Anyone have experience with getting a home electric car charging station installed? Specifically looking at installing one in the Bryan / College Station area.

KIDDOC will likely be along shortly. As I remember he used tommy at aggieland electric for this tesla

Thanks, I sent a FB message to Aggie Electric.

Looks like I really just need an electrician to install a dryer outlet (240v 50 or 40 A) in the garage. Then buy a plug in wall mounted charger. A search on Amazon shows up one by ChargePoint and another by Siemens.

Not that I know what is all necessary for the new dryer outlet lol

FWIW a dryer outlet is almost always only 30 amp and usually feed with a 10 gauge wire.



What is the amp draw of the charger ?

I'm looking at the https://store.clippercreek.com/HCS-40P-Plug-in-32-Amp-EVSE-Charging-Station-25-ft-cable-NEMA-14-50?search=HCS-40&category_id=74, which has a 32 A draw.

The problem as I see it is my garage is on the left side of my house and the power breaker on the exterior right side of my house (which is two stories). Should be interesting to see if the builder left any spare lines (I recall him saying they did) in the attic above the garage.

9Hy3Ww said:

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I'm looking at the https://store.clippercreek.com/HCS-40P-Plug-in-32-Amp-EVSE-Charging-Station-25-ft-cable-NEMA-14-50?search=HCS-40&category_id=74, which has a 32 A draw.


The problem as I see it is my garage is on the left side of my house and the power breaker on the exterior right side of my house (which is two stories). Should be interesting to see if the builder left any spare lines (I recall him saying they did) in the attic above the garage.

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Depending on the run length you will need 8 gauge minimum wire to support a 40 amp outlet and possibly a 6 if it is a really long run.


If you are in BCS

Try J&L Electric

979 218 4874

My wife got a Pacifica Hybrid minivan in February. We had a Siemens VersiCharge L2 EVSE installed in March so we could charge it more quickly. Like the OP, we have a two story house, and our electric service comes in on the opposite corner of the house from the garage.

Our electrician originally wanted to run a flexible conduit around the back of the house, but it was going to look pretty dodgy around the patio and back door. Instead we agreed to trench around the back of the house and bury a 4 gauge aluminum service wire.

The Versicharge uses a NEMA 6-50 plug (hot-hot-ground) where most others use a NEMA 14-50 RV plug (hot-neutral-hot-ground). Even though the VersiCharge only needs three conductors, we buried a four conductor cable in case we need a 14-50 plug in the future.

We've had some pretty serious issues on both the trenching and electrical sides. If you go this route, be very specific about where the trench goes and what kind of machine or hand digging they do. We lost a mature native elm tree to an oversized trenching machine in this process.

Car chargers draw a lot of current for an extended period of time. You can find pictures of melted connectors all over the Internet. A few weeks ago, our new 6-50 outlet got hot and failed spectacularly with a shower of sparks and a loud bang. Be sure your electrician uses high quality parts.

Despite the problems with the charger installation, we're thrilled with the Pacifica Hybrid. About 85% of my wife's driving is now on electric and she drives about 25K miles per year. We are saving a ton of money (or will be once we recoup the cost of the charger.)

Thanks! I was afraid of something like that (needing to trench around the house). I'm guessing if that is what our electrician will want to do, we are going to pass on this (getting the hybrid).

Success! Poked around my attic above my garage and found an unterminated orange electrical cable (pretty sure it is 10 AWG). Looked behind the cover on my electrical panel and found a orange electrical cable marked SPARE!

Pretty sure 10 AWG will work.

How do you like the Pacifica Hybrid? That is what I'm thinking of getting. Did you buy from Lithia? Why did you go with the Versicharge versus some other one. I'm about having the electrician do a junction box in the garage and then getting the charger hardwired in to try and avoid the mishap you mentioned.

We love the Pachy. It is quiet and smooth and doesn't feel like it has any power penalty versus the Town & Country we traded in. My family has a dealership in another state where we bought. There is now a state rebate on these, but we are not eligible since we didn't buy it from a Texas dealer.

I picked the VersiCharge because it is simple and has integrated cord management. We have a flat rate electric plan so there is no benefit to scheduled charging, and it is convenient to hang the cable over the charger and plug it into the dummy socket on the front.

I am not sure if 10 AWG will cut it for a 50 amp circuit through the attic. You might need to dial back the amperage on the charger and use a smaller breaker. It would still be much faster than the L1 charger in a 110v outlet. Your electrician should know for sure.

The charger you linked requires a 40 or 50 amp circuit


"208/240V, 40A/50A"

And draws 32 amps max

This will require at minimum a 8 awg or 6 awg depending on the length of the run

A 10 awg is only rated to 30 amps

Yea, I think I have to go with the LCS-30

https://store.clippercreek.com/lcs-30-24-amp-ev-charging-station

The difference in the charge rate is about 20 minutes. Something I suppose I can live with lol

HCS-40 (7.7 kW charge rate but the Pacifica maxes out at 6.6 kW) ~ 2 hrs and 25 minutes
LCS-30 (5.8 kW charge rate) ~ 2 hrs and 45 minutes