The idea of a subpanel for the equipment makes sense, but having the lighting turned off to help keep kids out seems like a bad idea. You’d have to energize all the equipment just to go into the room.
There already was a sub panel, fortunately. I’m satisfied with the simple toggle switches at the relevant outlets. I don’t want to kill power to everything on the circuits, just those outlets with things plugged in. Adding an indicator light isn’t too hard, but I was wondering if there was a pre-existing solution.
[QUOTE=ZenBeam]
The idea of a subpanel for the equipment makes sense, but having the lighting turned off to help keep kids out seems like a bad idea. You’d have to energize all the equipment just to go into the room.
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No, just put the breaker(s) for the lighting at the bottom of the panel, so you can turn on the lights by touch alone.
I assumed he was using a main breaker to turn off all the circuits from the sub-panel, not turning off individual circuits. Otherwise, why not just a bank of light switches?
Cutting power to the entire subpanel would be unacceptable—it powers a lot more than the shop. Plus, hitting the subpanel every time I want to use something would make it a PITA to do the 80-90 percent of work that gets done down there that doesn’t involve a stationary power tool (notwithstanding that the shop lighting is on a different circuit).
Adding a switch to the individual banks is relatively easy (especially since they’re not installed yet). Having the switch cut the power to just a particular outlet bank seems easier and more practical than cutting power to the entire circuit (especially since there will be outlets on the cicuit that I’ll want to be always energized).
But I’m not an electrician—is there something I’m missing about the benefits of adding another sub-panel or using the existing one?
easy is to have subpanel control/protect circuits. fill your panel with breakers and use switches to control the circuits, breakers are for protection. add another subpanel if you run out of breaker slots.
even if it takes hundreds of feet more cable you should have lighting circuits separate from other circuits, especially those serving power tools.
take a cable for a circuit out of the subpanel and into a switch enclosure. you can get one piece enclosures for ordinary light type switches that hold 3 or 4 switches or modular ones that you can make what size you want. don’t put more electrical load on a switch than it is rated for.
if you need a bigger electrical load switch than a light type switch then you can get a single metal enclosure switch like
A safety switch would seem to be the solution. You can run all your tool circuits through there and control it all with one movement. Additionally you can run one of the tool circuits to a light socket with a nice bright red bulb installed. If you wanted you could even put the light fixture outside the shop so it can be seen without having to enter.