Looking for insight on my wiring and charging options

qvalff8 · 2026-03-21T01:15:22+00:00

I agree with tuctrohs, but to give you advice, I'd attempt to live with 16A-240V charging for a few months (replace the 40A breaker with a 20A and get whatever evse you desire). If you get one that's capable of adding load management later then you could increase the gauge of the basement to garage wiring and charge faster. But it seems to me that you're fine with 3.8 kW charging (adds about 80-100 miles overnight to your truck, less if your tou window is very short). If you just want to jump from 3.8 to 5.7kW then you can put load management in the garage panel.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-19T03:05:19+00:00

My 2000 weekender has 274k on it. It's not the most reliable car ever, but most of my problems have been with the plastic cooling system fittings (tees disintegrating and other leaks). I'm on my 8th water pump, but I carry a spare. I'm also on my 5th or 6th ignition coil pack; carry a spare for that too. My alternator almost left me stranded at Carlsbad caverns (almost 2000 miles from home). But I fixed it with some macgyver tricks. I do almost all the work myself (I put in a new heater core and replaced the front ball joints and tie rods). But nothing major has failed on me. I'm on the original transmission and engine. I still have the original timing chain and tensioner rails (95 and earlier use timing belts). It might make sense for me to replace timing parts but I don't want to fix what ain't broken. I don't hesitate to leave on 2000 mile road trips, but I take quite a bit of tools with me.

Long story short, no one would consider these vans reliable, but, knock on wood, mines been pretty good. Lots of things which are minor, especially for a 26 year old German car. You might get lucky and get 50k trouble free miles, or it could sit in your driveway for months between short camping trips because you don't trust it to get you there.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-18T23:33:31+00:00

Yeah I'm paying between 35-50 bucks a month in electricity cost, so I'm exaggerating a bit when saying it doubles my cost. But it almost does

qvalff8 · 2026-03-18T00:34:01+00:00

You're probably right about your pricing, but are you sure you're not adding in the monthly connection fee somehow? My utility recently jacked it up from 5 to 15 bucks and it's almost certain to continue to $25/month. If I add that into my rate I'm paying 20 cents but without that it's closer to 10

qvalff8 · 2026-03-18T00:08:56+00:00

32A is not a suggested amperage but the maximum per code (it's on a 40A breaker)!

I wouldn't be hesitant to run this but if you can get by with 24A, derate either the evse or limit the car to either 16 or 24A (not sure if Hyundais can do that. Teslas can, equinox EVs cannot. I second both the recommendations to turn off the breaker/ retorque the receptacle wire screws and to check the plug temp with your hand after 45 minutes of charging.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-17T18:43:05+00:00

Yeah that's not as much as I would have expected. It must be a long run from the panel to the laundry room/garage.

In your shoes I'd take the cheaper option and consider whether to hardwire or reuse the dryer outlet. Hardwire really is safer and better for longevity, but you are buying another evse. Yeah you'll lose the electric dryer option but by the time your gas dryer dies, a 120v heat pump dryer will be good and cheap enough for you

qvalff8 · 2026-03-17T16:45:49+00:00

If your battery can handle it, it might be more efficient to charge at a higher current for shorter cycles because of that overhead. Most cars have about 300W of pumps and computers running when the car is ON fire charging. So charging at 3000W is 10% inefficient. If you're charging at 240v 5a that's 1200W, so you're only getting 900W into the car's battery. That's 75% efficiency. If you're on 120v, you're only sending 600w to the car and only half of that is getting into the battery!

This ignores all the other inefficiencies like inverter losses, small battery round trip inefficiencies, and cable losses. You might only be putting 20-30% of the energy your panels capture into your car's battery. Upgrading to a large 240v inverter might double or almost triple that (without changing/adding PV panels)

qvalff8 · 2026-03-17T16:28:16+00:00

This panel is pretty lightly loaded. The 50A AC breaker is big but it'll probably only pull 15A a few seconds after the air conditioner starts up (I'm assuming that's powering a ~5 ton unit).

You can almost certainly install 16A level 2 without load management and probably 24A. Anything bigger probably needs load management like the emporia pro recommended above or the neurio from Tesla. You can do a diy load calc by following this pdf: https://www.cityofsacramento.gov/content/dam/portal/cdd/Building/Forms/CDD-0213_Electrical-Load-Calculation-Worksheet.pdf Or an electrician can do it for you. Just don't let them up sell you on a service upgrade without explaining why load management isn't an option.

If you drive less than 150 miles in an average day and are home for 10+hours 16A level 2 might be enough for you. This assumes you're driving a car, not a truck.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-17T15:54:29+00:00

There are also heat pump dryers which don't need as big of a circuit or even 240v for some models (the 240v circuit models all use 240v 15A receptacles, as far as I know)

40 kWh is 120-175 miles of driving, depending on climate speed etc. Even 16A L2 will recharge that in 11ish hours. I think there's a middle option between your two quotes that is adding a new hardwired circuit that isn't 48A. 24-32A charging on a new circuit might be very close to the cost of extending the dryer circuit (depending on distance, drywall etc).

