Electric Vehicle Charging Station in Attached Garage
I’m wondering if anyone has any rules of thumb when locating a vehicle charging station inside an attached garage. I’m putting in a 240v outlet but don’t want to regret the placement location later.
I know I’m limited to a 25′ cord and placement near an overhead door is best. I read one blog that said to also place it near a man-door but didn’t say why. Anyone have thoughts or experience?
My garage will be 3-car attached. All outside doors are on the north face, running west to east it’s double overhead, single overhead, man-door outside, then door to house is on east face of garage.
I was planning on putting the charger in the NW corner, which is the likely location of my future EV. The gas powered family mover will usually be parked on the east side closest to the house door. Do I really need to consider putting the charger on the east side by the house and outside man-door?
I thought about putting it on the narrow section between overhead doors, but I feel like that will get bumped too often by kids not paying attention.
Thanks
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
Depends on the EV you buy. Some have the charge plug-in on the front, some on the back. A middle side wall on the garage can reach both in most cases.
Maybe consider putting multiple box locations on the same circuit? Then you could potentially shift the outlet (Nema 14-50) later? You'd still just have a single outlet (with a blank cover on the other boxes). If can't join in upstream boxes (not sure for these 50 amp circuits), run separate full length cables to each box (but only one would be energized?).
Thank you both. I'm dealing with a tract home builder, so my special requests sometimes get lost in translation to their subs. I'll probably keep it simple and just have them place it at the farthest corner (NW) from the main panel (SE) possible so I can just pull the wire back if I need to move it. I did specify Nema 14-50, which was no problem.
When we get ours installed, it's going in between the garage doors, but on the exterior of the house. I like the middle spot because it doesn't matter what side the EV is parked on, the cord will reach with a minimum of fuss.
I think the people door placement recommendation is for times when you might want to run the cable outside but not have it pinched under the door.
We don't park in the garage very often and I would rather charge outside, just in case something were to happen while charging.
Thanks for the battery fire notice. I've never had an EV, but I'm just trying to future proof, so I hadn't considered charging outside for risk mitigation. Great point.
I have the charger in my garage on one of the walls where it is in easy reach of the charging port on my Volt. The cable is usually long enough to reach either side of the car if you're careful, but you do want to try to get the charger installed as close as you can to where it will be connected on the car.
I don't like the plug-in chargers -- the plug is a weak spot, and these are very high load electrical devices. I much prefer the hard-wired chargers since they are less likely to have any issues. What I would do is to have boxes installed in the wal in several potential charger locations, then run the power cable through the boxes daisy-chain style, or star out from a central box (for example, if you had three potential locations, run a cable from the electric panel to the center box, then branch runs from that box to each of the two side boxes).
With cables pre-run to multiple locations, you can now install your charger wherever it's needed, and even move it in the future, with minimum effort. You don't even need to install the NEMA 14-50 receptacles in this case -- just put blank covers on the unusued boxes and install the charger on whichever box is in the best spot. Since vehicle manufacturers haven't really standardized on charge port locations on the cars, it makes sense to allow for the charger to be relocated in the future if you get a new car.
BTW, if you really want to future proof things, consider running oversized electrical conduit instead of just cable (NM / Romex). The charger you have today might not work for a future car that needs a beefier charger, so conduit would allow you to run a heavier cable in the future if needed.
Bill
My main rationale for the plug was just because my parents are the RV traveling type of retiree. Their RV has a NEMA 14-50 plug so I thought it would be convenient if we had a full house for the holidays or something. I get what you are saying though. Thanks.