home charging station for EV

[Anonymous]

We are looking at purchasing either a plug-in hybrid or, more likely, an EV. We live in the suburbs in a house with no driveway or garage, and about a 22-foot distance from the home down to the curb where we park. Before buying the car, my husband wants to investigate installing a charging station out front. He doesn't like the look of a cord running from the house all the way down through the yard to the street, and says he's worried he'll run it over with the lawnmower or something. What he is envisioning is a buried line (or actually, maybe two, since we will need to replace a second car in a couple of years and may end up with a second plug-in) that goes to a little pillar or something that contains the charging cable coiled and hidden when not in use. We are overdue for landscaping our front path anyway, so this could be something decorative that is also functional.

Has anyone installed something similar, and if so, did you use just an electrician or an all-around handyman? And does anyone have idea how much something like this would cost? I'm guessing a couple thousand dollars at least. And I think there's a tax incentive we could use toward the cost (but it wouldn't cover all of it, of course).

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Hm, I have not seen anything like this. I wonder if other people might use your EV charger if it were right at the curb, as if it were a public charger. There might be controls you could use to control access through the app. The cord for the chargers is long and thick, more like a garden hose than the cord for an appliance, so it would not easy to hide it inside a post.

Do you have the kind of street where you always have access to that street spot? I'm thinking of a situation where a work truck or neighbor's car blocks your spot.

I would check with the county/town about code issues related to this idea too.

Is there any option of charging at work? It doesn't take that long to get to a full charge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hm, I have not seen anything like this. I wonder if other people might use your EV charger if it were right at the curb, as if it were a public charger. There might be controls you could use to control access through the app. The cord for the chargers is long and thick, more like a garden hose than the cord for an appliance, so it would not easy to hide it inside a post.

Do you have the kind of street where you always have access to that street spot? I'm thinking of a situation where a work truck or neighbor's car blocks your spot.

I would check with the county/town about code issues related to this idea too.

Is there any option of charging at work? It doesn't take that long to get to a full charge.

Thank you for these thoughts! We would definitely check on code issues. We have a wide street with lots of parking area and could easily park 3-4 cars in front of our house if we wanted to, so no one else ever blocks our spots. Unfortunately, my husband's work still doesn't have a charging station (it should!) and I work entirely from home, so no luck there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hm, I have not seen anything like this. I wonder if other people might use your EV charger if it were right at the curb, as if it were a public charger. There might be controls you could use to control access through the app. The cord for the chargers is long and thick, more like a garden hose than the cord for an appliance, so it would not easy to hide it inside a post.

Do you have the kind of street where you always have access to that street spot? I'm thinking of a situation where a work truck or neighbor's car blocks your spot.

I would check with the county/town about code issues related to this idea too.

Is there any option of charging at work? It doesn't take that long to get to a full charge.

Thank you for these thoughts! We would definitely check on code issues. We have a wide street with lots of parking area and could easily park 3-4 cars in front of our house if we wanted to, so no one else ever blocks our spots. Unfortunately, my husband's work still doesn't have a charging station (it should!) and I work entirely from home, so no luck there.

I would consider whether Level 1 charging could meet your needs. You would use the cord that comes with the car and run it off a regular outlet (could be a regular outlet an electrician installs in your garden, like the kind for a water feature, or on the outside of your house (like the kind you use for holiday lights). You could run the Level 1 charger to the car at night and store it in the car's trunk when you're done. It's slow, compared to Levle 2, but if you could build up enough mileage overnight, you would not need to purchase an expensive Level 2 charger or figure out a complicated installation.

[Anonymous]

Your buried line plan seems good, but it may be expensive -- what you'll need to run to have level 2 charging available curbside will be 40 or 50 amp wires coming from your house to the curb, and then you'll install the EV charging station at the curb with the little post. So you're probably looking at 25 feet or so of heavy-gauge copper wire inside a weatherproof conduit, and then something to mount the charging station on.

I guess it's possible to mount the charging station on the house and just run a super-long cable underground to the curb, so all you're doing at the curb is plugging in. But you'll have to look around for level 2 charging stations that either have cords long enough to do that or allow you to swap in longer cords.

The PP who mentioned cable width is right, too -- level 2 charging cords are about as thick as a garden hose, so it may be harder to manage than you have in mind. And you'll probably want to get a charging station that you can lock with an app to prevent other people from parking and charging there during the day, though that sort of seems unlikely at the moment.

One middle ground could be to install the charging station on the house and get an extra-long cable to run to the car -- but only have it extended all the way across the yard when you're charging. We charge our car about once a week, at night; there's no worry about running it over with a lawnmower if you don't use it all the time.

[Anonymous]

This is definitely doable. Basically, imagine a structure like a mailbox but with the car charger attached to it and the wires running underground. Obviously, will be more expensive than mounting on the exterior of your house or inside a garage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is definitely doable. Basically, imagine a structure like a mailbox but with the car charger attached to it and the wires running underground. Obviously, will be more expensive than mounting on the exterior of your house or inside a garage.

This. And you will need an electrician. We recently bought a Tesla and had the charger installed in the garage. You need a qualified electrician to install the 240V charger and run the cable from the breaker. Our garage is pretty close to the breaker and it was still around $700 to install. It's not cheap.

[Anonymous]

My neighbors in Bethesda have their charging outlet on their house wall next to their front door, with a transparent cover. No garage. I wouldn't have noticed it at all, but they showed it to me. The cable is unobtrusive when their cars are charging (a Tesla and another car). None of it appears to be a concern in any way.

