential electricity and am comfortable in my abilities to operate with it safely. I’m merely showing you what is involved, and if at any time you are not comfortable doing anything I’m demonstrating in this video, please call a professional. There’s no sense in you injuring yourself or others just to save a few bucks. With that being said, let’s dive in. 

What You’ll Need

For this install we are going to be using some electrical conduit, some 8ga stranded wire, a 40amp dual pole breaker, a 4” electrical box, some screws or toggle bolts, some electrical tools including a fish tape and wire strippers/cutters, and a NEMA 50amp 220v plug.  

The Tesla Model 3 can handle up to a 50amp circuit to charge the vehicle. However, I am using a 40amp breaker with 8 ga wire because 8 ga wire is easier to pull through conduit than 6ga wire. The lower the gauge of the wire, the thicker it is and the more amperage it can accommodate. Here’s a basic amperage rating for the various thicknesses of wiring you’ll typically find in your home. 

I’ve also done this in the past using a 30 amp circuit and 10 ga wire. The car will charge either way. However, the larger the circuit, the faster it will charge. 

The first thing we’re going to do is turn the power off at the panel. Keep in mind that will kill all the power in the house and all the circuits. However, it doesn’t stop the power from coming in to the panel. Make sure you still work carefully and avoid the main leads coming into the panel. 

Checking Your Breaker Panel

You’ll need to make sure your panel has space to accommodate the breaker for the charger. I happen to know I have a few unused breakers in the panel from previously installed things. So I am going to repurpose a breaker that was previously used for an old electric oven. When selecting a breaker, you need to make sure that your new breaker matches the breaker style for your panel. I used a Square D panel which is usually written somewhere on the panel itself. 

Running Electrical Conduit

Next we’re going to install our box where we want it to be by screwing it to the wall on a stud or using toggle bolt anchors. From there we can start to install our conduit. I’m using schedule 40 PVC conduit because it’s easier to work with. However, I wanted to use 1” diameter conduit but it wasn’t in stock at the time so I went with ¾”. I’d recommend using the 1” conduit so that it’s easier to pull the wiring through. 

Installing the conduit will depend on your location. In this case I’m going up the wall, through a dividing wall into different portion of the garage, and then connecting to the panel. Using a pair of PVC cutters and a tape measure makes this part pretty simple. When you get to a corner, you can use one of these 90° junctions. Once you have the majority of the conduit run, connect it to your panel box by removing one of the panel knockouts and connecting it with a connection and nut. I recommend dry fitting all the pieces and making sure everything looks good before going back and gluing up your connections. 

Pulling Your Wiring

Now comes the fun part of pulling your wiring. The thicker your wiring, the more twists and turns you have, and the smaller your conduit, the harder it will be to pull. That’s why I recommend using the 1” conduit and the 8ga stranded wire. Stranded wire is essential to be able to pull. I’ll be pulling 4 wires. A red and a black, which will be the hot wires, (110v’s each which add up to 220v) a neutral wire, and a ground wire. Feed the wire fish tape through the conduit until it pops out the other side. It doesn’t necessarily matter which direction you pull from. I opted to pull away from the panel towards the end box. Once your fish tape is popped out the other end, you have to attach your wire to it. It involves stripping back a bunch of the wiring, twisting it together, and making everything as small as possible. You also don’t want to be shy about taping the hell out of it. You’re going to be wrenching on it pretty good and you don’t want to have it come apart halfway through your conduit run. 

I screwed up in this case because I tried to pull the whole lengthall at once. If you have a 90° junction anywhere in your run, this is going to be really hard to do. I should’ve started pulling from the 90°, got the wire to this point, and then unhooked everything and started over for the rest of the way. I ended up doing anyway but it was more difficult than it should have been. 

Once I pulled it all the way through to the box, I made sure I had about 8” sticking out of the box after cutting off the waste from the fish tape.

Connecting to the Panel

Back at the panel you need to make sure to give yourself plenty of length in the wiring to keep it tidy around the outside edges of the panel box. I happened to notice someone previously installed some wiring in this box where the ground crosses over in front of some of the breakers because they didn’t leave enough length. That’s a big no no and something I’ll have to fix. 

Make sure you have enough slack in the wiring to make the connections at the neutral and ground bar, and to your new breaker for the hot wires. Once you know you have enough length, cut off the excess. 

Connect the white neutral wire to the neutral bar in the panel. Then connect the ground wire to the ground bar. Next connect each of the hot wires to each of the connections on the bottom of the breaker itself. It doesn’t matter which one goes to which. Make sure they’re stripped to the right length and tighten them down securely. Then place the breaker into its location in the panel and snap it into place. 

Connecting the Receptacle

From there we’ll go back to the other end and make the connections on the receptacle. I’m using the 50amp receptacle but you can use different receptacles and Tesla adapters depending on your setup. The 2 hot wires (the red and black) get mounted to each of the brass terminals on the receptacle while the white gets connected to the silver terminal screw and the ground connects to the green terminal. Make sure everything is tightened securely and fold the wires back into the box and screw the receptacle in place. 

Next, I’m going to close up the electrical panel and turn the power back on at the main breaker. Then I’ll turn on my newly installed breaker to test out the circuit before I put the cover on the box. 

Once I plug everything in, it looks like everything is working as it should. Lastly I’m going to just add a cover to the box and install this little charger mount and cable management rack I found on Amazon. 

