A friend of mine recently purchased a new house, and i'll be assisting with the building of a small shed in spring. The electrical requirements are pretty low as he only wants a couple of receptacles to be used for low draw requirements. With that in mind, the plan is to run 12/2 with ground to the shed.
Living in Chicago we have a "conduit culture" as most of you know, so I don't have a lot of experience with NM. I have a neighbor that has offered some 12/2 NM-B for free to assist with the project, but I turned him down at first. As I sit here with a beer I started to think. I've used a lot of THHN in conduit, and nowadays it's also dual THWN rated. My understanding is the NM-B is THHN for the individual conductors. My question is whether these would also be dual rated THWN. If so, I could strip the NM-B outer jacket and utilize the individual line and neutral conductors in conduit (the ground is bare, so we would need to pickup a small spool of THHN/THWN for ground since it will be in buried conduit.) Thoughts?
A friend of mine recently purchased a new house, and i'll be assisting with the building of a small shed in spring. The electrical requirements are pretty low as he only wants a couple of receptacles to be used for low draw requirements. With that in mind, the plan is to run 12/2 with ground to the shed.
Living in Chicago we have a "conduit culture" as most of you know, so I don't have a lot of experience with NM. I have a neighbor that has offered some 12/2 NM-B for free to assist with the project, but I turned him down at first. As I sit here with a beer I started to think. I've used a lot of THHN in conduit, and nowadays it's also dual THWN rated. My understanding is the NM-B is THHN for the individual conductors. My question is whether these would also be dual rated THWN. If so, I could strip the NM-B outer jacket and utilize the individual line and neutral conductors in conduit (the ground is bare, so we would need to pickup a small spool of THHN/THWN for ground since it will be in buried conduit.) Thoughts?
If it was my buddy I would suggest at least 10/3 teck. No need for conduit and when he wants to add whatever you can accommodate him. These projects always start out as "All I need is this" 2 weeks later....
We've spoke about it. I'm definitely the type for a bit of overkill on a project, but the fact is that this will be a tiny shed and he's not a DIY guy (really no electric power tools to speak of.) The receptacles will predominantly be used to charge the battery on his gas lawnmower...
Why not use UF12/2 for direct burial instead of THWN in conduit? I used THWN in conduit for my shed wiring because we have sandstone and limestone to cut through and they have sharp edges that could penetrate a cable and can move even though good sand fill. But if you don't have that problem, UF cable might be much simpler.
But I would also consider the possibility of wanting more power later than he thinks he wants today.
Have always preferred conduit to direct burial in these situations.
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