How far is your panel from where the car parks? That sets the charger job

Most people shopping for a home charger spend their time on the charger. In Lockport the thing that moves the price is the walk from the electrical panel to the spot where the car parks, and what the circuit has to get through on the way. Each wave of houses in town puts the panel and the car in a different place, so the same charger can be a morning’s work on one street and a full day on the next.

Why does the distance from the panel to the parking spot matter more than the charger?

A Level 2 charger draws 32 to 48 amps, and the circuit is sized to that draw, not to the name on the front. Two neighbors with different brands at the same amperage end up with the same breaker and the same wire. What changes from house to house is how far that circuit travels and what it passes through. That is most of what separates one quote for EV charger installation in Lockport from another.

The run goes in conduit here, the Chicago-area way of doing it. The pipe is bent on site, and a finished room in the way means going around it instead of straight through. A longer run takes more pipe and wire and more hours on site.

There is a separate question, whether the panel can take a charger at all, and it gets answered first. This page is about the circuit once the answer is yes.

How does the circuit get from a basement panel to an attached garage?

In the two-stories built 1995 to 2010 east of the canal, the panel is in the basement and the car is in an attached garage at the side of the house. The circuit leaves the panel, crosses part of the basement and comes up into the garage through the wall it shares with the house. How easy that is depends on what the basement looks like now.

Many of those basements were finished years after the house went up. The one room that usually stayed unfinished is the utility room with the furnace, the water heater, the sump and the panel, and that room is where an electrician starts looking. From there, the circuit can go a few ways:

• along a joist bay that already runs toward the garage side, if one opens off the utility room
• out through the rim joist and along the outside of the foundation in conduit, then into the garage
• across a finished ceiling, with access holes cut where the run meets blocking or a duct

An open joist bay toward the garage is the short path when the house has one. Going outside keeps the finished rooms out of it. Crossing a finished ceiling works too, with drywall patching as part of the day, which is why the ceiling matters more in these houses than the total distance.

In the garage, the circuit usually shows. Conduit comes through the shared wall and runs along the garage wall to the charger, at a height that clears the car door and the bikes. Where on that wall depends on how you park, nose-in or backed in, and which side the car’s charge port sits on.

If the basement is still open, or about to be finished, running the pipe before the drywall goes up turns most of this into a pull through conduit that is already there.

What does a ranch or split-level with the panel near the garage need?

Usually not much. In the 1960s and 70s blocks toward Crest Hill the panel often sits on the garage wall or in a utility space beside it, so the charger goes on the same wall or the next one over and the run is short. That is the cheap end of the range. The catch on those streets is the 100-amp service behind the panel, which is the capacity question from the first section and gets settled before anything is mounted.

How does a charger circuit get out to a detached garage at the back of the lot?

Fairmont and the downtown bluff are older than the attached garage, and plenty of those lots park in a detached one out back. The circuit has to leave the house, cross the yard underground in conduit and come up inside the garage.

What is in the yard between the house and the garage sets the work. Open lawn trenches cleanly. A concrete walk, a patio, a tree with roots across the path, or a gas or water line in the way means the trench bends around it or the conduit goes under it. Where the panel sits in the house matters too. A basement panel on the street side adds a run across the house before the trench even starts.

Some owners want more than the charger out there: lights that work, a door opener, a heater, a bench with a saw on it. That is a different job. Instead of a single charger circuit, the garage gets its own feed and a subpanel in the garage, and the charger and everything else land on it. A feed already out there for a light and an outlet does not carry the charger. The charger still gets its own circuit, or a spot on the subpanel.

Either way it is a new circuit and a detached-garage feed, so the City Building Department permits it and inspects it.

Can the charger go on an outside wall for a car that parks in the driveway?

Yes, when the garage is full or a one-car garage has two cars that need it. The charger goes on the exterior wall closest to the panel, often the side or back of the house rather than the front. The unit has to be rated for outdoor use. If it plugs in rather than hardwires, the receptacle gets a weatherproof cover that stays closed with the cord plugged in, the kind that bulges out from the wall. The cord should reach the port with the car where you actually park it, without crossing the front walk, so nobody trips over it in the dark and the snow shovel does not catch it in January.

What does the run add to a charger install?

A short run from a panel with room is the low band, $650 to $1,400 in Lockport. A long run, from a basement panel on the far side of the house or out to a detached garage, moves it to $1,200 to $2,200. The time follows the same split, from two to four hours on a panel with room to a full day with a long run. The charger itself is yours and is not in either number.

The detached garage that gets its own subpanel is priced as that job, with the subpanel at $900 to $1,800, more for the underground feed out to it, and the charger circuit from there. A ranch with the panel on the garage wall is usually in the first band, and a two-story with a finished ceiling between the panel and the garage is usually in the second.

The figures beside the rest of the electrical work are on what a charger install costs. The real number for your house comes on a written estimate after an electrician has walked the path from the panel to where the car parks.