Finished Charger

And that’s it! I now have an electrical vehicle charger set up in the garage. You can charge the car off a normal 110v outlet but it takes a really long time to charge. If you drive a lot, it might not be sufficient for you. This way the car charges relatively quickly and you can top off anytime you’re at home. 

Thanks very much for checking out this video and I hope you learned something about installing a 220-240v circuit. This process can be used for more than just electrical vehicles. The install is pretty similar for other 220v circuits like large electric appliances, heaters, welders, shop tools, etc. Once you get used to understanding circuit and wiring sizes, etc you’re not really limited to what you can do. 

Thanks for checking out this project! Check out some of my other DIY Home electrical projects.

Top 5 DIY Electrical Tools Every Homeowner Should Own

Garage Heater Installation | A DIY Guide

It’s been pretty cold in my shop of late so this week I’m showing you how I plan to keep the shop warm by installing an electric garage heater! This requires the installation of a 220v circuit so I’ll show you all the steps to install a dedicated 220v circuit to run this heater. Watch the video for step-by-step instruction and  make sure to stick around for a 20% Discount code on the purchase an electric garage heater from New Air. Please note that working with 220v power can be dangerous. If at any time you are not 100% comfortable installing this heater or cannot perform the steps safely, contact an electrician to run the necessary power supply for you. 

Follow along with all the tools and materials you’ll need to tackle this project.(affiliates) http://bit.ly/InstallingAGarageHeater

Disclosure: This post contains an unpaid product integration by New Air. All views and opinions herein are my own.

1. Turn the Power Off at the Breaker

First and foremost when working with electrical, you should always turn the power off at the breaker panel for the area you are working. In this case I am working in the main panel so I shut off the power to the house. You’ll also need to verify that you have existing space in the panel available to install a new 220v dual pole breaker.

2. Run Conduit to the Panel

In my case, I was able to drill a hole through the wall from the panel to the workshop since they shared a wall. Depending on the location of the panel and your access to it, you may need to open up a section of the wall around the panel or connect conduit along the outside of the building. Each home is different so understanding your home is important in determining how you are able to run the conduit. If you are working inside the wall, you can use Romex cabling instead of conduit but any electrical that is run on the outside of a wall needs to be encased in conduit of some kind.

I’m using 1/2″ EMT conduit along with a combination of fittings, elbows, and connections which you can find in the electrical aisle of the hardware store. Use a pipe cutter to cut the conduit to the required lengths. You’ll need to find a location in your garage to hang the heater that is out of the way of garage doors, or overhanging obstructions. You’ll also want to make sure that the heater doesn’t directly vent squarely onto a wall or surface that is susceptible to heat to minimize the risk of fire.

In my case, I am running the conduit up the wall and onto the ceiling so that I can hang the heater near the center of my shop but away from the garage door. I’m using 4″ junction boxes to provide easily accessible areas where I can access the wiring should I need to make any changes or adjustments down the road.

3. Running the Wiring

For this project I am using 10 Gauge stranded wire in Red, Black and Green. The Red and Black wires will be the alternate phase hot wires and the Green wire is the ground wire. Because this is a 220v circuit, a white neutral wire is not required.

To install the wiring to the breaker panel, I feed the 3 wires out through the conduit into the panel and then connect the Green ground wire to the ground bar in the panel and the Red and Black wires to the terminal screws on the breaker. This is a 30 amp breaker because the average draw of the heater is 21 amps.

Using a fish tape, I feed it down from the ceiling junction box to the lower junction box and then attach the wiring by bending it around the fish tape and securing it with electrical tape. Using a extra piece of conduit to mount the spools of wire onto allows the spools to free spool as you pull the wires back up through the conduit with the fish tape. In addition to connecting the ground wires to each other and wiring to the breaker ground bar, each junction box will need to have a grounding pigtail attached to it to ground the junction box.

4. Hanging the Heater

Installing the heater in place is a relatively simple task compared to the rest of the project. Choose the location of the bracket and mount it to the ceiling or wall as needed. In my case I located a stud in the ceiling and mounted the bracket in place by pre-drilling and securing it in place with a couple of lag bolts. Once the bracket is installed, mounting the heater is just a matter of using the included carriage bolt and spacer to hang the heater from the bracket and then securing it in place with the included nut.

5. Connecting the Wiring

To connect the wiring from the heater to the junction box in the ceiling I am using a flexible appliance whip that I picked up at the local hardware store. Run the wiring through the hose and then  connect it to the junction box and the heater using the included attachments. The wiring of the heater itself doesn’t match the color scheme of the wiring I am running but the white and black wires are the hot wires, and the yellow wire with the green stripe is the ground wire. Connect the wiring using some wire nuts and then close up the heater. Lastly connect all the wiring in the junction boxes by connecting like colored wiring with wire nuts and putting cover plates on the junction boxes.

6. Turning Power on and Testing Heater

Lastly turn the power back on at the breaker and turn on the heater. Within about 2 minutes of the heater being on my shop had warmed up substantially. It has an adjustable temperature control knob so you can turn it on low if you only need a little bit of heat or you can crank it up to high and really pump out a lot of heat.

Having a heater in my shop is not something I’ll use all the time, but it is going to be a really nice thing to have when I do need it. I hope this video and post were helpful to you in showing what is involved in running your own electric garage heater.

If you’d like to purchase your own New Air electric garage heater, you can use the Discount Code “MRFIXIT” here and get 20% Off your order.

If you enjoyed this project, check out some of my other workshop projects:

DIY Bath Walnut Caddy

DIY Cheese Cutting Board

Thanks so much for watching and good luck!