Dedicated circuit for a dehumidifier

Wires, breakers, outlets, switches - be careful
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Dedicated circuit for a dehumidifier

Post by kevm14 »

So in the new house, I discovered one day that the place I have the dehumidifier plugged in is on the same circuit as the sole outlet in the garage, which is where I plug in my air compressor. I found out they were the same circuit because the breaker tripped while both were running (15A). I knew I needed to give the dehumidifier its own dedicated outlet, which I think is common practice (my old house had that setup in the basement). Even worse, the only way to reach the outlet I was using for the dehumidifier was to string it across the basement walk-out door. So to use that door, I would first have to unplug the dehumidifier. None of this was satisfactory.

Here is a before shot from November 2014. The outlet is on the left side of the door and the previous owner just ran an extension cord up and over the door frame. Lame.
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So I bought a 15A breaker and used some 14/2 wire to run a dedicated circuit. I installed the outlet on the ceiling joist in a place that was as out of the way as I could make it (within the cord's reach and in a place I could mount the box) as well as somewhere I could reach occasionally if I needed temporary power. In the future I will add more circuits (and lights) for both the basement and garage. Probably using 12ga wire.
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No real tips and tricks to mention but I could say a few things:

- I knocked out a hole in the breaker box and bought the correct "3/8" wire clamp to go in the hole and clamp the wire from moving
- When adding circuits, always cut the hot wire the length that gets the wire to the furthest breaker slot
- Cut the neutral and ground the length of the furthest neutral/ground bus
- Peel back the insulation so only an inch or so sticks into the breaker box
- Loop all wires down and back up to where they are actually going, this way you have flexibility in the future to move things around if necessary
- I don't know if there is an official method to determine which side of the breaker box to mount a 120V breaker, but I will say this: the 240V double breakers effectively don't count, because they draw from both "phases." So if you are using the number of breakers to judge which side is more or less loaded, you don't count the 240V breakers.
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