Electricity question

[Wise Woman]

We are starting our new coop in the next week or so and I want to run electricity to it. It will be about 15 ft away from a shed that does have electricity. The shed has 10 outlets and a row of track lighting. The wiring runs out the side of the coop into a small silver box with about a 1 " pipe below that and it looks like it goes into the ground from there. I am assuming they can tap into that and just run a line up to the coop. Is this correct?

I would like 2 outlets in the coop, one for a string of fairy lights so I can see in there at night if I need to and 1 for a box fan in the summer if necessary. The 2 in the run are for a heated water bowl and a light in the run. Also I would like to be able to install 1 or 2 outdoor ceiling fans

(http://www.lightingdirect.com/kichl...fan-with-5-blades-includes-4-downrod/p2367285)

in the run for summer and would need wiring run to the ceiling for those as well. I don't know anything about electricity but was hoping to see if this sounds doable before I go and hire an electrician. Are 4 outlets and two ceiling outlets too much to run off the shed?

At what point in the project should I have the electrician come out and run the wiring? I need to get as much of this whole coop building thing sorted out prior to starting so my husband doesn't flip out. He will build it, but it will go much smoother if I have things all sorted out and planned for him to just follow.

Thanks so much. You have no idea how helpful this forum has been to me. I only have one shot to get this right and the way I want it as it is our last coop and I will have to live with it for the next 30 years or so. Cheers!

 

[PapaChaz]

where does the power TO the shed come from? Is there a separate meter on the shed, or is it fed from your house? Pictures would help, but it sounds to me the silver box with the pipe coming from it is where the power comes up to go IN the shed.

Is there a fuse panel in the shed?


the main issue is you want to make sure if the shed gets it's power feed from your house, that you don't overload that circuit by adding MORE to it. But if it has that many outlets in the shed, and they don't all get used, I'd disconnect something that's not used and tie THAT one to a line to run to the coop. But if you overload the circuit coming from the house, you'll have problems with that, from constantly throwing the breaking to being a fire hazard

if the shed is wired directly from the pole, and has a meter and it's own fuse/breaker panel inside, you should have plenty of available power to take care of the small needs of a chicken coop

 

[Ridgerunner]

You’ll need to get a qualified electrician to do the detailed planning for you. What he/she can do will depend on what you have in place. Instead of trying to get too much into the details think more about what you want and let them worry about the details. The more you get the more expensive it will be of course.

I would want the outdoor line buried instead of above ground, even for just 15 feet, but that adds to the expense. The buried line is mainly personal preference. Fifteen feet isn’t really that far as long as it is high enough that you can comfortably walk and work under it unless your building codes require an in-round line. A qualified electrician will know about that. Dad’s first cousin was electrocuted when he carried a metal ladder too close to an overhead power line. That would qualify as an overhead power line.

I very much like a separate line run from a breaker box to a breaker box in the coop with separate circuits in the coop. This isolates power outages and eliminates other problems. If everything is in the same circuit you can overload that circuit plus if you use a power tool, say a saw, you can dim lights and mess other things up even if you don’t trip the breaker.

The electrician will have to see if there is a place to put another breaker in your box or if they need to tap into an existing line. They will also be able to size the breakers for the right amperage.

There are a lot of variations and ways to do it but my ideal would be a line from a breaker box in that shed to another breaker box in the coop. If here is not a breaker box in the shed then you can’t do that unless you pay the electrician extra to install one. It should not be that hard but the labor, equipment, and material cost add up.

From the breaker box in the coop, run one circuit for lights only and install a light switch for those lights. I’d put one light in the run and one light in the coop, each with their own switch. Your fairy lights could be on an outlet but I’d put a switch on that outlet for ease of turning them on or off.

Then run at least two separate circuits for your other outlets. Don’t overload them. You might want to dedicate one circuit to heat only, heaters draw a lot of power. I’d add at least one more outlet than you think you need. You never know when you might need to plug in a power tool or something although you may be close enough to that shed to just run an extension cord from there.

All this kind of assumes you have a decent sized coop. If your coop is one of those tiny coops for a minimum number of chickens this is probably way overboard.

 

[PapaChaz]

I should have also posted I realized you are planning to hire an electrician, and they will be able to answer all your questions. But I also realized I failed to answer your main question, so here, yes a qualified electrician should be able to do what you want, provided you have the right kind of power feed and "room to grow". Use the things that Ridge runner and I have posted to give you some things to ask and/or look for when you talk to electricians.

I too would do an underground cable. I personally am usually guilty of over kill, I'd put outdoor graded wire inside outdoor graded conduit under ground......

 

[Wise Woman]

Thank you so much for all this information. It sounds like this is going to be a huge deal and cost more money than the coop itself will.

There is no breaker box in the shed. 2 white wires come out of the little silver box and go into the shed. One goes to the left and one goes to the right. There is a 4 hole outlet on each one and I am not sure which wire the overhead light and the 2 hole outlet is run off of. I would have to get a ladder out there and look or wait for my husband to get home and I will ask him. He probably knows.

There will be a freezer or two running full time in the shed once the animals are moved out, however, the only other time we will be using electricity out there is if myself or my husband is working on a project. I am not sure what he is planning to do for heat, if any thing, because he won't be out there all that much. He could just add some insulation and probably be fine. It's not like he needs a workshop to earn his living or anything.

The space between the chicken coop and the shed is where our leach line from the septic tank is. Will this pose a problem if we want to bury the line? I would prefer that. I am going to check into some solar options as well I just think electricity is more reliable. I don't know if we can afford to have this electric work done right now, so do you think it could it be added at a later date or would it be imperative to do it now while the coop is being built?

Thank you so much for all your help. I do not want my husband messing around with electricity as he will surely blow us up. He is in the propane business and does that well, but electricity is a whole nother animal. I will call some electricians and see if I can get a few estimates. If it can be done later, I could just use an extension cord for their water heater this winter and forgo everything else until next year.

FYI, the coop is going to work out to be about 5 x 7 and the run will be about 20 by 7, if that helps at all. We don't plan to heat the coop and we could do without the ceiling fans if necessary. I will be planting vines over the run to keep it cool in the summer and if that works we might not need any fans at all, in which case I would just have my fairly lights and the water heater in the winter.

 

[PapaChaz]

more than happy to help. The one thing I see is that it sounds as if you have two circuits coming into the coop. The freezer, which has a compressor, will have to have one complete circuit to itself. The rest of the shed would require the other circuit.

I wonder if both those circuits actually come from one circuit in the house, if so that will need to be addressed before puttting a freezer out there.

I would still call an electrical company, most would probably give a free estimate. Tell them what you want and let them tell you what it would cost. If the estimate is free, you haven't lost anything. I'd see if I could get more than one, tell them you're taking bids, and maybe get a better price than if they think they're the only one you're talking to.

It could be worth while.

For me, the only need I can see for electricity will be maybe for the water pan heater in the winter. I don't have a problem running a heavy duty outside extension cord for that, and by the time I get to the point of hatching and raising chicks, I intend on having the space prepared to do that where there already is power for the heat lamp or brooder plate.

Good luck!