3. Garage Electrical and Pneumatic

Next was electrical work and installing compressed air.

The lighting and electrical setup for the garage was sub-par. There were two 2-bulb florescent ballasts in a single corner of the garage. And the garage door opener outlet was routed through conduit, and through those ballasts, to an outlet in a single corner of the garage. There's another loose outlet in the back wall that is on a different circuit from the rest of the garage. It's a big mess, and I didn't want the headache. So, I started over.

The Plan:

There's a light switch that turns on the existing lighting. I reused that switch, and installed some new daylight (5000k) LEDs to burn my eyes with the force of 1000 suns (in a good, easy-to-see-what-I'm-doing way).

Then, I bought 2 CAFCI breakers, and planned out two new 20 amp circuits. One circuit is dedicated primarily to the air compressor, and the other circuit is general-use. I have two-gang outlets at 3 separate places along each wall. I never want to be far from having some power. I have 4 air connections at the 4 corners of the garage, for similar reasons.

Quick note: NEC (2014 maybe? a recent-ish revision) requires pretty much all outlets to be Tamper-Resistant.

So, I took some measurements, drew my garage to-scale, and made some rough plans in Draftsight. It's a free 2D drawing utility. I use a lot of 2D and 3D modeling software at my job.

Photos of work-in-progress: I have the compressor outlet wired up and routed, but not yet hooked up to power.

Updated 6/16/2018

I've had the garage finished for a while now, but hadn't updated this portion of the site. See photos of finished work.

Romex is coming out of the breaker panel, through the inside the wall, into the back of those two electrical boxes. Schedule 40 PVC branches off from there.

All my research suggested 25 ft minimum of airline BEFORE reaching the inline filter/regulator to allow the air to cool and moisture to condense. There is a drain at the bottom of each vertical bend, two in total. The compressor is plugged in to the compressor-dedicated circuit (right-most 2-gang outlet). The left 2-gang outlet is the general-use circuit.

This filters the moisture out of the air, regulates the pressure, and adds oil to the air for the tools. It is much easier this way, instead of manually oiling them.