Reading Princeton96's recent post about his outside install for his 14-50 outlet made me think that there may be some interest in this. To be fair, this is not an UMC install since my Tesla is at least a year plus away. However, I had to deal with similar issues for the J1772 install for my current Leaf, so I thought that there may be some interest in how I dealt with it.
To begin with, since our garage is filled with cr*p (and to be fair, it's mostly my cr*p, not my wife's), we have to park the cars outside. So my Leaf has to charge outside as well. I had installed 2 x 14-50 outlets on the outside of our garage in preparation for our eventual Tesla. But where to put the charging cable when not being used? We live in a pretty safe neighborhood but I wanted to make it not too obvious that there was an electrical car charger just hanging on the wall.
So this is what I came up with:
The grey box on the outside wall of the garage is the 14-50 outlet (to be painted the same color as the garage but haven't gotten around to it yet). It's hidden behind a tall plant (needs more watering). The charging cable is held in the black storage unit to the left of the plant.
This is the brand of the storage box purchased, found at Home Depot (and therefore should be available almost everywhere). Found in the storage area - hard black plastic which seem to be UV strengthened to stand up to sun exposure (always an issue here in Hawaii). Notice the hole in the center lip which would allow you to lock the lid closed.
Interior shot shows the cable inside - fits quite nicely with a lot of space still. Initially thought about lighting up the interior with using a cheapy LED puck light from Costco but the adhesive on the Velcro that came with it frankly sucks and the light keeps falling off (which is why it's on the floor of the box instead of on the inside lid). Could be fixed with industrial Velcro or supergluing rare earth magnets to the lid and to the light. It actually hasn't been a problem yet so I haven't gotten around to fixing it. The holes in the lid were cut out using a Dremel with a cutting bit and then smoothed out using the same Dremel with a sanding bit.
Closeup of the holes cut out. The nice thing about this box is that the outer lid overlaps the inner lip completely so it really does a nice job of keeping the interior of the box dry.
And here's the final product with the cable pulled out.
Probably a good practice if you're doing this is to make sure that you keep a drip loop while charging. This would be a point on the cable that's lower than the entry point into the box and the car so that if it rains and water drips down the cable, there's a lowest point on the cable where it drips onto the ground instead of following the cable all the way back into the box.
Hope this helps somebody or gives them some ideas!
To begin with, since our garage is filled with cr*p (and to be fair, it's mostly my cr*p, not my wife's), we have to park the cars outside. So my Leaf has to charge outside as well. I had installed 2 x 14-50 outlets on the outside of our garage in preparation for our eventual Tesla. But where to put the charging cable when not being used? We live in a pretty safe neighborhood but I wanted to make it not too obvious that there was an electrical car charger just hanging on the wall.
So this is what I came up with:
The grey box on the outside wall of the garage is the 14-50 outlet (to be painted the same color as the garage but haven't gotten around to it yet). It's hidden behind a tall plant (needs more watering). The charging cable is held in the black storage unit to the left of the plant.
This is the brand of the storage box purchased, found at Home Depot (and therefore should be available almost everywhere). Found in the storage area - hard black plastic which seem to be UV strengthened to stand up to sun exposure (always an issue here in Hawaii). Notice the hole in the center lip which would allow you to lock the lid closed.
Interior shot shows the cable inside - fits quite nicely with a lot of space still. Initially thought about lighting up the interior with using a cheapy LED puck light from Costco but the adhesive on the Velcro that came with it frankly sucks and the light keeps falling off (which is why it's on the floor of the box instead of on the inside lid). Could be fixed with industrial Velcro or supergluing rare earth magnets to the lid and to the light. It actually hasn't been a problem yet so I haven't gotten around to fixing it. The holes in the lid were cut out using a Dremel with a cutting bit and then smoothed out using the same Dremel with a sanding bit.
Closeup of the holes cut out. The nice thing about this box is that the outer lid overlaps the inner lip completely so it really does a nice job of keeping the interior of the box dry.
And here's the final product with the cable pulled out.
Probably a good practice if you're doing this is to make sure that you keep a drip loop while charging. This would be a point on the cable that's lower than the entry point into the box and the car so that if it rains and water drips down the cable, there's a lowest point on the cable where it drips onto the ground instead of following the cable all the way back into the box.
Hope this helps somebody or gives them some ideas!
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