Wire has 2 gauges listed?

[Onion69420]

This is the cable feeding my 100amp sub-panel.
I am going to upgrade to 125 amps so i am guessing i will need to run a new feeder from the main panel.
Im just curious why this cable says both #2awg and #4awg?

 

[JoeD]

The ground is smaller as permitted by code. It has 3 #2 and 1 #4.
You can read it as
3 CDRS(conductors) 2 AWG
1 CDRS 4 AWG

 

[Onion69420]

Great thanks for your help!
So if its copper it can carry 125 amps? Im a little confused by the charts with the different types of wires and temperatures.
My electrician wants to charge me 3k to run a new feeder cable, id love to save that money by just changing the breaker if thats possible.

 

[afjes_2016]

Why are you upgrading your 100amp sub panel to 125amps? Just curious.

Did a load calculation determine it is necessary? You may have mentioned it in another thread but I don't know off the top of my head.

Upgrading from 100 to 125 amps is not much hence the reason for my question.

If a load calculation determined the upgrade was needed can you post the load calculation here please. If a load calculation was not performed what determined that you needed to upgrade 100 to 125amps?

 

[Onion69420]

I didnt have a study done, ill tell u what im running off this panel:
30amps of lights at 240v
18.5 amps dehumidifiers
12000 btu 120v mini split
12000 btu window a/c 120v
5000 btu window a/c
8000 btu window a/c
8 fans
Some of those a/c units are not in the garage but in bedrooms that the subpanel is supplying power to, as half my house with the sub was an addition.
I need around 15 more amps.

 

[speedy petey]

30amps of lights at 240v

I find this hard to believe. Do you realize this is 7200 watts of lighting?

What are you basing this number on?

 

[Jeff Handy]

It must be a grow house.
For weed.

 

[bud16415]

It must be a grow house.
For weed.

My friends wife worked IT for the electric company and she wrote a program for looking for drastic changes in power consumption of meter readings. Her goal was to search for bad meters and or shorts and such sucking power.



She ran her program that looked at years of data and then compared it with obvious things like say a pizza shop moved into a location that was a dress shop. She then had a list for the service crews to go out and check.

What they found is most of these places they were met with resistance allowing them to enter the property along with funny smells.

 

[Onion69420]

Im a medical grower, yes its 7200watts of lighting.
Anyway the problem has been solved. Rather than upgrading to 125 amps what i did was replace my 3 120v dehumidifiers that were drawing a combined 19 amps with a commercial 240v dehu that draws 4amps and is much more effecient. This freed the 10 amps i need and was also 500 bucks cheaper than running a new feeder and getting a new panel installed.

 

[Jeff Handy]

Can you use LED lighting to grow?

That would cut way down on amps.

 

[bud16415]

We had our old hardware store close and a new one open this year in town. The old one was a huge building and the owner was approached by a company from out west to sell the building. He has a 400 amp setup in there for the store and they told him they needed at least 5 times that amount. So I guess our town missed out on new indoor agricultural growth.

As a kid hot houses were very common around here for winter produce and quickly vanished when transportation took over. Hard to beat free sunlight. Hey that was “green” way back in the 30s and 40s.

 

[Onion69420]

Im already all LED