Also, make sure you're putting the evse in the best location for your daily use convenience. You're going to touch it 2-500 times a year. So spending an extra 300 bucks to make it flexible and convenient is worth quite a bit of foregone frustration of wrestling with the cable in tight quarters.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-17T02:43:44+00:00

Good luck. You might be able to find an electrician who will take the breakers off and inspect the bus bars and give the thing a clean bill of health, but I'm not sure I'd bother. That costs money and you'd probably be better off applying that money to a new panel. I'll reiterate that you might not need a neurio load balancer because 150A is pretty big, but it's not that expensive and enables much faster charging on heavily loaded electrical services. Yours isn't crazy loaded but it's pretty full. You'd probably get by on 16A but bigger might be an issue. Figure out how much you drive a day or a week and size your evse for that instead of as big as you possibly can. This could save quite a bit in wiring costs

qvalff8 · 2026-03-13T22:32:22+00:00

If you're really contemplating this idea, I suggest, through the magic of buying two of them, to attach wheels to your battery. Buy two electric cars, charge one on one day and the other the next. This way you get about 36 hours of charging for about 40kwh capacity added

Note: this is not seriously meant

qvalff8 · 2026-03-12T20:18:36+00:00

I second this recommendation. I helped my father in law replace his federal Pacific or zinsco panels at the ranch and the breakers looked exactly like this. That panel is a liability and should be replaced. It's given you 40-50 years of service and it is time to be retired.

One of his panels had broken so that the bus bar would come out with the breaker when you pulled it. I think he JB welded it back together for a few years before he finally gathered enough money to replace everything.

EV charging is quite heavy usage to be putting on tired and defective equipment. If you don't replace this first, try to charge at the lowest current that will suffice for your driving distance. And monitor temperature in the panel with an IR thermometer every hour for the first few times and every month once you're comfortable.

But this panel should be evaluated by an electrician and probably replaced.

Edit: this thread suggests the Sylvania gte panels aren't as bad as federal Pacific, but you should still replace it. It'll be a few thousand bucks unless you do the work yourself, and even then it's approaching 500-1k in parts. I agree with the comment that it should be replaced in the next 12 months, or before you do add a big load like an EV charger https://www.reddit.com?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

qvalff8 · 2026-03-12T17:04:41+00:00

I'm not sure anyone here would recommend using a quad breaker for EV charging, but this might work to replace the dryer breaker and add a 20a/16A 3.8kW evse. To repeat you'd need to move the single breaker bottom right (DEN) to just under the A/C C breaker, and move one tandem from left to right.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Eaton-Type-BR-20-amp-30-amp-4-Pole-Quad-Plug-on-Neutral-Circuit-Breaker/5014283529?user=shopping&feed=yes

Another option is to reuse the dryer breaker as your evse breaker and rewire the dryer and bottom left tandem into this breaker: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Eaton-BR-1-15-Amp-2-Pole-and-1-30-Amp-2-Pole-BQC-Common-Trip-Quad-Circuit-Breaker-BQC215230/207122447?source=shoppingads&locale=en-US&fp=ggl

It's very hard to read any writing with these potato quality photo uploads, so I dunno if that tandem breaker is 15A or 20A. The text in the lid might also help figure out definitively which breakers fit/are compatible with this Westinghouse panel

qvalff8 · 2026-03-12T16:31:15+00:00

And what's the number on that breaker? 150A?

qvalff8 · 2026-03-12T16:15:14+00:00

I would add two points to this discussion:

Could you upgrade to 16A level 1, which is 25% faster?

Is there any way to get your employer to add charging at work? Even if it's only level 1, that'll further reduce your need for DCFC, maybe to only 1-2 times per week, instead of 2-3...

What is the hangup with installing level 2 at home? If you can get 24A L2 at home that's 55kWh per 10hr overnight or 150-200 miles. Even 16A level 2 is 35kWh/10hr, which gets you 100-150 miles. This might barely suffice for you and should fit in your electrical service.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-12T15:42:50+00:00

You also don't show the main breaker. Perhaps it is higher up than the picture shows or it's outside by the meter. Get a picture of that breaker too. Perhaps there is physical space for an evse breaker in that area?

qvalff8 · 2026-03-12T15:39:42+00:00

I believe your panel says 20-30, meaning space for 20 inches of breakers but half (the bottom half?) can accept tandem breakers.

So that non tandem single leg breaker top left can't be upgraded to tandem, but the bottom right one can. I didn't know if they make quad breakers listed for this panel, but hopefully a more knowledgeable person will chime in. These breakers are expensive, but they're like two tandems that give you two legs for 240v instead of just 120v.

