adding circuits w/conduit

[nacree]

Hello,

I am in the middle of a kitchen remodel and need to add 4 new dedicated circuits: microwave, fridge, dishwasher and I am putting the overhead and under cabinet lights on a dedicated circuit. Since I cannot access the rear of my breaker panel to bring the new circuits in, I am going to have to run conduit.

My question is, how do I tie the individual wires run from the main panel in the conduit to the new circuits in the kitchen that have been run with 14-2 NM-B wire? I was going to simply attach a small 6x6 rain proof box to the outside wall, drill a hole throught the wall to run the NM-B cable into the box where I would simply make the connectons w/wire nuts, but that would put 12 connections w/wire nuts in the 6x6 box on the outside wall.

Is that even legal? Does anyone have a better solution? I suppose I could use terminal strips to make the connections and it would be a lot cleaner looking but since I would be custom I dont think the electrical inspectors would like it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[kactuskid]

You say yu can't access the rear of your main panel to bring the new cables into it. I guess I don't understand this fully. Where is your main panel located? Is the panel installed inside a wall stud cavity and just the panel door showing? And why would you run the cables outside? And, just one last question, how do you plan on accessing the main panel to install conduit into it for these new circuit wires?

All these questions are needed just to get an idea and maybe offer some alternatives to your plan. It's not really a good idea to have these connections in a j-box outside if you can help it.

[nacree]

Quote:My main breaker panel is on the outside of the house, on the Dining Room wall- to acess the back of it to bring in the wire for the new ciricuits I would have to tear into 2 walls in several places. The house is also two stories which makes routing even more difficult (cant go into the attic and come back down for example).

The kitchen is next to the dining room, so I can add some conduit from the main panel and make a 4 foot run to an exterior portion of the kitchen wall and bring in the new circuits there. Since all of the drywall is out of the kitchen I have some freedom with routing the new circuits to the opening to the exterior wall to meet the conduit- so the J-Box would have to go on the outside of the kitchen wall. (not really ideal but I can't come up with anything better). I could post some pictures if that would be helpful.

If you have any suggestions I would greatly appreciate them,

Thanks again,
Nathan


>You say yu can't access the rear of your main panel to bring the >new cables into it. I guess I don't understand this fully. Where is >your main panel located?

[kactuskid]

Well, it's legal to splice these connections in a J-Box, though I just don't like the idea of it being outside. It would have to be in a weather proof box with gaskets. I would also use 2 box's instead of one since running more than 3 cables together may affect the voltage. These cables would need to be sleaved for protection where they come through the house and you'd need to do a box fill calculation on the j-box's to make sure that they are sized properly. Here's a link for you for this:

http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/pages/h00134.asp

Your other choice may be to install these Jbox's inside the home, but then they would require to remain accesible at all times.

Another possiblilty would be to install a sub panel on the outside of the kitchen wall to power these circuits.

[nacree]

Thanks for the info,

The box I bought is rated rainproof for outdoor use, and seems to be at least as water-tight as the breaker panel on the exterior of the house.

Just as a note, There should not be any voltage issues as I am running a set(hot, neutral, gnd) of 12ga thhn wires in the conduit for each of the four new circuits, so each new circuit will have a dedicated breaker.

I thought about the subpanel, but I just had the main breaker panel redone because it was old and did not have enough space already, all of the breakers were already doubled up. Now I have a 200amp service and plenty of spare breakers in the main box. The only thing a subpanel would have bought me at this point is another (larger) box on the wall with the breakers inside of it.

Anyway, thanks for the info, I'm glad to see I was not completely out of my mind with the way I was doing things.

Thanks again,

Nathan