Garage EV Charger

Charging our EV (electric vehicle) with a standard household 120 volt outlet adds 5 miles per hour of charge. This was enough to recharge overnight for our normal daily driving, but just barely. Time to upgrade the garage with a 240 volt outlet!

Hubbell 9450A NEMA 14-50 Receptacle

Tesla recommends this outlet made by Hubbell. It’s pretty expensive compared to the Leviton model at the local hardware stores, but it’s also sturdier and made for many more plug/unplug cycles than a typical oven/dryer outlet.

2-gang box with 3/4″ conduit

The exterior box depth is 2.5″ and the interior is 2.25″ deep. I wanted as much room as possible to make room for the large Hubbell receptacle and to bend the 6-gauge wires out of the way. The box volume is 32 cubic inches.

3/4″ ENT conduit

I ran the conduit outside the wall because I didn’t want to put a hole through the header which was more like a beam structure here.

Circuit breaker panel

Not shown, drilling a hole in the header plate above the circuit breaker panel was unusually difficult because I kept running into horizontal nails.

Square D QO style 50-amp breaker with 6/3 wire

Our EV charger pulls 32 amps and only needs 8-gauge 2-conductor wire plus a ground wire. However, I ran 3-conductor 6-gauge wire, plus ground, to allow for a larger EV charger or other uses in the future.

Tesla generation 2 charger with 14-50 adapter

Now we can charge at 30 miles per hour, six times faster than before!

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Mom

    Very impressive, James!

  2. Ann

    Cool! Don’t underestimate your contribution to the public discourse. I’ve found these kinds of technical blogs are very useful for learning all kinds of things. I’ll never forget your instructions you put on Happy Corner on how to thread wires under carpeting!

  3. Jim Richards

    And of course remember Lynda’s father famous quote— “with electricity you only start to make a mistake”

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