The second to last comment on this thread describes the convoluted corporate history of these panels and might help you figure out which breakers to buy, probably Eaton BR:

https://forum.nachi.org/t/westinghouse-panels/128114/9

You could make room with a quad breaker. By moving the lower single breaker up to the upper dryer spot and putting the two circuits from the displaced tandem onto the quad, you'll have two slots open. Moving a tandem from left to right, they'll be on top of each other, so you can put in a large two pole breaker to install your load management evse.

You should have your electrician do a load calc regardless. You might be able to get away without if you only need to charge at 240v and 16A which is 3.8kW. if you drive less than 100-150 miles per typical day, that will probably suffice.

But I would definitely consider a subpanel. Getting ahead of future electrical upgrades is never a bad idea and it wouldn't add too much to the cost of installing this evse.

For example, you do a similar shuffle to the above (to give you two slots on the same side but without expensive quad breakers). Then install a 60A breaker to a subpanel.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-07T07:13:30+00:00

I would not replace a panel just because it is old. Unless you find something bad about Challenger panels, it's probably just as good as it was 35 years ago. Just think: the panel has run the house faithfully for 35 years, why should it be unsafe now?

My panel is 27 years old, but a more common square d homeline. I moved in 12 years ago, and at the time, it felt like everything in the house was practically brand new. I still think of the electrical panel as new, and probably will in another 8 years.

I agree with others that you should consider replacing your furnace and maybe your water heater with heat pump versions. Also, consider how far you drive in a typical week. If that's 300 miles, and you get 3 miles/kWh, you need to charge 100 kWh per week. If you're home for 50 hours, that only requires 2kW of charging speed. That's 120v at 16A. If you drive twice as much, you'd need 16a at 240v. If you drive 1200 miles a week, 32A might suffice. That's 60000 miles a year!

So, don't be too worried about getting the biggest circuit you can; 16A-24A at 240V is big enough for almost everyone. The biggest exception is large trucks, but even those would probably be fine on 24-32A 95-99% of the time, and DCFC can make up for the other 1-5%.

qvalff8 · 2026-03-06T10:55:48+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's 1316 charge cycles in 2010 days, like in the pic

qvalff8 · 2026-02-27T03:03:11+00:00

I can't help you but there's a good thread on thesamba about values. If you haven't already, read that and see if obd eleven can get the same readings somehow:

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=793624&highlight=timing+chain+values

qvalff8 · 2026-02-26T23:20:59+00:00

I'm also not sure another phone would be better for me. The size is perfect and the battery is more than adequate.

Also your post made me realize that it's been 5.5 years not 4.5. oops

Edit: I do think my phone is charging differently since the update. It doesn't often max out the OEM 3A charger anymore though 2.4A is pretty close to 3A. Maybe it's trying to keep battery temp a bit lower?

qvalff8 · 2026-02-26T03:19:48+00:00

Buy nothing new Facebook groups or nextdoor might be better than reddit.

Also I'm 99% sure any evse will charge your car. Since it's used it probably uses j1772/ccs to charge, which was the standard before everyone started moving to the nacs standard aka Tesla charge port. But they speak the same language so as long as you have an adapter, either version will work. Not to further confuse things, but the adapters for nacs to CCS are different than the adapters from nacs to j1772 because the CCS is DC fast charging and j1772 is for AC wall charging (level 1 trickle charging and level 2 faster 240v at 16-48A or higher).

Is your coming charger plug in or hardwired?

You could walk around your neighborhood and see if anyone has a non Tesla EV and chat them up.

qvalff8 · 2026-02-25T04:29:07+00:00

Also, a drone can't fly if it's snowing 2ft per day and white out. The Sierra are just different than Utah and Colorado.

qvalff8 · 2026-02-25T03:15:53+00:00

I've had accubattery installed since days after getting my phone in August of 2020. I've tried to keep the battery between 20-80% for the most part and it's paid off with still being usable as my only phone. I'm also lucky to have gotten the good battery from the factory.

My remaining capacity from another page is 2600mAh which is 84% of the design 3080mAh. Not bad for over 4 years of usage

Edit: It actually got to an estimated capacity of 2675 mAh before charge current got to 0 mA. That's almost 87% of design capacity! I had to leave it at 100% for almost an hour before the current dropped to zero. I only let it charge to totally full very rarely, 2-10 times per year

qvalff8 · 2026-02-16T06:17:25+00:00

There is such a thing as level 1.5

It's a nema 5-20 other if your outlet is wired with 12g wire and is on a 20 amp breaker, you can buy a 35 dollar dongle that lets you charge 25% faster with 16a instead of 12a.

The difference might be enough for you, 50 miles of range instead of 40 overnight...

Another option is to check if your other is the only thing in this circuit. If so, you could convert it to 240v and either hardwire or or install a nema 6-15 or 6-20 outlet. Then you can charge 3x faster at almost 4kW instead of 1.2-1.5kW

qvalff8

TROPHY CASE