Before the addition to my house I often was at a loss for anything to do with electricity; less than stellar performance in 3rd quarter physics also did the trick. Sure I could change a bulb well enough but any thing to do with wiring the real thing and it was truly a shocking affair as far as I was concerned.

So I watched the guys pulling 14 guage 2-wire electrical wire from all the new outlets and switches back to by whatever path possible to the electrical panel. That in itself was awe inspiring.

My work shop in the garage was on the same cicuit as the washer, dryer, the toaster and microwave, oh and the kitchen lights for that matter. But the new addition would place everything on it's own circuit...I thought I needed another plug in the garage.

So the guys said they would run an extra line from point A to point B over there on my bench. I wanted a quad with proected armor cable BLAH_BLAH_BLAH and they said wold beyond the scope of what they were willing to do as a freebie for me.....and I appreciated what they would have done but me, VD, could not be denied for lack of knowledge and a universe of resolve.

My original plan was a simple outlet in the middle of the bench. Then I said I am going to the library. I found an ORTHO book on basic wiring and another book called wiring basics which talked about basics and the NEC (national electric code).

One thing led to another. For a garage, instead of an ordinary 15amp circuit run with 14gauge/2 wire I would want to run 12gauge/2 wire that would handle 20 amps. A 15 amp circuit is comfortable with no more than 8 outlets and about 1440 watts (120volts x 15amps minus 20% (margin of safety)= to give a safe capacity for your circuit. The 20amp circuit is safe to about 1920watts. So I bought 100 feet of 12/2 and 3 20amp outlets, 30 feet of 1/2 conduit, offset connectors, concrete anchors, hangers, 18.8 cu. in handy boxes, and hanging staples. I owned a tubing cutter altrhough you can use a hack saw.

I drew a rough sketch of what I wanted in workbench outlet(s) [more on that later]. I then mounted my boxes on the wall and started at the end run. I measured the distance to the next box cut conduit and connected the boxes and supported the lot with hangers. I pulled a length of the wire through to connect the 2 boxes leaving about 8 inches hanging out of each. The next box was connected with (2) 90 degree bends ( if you have more than 360 degree of bend you have to use a pulling elbow and but you want to avoid this situation. Similarly I pulled a length of wire through to connect this set of boxes leaving 8inches or so and coiling them back into the box(s) for later.

Now the Big MOMA. I started back at the panel an loosely pulled the wire back towards the garage. Building codes in your local vary, but you essentially want to pull your wire and support them and protect them from stuff. drilling holes through joist, guard strips and staples is a fine way to accomplish tihs. Pulling the wire through the conduit is tricky and there are a number of conventions the electrical universe uses to arrive at this but I won't go into it in any detail here.....and at the end i pulled the wire and left 8 inches.

For a garage setting you want to protect yourself against ground faults-shocking yourself to death byt installing at the first outlet or at the breaker a GFCI (ground fault cicuit interupt) device.This is a sensitive device that senses small changes in electrical current to small to trip the actual circuit breaker but strong enough to ruin you day. A typical GFCI with detect a current change in potential of as little as 4-6 milliamps and will shut cut the circuit in as little as 1/40th of a second. Choice is yours.