Detached garages, workshops and basements in this region tend to share a history: one circuit extended from the house decades ago, a single bulb, one receptacle, and everything since run off extension leads. The Electric Guys wire garages, workshops and basements properly across Pittsburgh and about thirty-three miles around — dedicated circuits, real lighting, and 240-volt outlets where the tools need them.
The reason it matters here more than most places is the terrain. A very large number of homes in greater Pittsburgh have a detached garage sitting well below the house on a sloped lot, fed by a buried run that somebody put in a long time ago and that nobody has looked at since.
Why choose The Electric Guys
- Proper feeder and subpanel, not an extended circuit. A detached building needs its own feeder, its own disconnect and its own grounding — which is not what we usually find when we open the box out there.
- Sized for what you actually do. A car and a chest freezer is a different specification from a welder, a compressor and a dust extractor. We ask first.
- Buried runs done to depth. Direct burial cable and conduit have different depth requirements, and a run that was shallow in 1974 is a run that a fence post finds eventually.
- Damp and cold accounted for. An unheated garage in this climate goes through a lot of freeze-thaw, and condensation in an outbuilding panel is a real failure mode.
Our garage and shop wiring process
- Establish the use. Tools, loads, whether anything needs 240 volts, and whether a car will charge out there in future.
- Check the house end. Whether the existing service has the headroom for the feeder, which on a 100-amp service frequently decides the whole job.
- Plan the run. Trench route, depth, conduit, and where it enters the building.
- Install feeder and subpanel. With its own disconnect, grounding electrode at the building, and room left for later.
- Fit out the inside. Lighting that actually lights a workbench, receptacles at working height and spacing, GFCI protection throughout, and dedicated circuits where they are needed.
What this looks like on a Pittsburgh lot
Slopes. Houses on the hillsides — Mount Washington, Beechview, Brookline, much of the South Hills, a good deal of Penn Hills — often have the garage at street level and the house well above or below it, sometimes with the driveway being the only flat ground on the property. That geometry makes the feeder run longer than people expect, and length is what drives conductor size.
Water is the second factor. Garages at the bottom of a slope collect what comes down it, and basements throughout the region take water periodically. Everything in a space like that wants GFCI protection and nothing important should be mounted low on a wall.
The third is capacity at the house. This is where a garage project often stops. Adding a properly sized feeder to a detached building draws on whatever headroom the service has, and a great many homes here are on 100 amps with very little to spare. That does not mean the project is off — it means the honest sequence is service first, garage second, and knowing that before you buy the tools is considerably better than finding out after.
Finally, there is the car. If an EV charger in the garage is anywhere on the horizon, it should be in the load calculation now rather than being a second trench in three years.
Serving Pittsburgh, PA and nearby
Across the city and out through Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Monroeville, Penn Hills, Murrysville, Robinson, Moon Township, McCandless and Cranberry.
Free estimates Monday through Saturday. Call or text (412) 501-7391.