Well, that's one big milestone checked off: flipping the main breaker on for the first time ever (while cringing for a couple seconds hoping not to see showers of sparks, lol).



Ive got all of the GDO outlets wrapped up, all of the wall outlets wrapped up, and half of the ceiling light outlets wrapped up. I got stalled out on the lights - I didnt realize they only give you a few actual plugs - the rest are just jumpers to string lights together. Unfortunately my ceiling isnt wired to accommodate that - Id planned to plug each one directly in. So, more plugs coming today - but at least now I can run my temp lighting off of the actual wall outlets inside isntead of via a bazillion feet of extension cord up to the house.

Unfortunately I drained all day Sunday hooking up just 4 wires in the main house panel. That was absolutely brutal. It's just too much bulk to add on top of an already busy box. In hindsight, I wouldve saved a ton of time slapping those number labels on every hot wire, pulling all the breakers, folding all of the branch circuit wires out of the box, then laying these subpanel wires in first. Trying to fight around fist fulls of existing wire bundles (that frankly arent run nicely to start with) was an absolutely massive task.

So now Im down to just finishing 4 more ceiling light receptacle boxes, hanging 6 more lights, and adding the plugs to the hung lights missing them (whenever the plugs show up today). Getting super close to the end on this one...

 

AWESOME!!!! My jaw dropped reading your inspections got waived! Awesome!!!

I was so excited when my shop got power for the first time! Huge win!

I see you have a hole house surge protector in your panel. I have on in my main panel, except mine doubles as a pair of breakers. The "concept" they advertise is connecting it to something you will notice if the breakers trip....

 

I was surprised too - Ive never heard of that before. Admittedly, it's pretty low risk for them - there's no drywall, so they can still see 95% of the stuff when they're here for final anyways.

Final inspect is now scheduled for tomorrow, so fingers crossed...

Yep, I saw those also. Bad thing, at least with Siemens, is that they don't currently appear to make one with GFCI also. As this is built to 2023 NEC / 2024 IRC, all of the circuits Ive got must be GFCI (the recently released 2026 NEC is even more strict - they added even MORE circuits to cover with it).

I could use the outlet style GFCI, the bad thing is Ive only got 1 circuit in easy reach - the wall outlets. Every other circuit needs a ladder to get to any outlets, so it would be a pain to have to reset. Because of that it would only save me 1 breaker, so I just skipped it.

 

Yeah, the GFCI topic is a bit of a tough one. I was able to run my electrical so that the first outlet in a series is a GFCI. It cost less then the GFCI breakers. I even read the code states that if you are using an outlet ONLY for plugging in a ceiling mounted shop light, it must be GFCI protected. Basically, in an outbuilding, if it is an outlet, GFCI protect it.
I heard of someone mounting GFCI items like the link below right under the breaker panel to start each circuit. But at the point you add the cost of a breaker (say $10) and this at $22-$24, you are now about $34 in, plus wire and time.... And the breaker is ballpark $50 if I recall. So $16 more and it's a cleaner configuration.
https://www.menards.com/main/electri...359-c-9526.htm

I have also heard of people that ALL outlets are GFCI outlets. That is a bit much!

I have outdoor outlets, enclosed in a weather protecting bubble. I got these "Amazon Basic" GFCI weather/tamper resistant outlets. They seem to be working fine. I was a bit "nervous" to get "Amazon Basic" GFCI's, but if they actually failed, the way the circuits are wired, it should trip a better brand GFCI outlet inside. But I liked this because "in theory" if I am working on something that trips a GFCI, I would think this would trip first (and hopefully not both this one and the one inside). The idea was for an easy reset.
https://a.co/d/0jckCGjW

 

I agree - IMO they're going way overboard with it, especially with the 2026 NEC changes. I really think its going to start to push people to install them in some spots just for the inspection, only to remove it when it starts nuisance tripping in actual use. IMO electric motors and GFCIs just arent a good combo.

Maybe Im wrong and GFCI tech has improved in recent years to reduce nuisance tripping. I sure hope so as the way things are trending, we're maybe 1 more code revision from it being mandatory for the whole panel.

Id thought about that path, but my problem is that only one of my five circuits has receptacles at ground level. All the rest of the receptacles are up by the ceiling. Given the reset must be 'readily accessible', I figured theyd fail me if I did the receptacle type GFCIs on the other circuits. So I just kept them all matching and did the GFI breakers across the board.

