#40 amp circuit breaker code#

Ideally, I'd like to have the brewery control panel, the lights, and a small, 120v point of use hot water heater running at the same time in the garage.

#40 amp circuit breaker code#

I think code would allow me to pull #6 wire and run the 50 amp breaker, but it may not be worth the effort of pulling the wires for the small increase. I could increase the size of the breaker on the garage sub-panel and pull new wires, but I think I'll be limited to 50 amps because, unfortunately, the garage is detached and there is only 3/4 inch pvc conduit under the slab in the backyard (guy before me's bright idea). Just the dishwasher and other normal household appliances and two bathrooms in a small house. I have a 40 amp air conditioning circuit, but the rest are just 15 amp lighting and 20 amp outlet circuits. That being said, I don't think I'm drawing anywhere near 200 amps even at the peak. I'll check the lighting ballasts and the freezer specs to see what the actual draw will be.Īs for my main panel, it is 200 amps and completely full. Flipping the two outlet circuits off during a brew day wouldn't be the end of the world. You should be able to run the lights and the brew panel no problem though.ĭo you have room on your main panel to expand your subpanel? Your beer is not going to dramatically warm up or anything more than maybe a couple degrees. Worst case, if you're looking a bit high, you unplug one or both of the keezers (or flip that breaker) while you're brewing. That's the number i would shoot for not exceeding just to be safe. In the case of a 40 amp circuit, that would be somewhere in the 32-34 amp range. This is because your wires are going to heat up over time during constant use, and if you push it, you can melt wires especially when you're operating around the capacity of the breaker.Īn important thing you will want to consider is that for any extended run time of electronics (say over an hour, so brew day would certainly qualify), you want to underrate your circuit breaker to around 80-85%. Unfortunately for extended use scenarios (>1hr), it isn't really as simple as just subtracting appliance amperage draw from the breaker rating. Without operating info on the keezers and lights I couldn't say for sure, but you might be getting close. I would basically assume that the fluro lights aren't pulling much amperage at all but you could check the ballast on them to confirm that. Part of that's going to depend on how many amps your keezers are pulling.