My other neighbors have their outlet in their garage.

[Anonymous]

The simplest home charging is a 120 volt "orange cord" inside a garage. It's slow but works for lots of folks and doesn't cost much to get going.

Charging at the street gets more complicated. One of my neighbors drags the orange cord out to her parked car, which is slow and not so convenient. It works.

Another neighbor installed a "Level 2" charger that is several times faster but requires a new 240 volt circuit added to the electrical panel, work by an electrician, a pedestal charger (like the one posted above) and a county permit. It was probably a couple thousand dollars all together. However, it is fast and convenient to charge. My neighbor said that his is programmed for his car (there's an app for that) so not just anyone can pull up and charge on his dime.

Of COURSE Montgomery County has a whole website on this:
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DPS/Process/rci/residential-EV-charging.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are looking at purchasing either a plug-in hybrid or, more likely, an EV. We live in the suburbs in a house with no driveway or garage, and about a 22-foot distance from the home down to the curb where we park. Before buying the car, my husband wants to investigate installing a charging station out front. He doesn't like the look of a cord running from the house all the way down through the yard to the street, and says he's worried he'll run it over with the lawnmower or something. What he is envisioning is a buried line (or actually, maybe two, since we will need to replace a second car in a couple of years and may end up with a second plug-in) that goes to a little pillar or something that contains the charging cable coiled and hidden when not in use. We are overdue for landscaping our front path anyway, so this could be something decorative that is also functional.

Has anyone installed something similar, and if so, did you use just an electrician or an all-around handyman? And does anyone have idea how much something like this would cost? I'm guessing a couple thousand dollars at least. And I think there's a tax incentive we could use toward the cost (but it wouldn't cover all of it, of course).

Thank you!

If you buy/lease the Chevy EV, then part of the package is a Level 2 charger installation (I'm sure there is an installation cost).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are looking at purchasing either a plug-in hybrid or, more likely, an EV. We live in the suburbs in a house with no driveway or garage, and about a 22-foot distance from the home down to the curb where we park. Before buying the car, my husband wants to investigate installing a charging station out front. He doesn't like the look of a cord running from the house all the way down through the yard to the street, and says he's worried he'll run it over with the lawnmower or something. What he is envisioning is a buried line (or actually, maybe two, since we will need to replace a second car in a couple of years and may end up with a second plug-in) that goes to a little pillar or something that contains the charging cable coiled and hidden when not in use. We are overdue for landscaping our front path anyway, so this could be something decorative that is also functional.

Has anyone installed something similar, and if so, did you use just an electrician or an all-around handyman? And does anyone have idea how much something like this would cost? I'm guessing a couple thousand dollars at least. And I think there's a tax incentive we could use toward the cost (but it wouldn't cover all of it, of course).

Thank you!

If you buy/lease the Chevy EV, then part of the package is a Level 2 charger installation (I'm sure there is an installation cost).

You can't buy or lease a Chevy EV right now. The entire line is under recall.

It is unfortunate, they are a great car.

I am a real electric car booster (who charges with the level 1 inside our garage), but now is a bad time to buy an electric car due to shortages. If it's just a commuter car, I'd look at a used Leaf, anything 2018 and on. We have been driving electric since 2015 and despite many promises, no car manufacturer has gone all-in. Chevy did well with the Bolt... But then they started to catch fire. Hyundai and Kia electric cars have the same LG battery and the same recall. Vw might be a good bet, but it's battery mirrors the same tech. Only Tesla and Nissan have different battery configurations. Nissan currently has no climate control for its batteries and they tend to lose range (although not as quickly as they once did.) I still highly recommend Nissan's Leaf, but the quick charger on it, the one you'd be using for trips out of town, has the betamax of car chargers. It's being phased out and is harder to find. There are no adaptors to switch to the dominant CCS protocol.

Tesla is the most foolproof way to go. But they have shortages and their used market is pretty inflated right now.

We are looking to replace our recalled Bolt and I've been over the choices a ton. None of them thrill me. Hoping in six months or so to see some change in the options.

[Anonymous]

We have a driveway and paid 2k to an electrician plus $700 for the station. Our neighbors who do t have a driveway were quoted 6k from the same electrician.

[Anonymous]

What if you only installed a 240 volt outlet on the side of your house, like the one that I have for my clothes dryer? An electrician said he'd do that for me for a couple hundred dollars.

[Anonymous]

So how does this work? Does it mean no-one can park at the curb in front of your house?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is definitely doable. Basically, imagine a structure like a mailbox but with the car charger attached to it and the wires running underground. Obviously, will be more expensive than mounting on the exterior of your house or inside a garage.

This. And you will need an electrician. We recently bought a Tesla and had the charger installed in the garage. You need a qualified electrician to install the 240V charger and run the cable from the breaker. Our garage is pretty close to the breaker and it was still around $700 to install. It's not cheap.

Question for the last PP:

You put a charging station in your garage.... are you actually charging the car in the garage? Or do you leave the car outside when charging?

I ask b/c DH wants a Tesla and we always keep our cars in our garage. BUT, my DD's bedroom is above the garage and I'm worried about a fire. I've heard that you aren't officially supposed to charge them inside... but since we keep our cars in the garage over night, charging an EV overnight in the garage was supposed to be the convenience of it.

Do you feel comfortable charging your EV inside the garage?