Yep, that's how my 2023 NEC is, so I had to do GFCIs for both my overhead lights and garage door openers, even though no reasonable person would ever be climbing up to the ceiling to plug extension cords and such in when there's perfectly good plugs everywhere at ground level.

Oh weird - I've never seen that before. I agree with you - that wouldve looked like a mess on my setup having to have a bank of 4 of those mounted somewhere on the wall for the inaccessible receptacle branches.

That makes sense. Ill also say weve had great luck with Amazon Basic stuff in general. We've used all kinds of items from them without issue.

 

Well, that's it - at least for the official work here.

Final inspection completed / signed off, and certificate of completion issued.


Next up is running a 20 amp circuit to the shed while Ive got the trench open.

After that it will be figuring out if I can salvage that pool light conduit to get it reconnected. If the wires just break, Ill be forced to abandon it / rerun from the back of the house.


Then Ill be able to turn back to the garage and adding the final circuits. Probably need to at least take some measurements and start buying wire in the meantime.

 

Ended up having to order the thwn2 wire for the shed (since the place I get bulk wire from online is literally a third the price of the big box store in this size for whatever reason).

So I swapped to project B - tearing out all of those stupid tamper resistant outlets and replacing them with normal ones...

Id had my fill, even after only a week of having live power in there. I was planning on that anyways - Id bought the absolute cheapest TR plugs they had in bulk just to get it through inspection.

 

LOL, there you go, the ol work around after the COA plan. Been reading over the past years about your garage oddessy, wow, what a hassle. To bad you had to do the permit routine. It is a substantial structure so I get it, but dang, the hoops you jumped would have broke most diy'ers.

I tried to go the official route building a garage. Since I had an attached carport they would not let me have an attached garage. Something about to much roofline for the property size, fire hazard. I said okay, cool, no worries. Waited a few months and then brought in a company, told them I handled the permit, had them build the garage. Figured I would just pay a fine if there was an issue. Never heard a thing from anyone in zoning / building dept. But then it is nothing at all like your building.

We are doing a building now, pool house for a famous 49er's quarterback, they won't let him have an apartment and full kitchen in it, because the main house already has an apt. So the pool house apt is for now a "game room" wink wink, the kitchen all roughed in and hid behind the drywall. After COA, walls open, plumbing comes out, kitchen cabinets, counters , shower gets installed etc, lol, the ol houdini after COA routine.

Congrats on the COA, you have definitley earned it. The roofing membrane fight, grinding all the concrete floor, trenching, all the rebar work at first, you the man!

 

I agree, wouldve been massively easier without.

The location was my big worry - if we'd have been buried back in a subdivision somewhere, theyd never know unless we really ticked a neighbor off. But unfortunately we're less than 2 miles from city hall (and the adjacent development amd planning building) and on a major corner (both roads are 7 lanes - 3 each direction plus the center turn lane, not including bump outs for turn offs). So these city inspector cars are going past numerous times a day. I figured anything that clears the 6 foot block wall would be a major risk to getting shut down, especially with how slow I work.

Yep, we've got that too. I had to submit a page with the original permit showing the math that we're under the limit. Fortunately the lot is decent size and our % max allowance was fairly lax (1/3 coverage), so we were well under. I want to say our limit was something like 14k SF of max roof covering and we're nowhere near that.

IMO it's a dumb requirement. Right across the street is a very tightly packed subdivision. They've probably got 15 foot deep backyards, but the sides and front are bare minimum - maybe only 3 or 4 foot. Those lots are easily 80%+ covered by roof, and somehow that's ok, but they fought me on having 2 "accessory buildings" even though Im not remotely close to the coverage limit. There's even a "zero lot line" subdivision they just built down the street that's probably 95% covered lots.

That is too funny!

I get what they're trying to do with the whole permitting process, but IMO all the absurd restrictions and red tape seem to make it counter productive. Id bet 9 out if 10 people I talk to at work starting some kind of permit required project (which in some local cities is practically anything - one of the larger local cities doesnt even allow replacement of a 4x8 or larger sheet of drywall without one) do it all under the table to avoid the hassle.

If these planning folks were even a little bit reasonable, I think the general population would be a lot more willing to play along (and potentially get some benefit by them catching some legitimately serious issues on some of these diy totally unpermitted jobs). But instead their reputation scares so many people off from even trying.

Thank you, I appreciate it!

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