I bought a Chevy Bolt recently and I’m currently a renter. We’re hoping to buy our first house in the coming months, and buying a home charger is one of my first priorities after we close.

Houses are older in my area (metro Detroit), especially at our price point. Most garages are detached, some non existent.

Is there anything specially I need to look or ask for to ensure the house is EV Charger acceptable? Does the electrical equipment need to be somewhere specifically?

Finally, would I be able to purchase a free standing charger if it’s unable to attach to the house?

  • retiredminionBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    First and foremost - No Plug! Direct wire your EVSE (Charger). Plugs are a significant fire risk and they create code conflicts where a plug requires a GCFI breaker but the EVSE already has one and may have issues with the GCFI breaker (which is also 5x the price).

    If the EVSE will be in a location that’s publicly accessible, you’ll want access control. This could be a feature of the EVSE or a switch in a lockbox.

    While more power is nice (Tool Man), 24a 240v off a 30 amp breaker will be enough to provide nearly 200 miles of charge overnight. Also if you already have an electric stove or electric dryer, charging overnight can easily be instead of cooking or laundry so no net power demand just breaker space. Every EVSE (Charger) I’m aware of can be set to lower levels of current.

    If you look at a detached garage, see if there is a garage subpanel. If there is, it almost certainly already has 240v available even if it’s not currently used.