Tesla OR third party charger?

[Penfold]

Thanks WannabeOwner, unfortunately I don’t have that option. I wonder if having a pole or something erected and cables under the ground would be the way to go. Not ideal and will increase installs costs somewhat but might be the safest for keeping cables out of the way.

Cheers DJP31, will get a quote once the S is ordered

 

[WannabeOwner]

I thought about putting a charging post on the other side of the drive, so I could park "facing the right way", but I thought it would just stick up and look ugly by the lawn. I've done that by the charging bay installed in the work car park.

I prefer to have the charge port nearest to the charger, but if I park other-way-round its not a problem to just trail the cable behind the car to the charge port, although excessive-me! sometimes worries that the charge-plug sticking out might get knocked by a delivery driver zooming through my drive ...

We normally park facing this way, but on the opposite side of the drive. If I come into drive from other end then the charger-side is nearest the wall, but I have to back-up to park ... all these 1st World Problems to wrestle with!!

Charger sticks out a bit

The charger (non-Tesla), on the wall, in case of interest. Plus Commando socket and also an outdoor 13-AMP (e.g. Hoover the car):

Dead scruffy with hose and squeegee ... I'd never make a photographer!

 

[DJP31]

Inside the garage:

Outside:

IMO the Tesla unit is the prettiest charger out there

 

[WannabeOwner]

IMO the Tesla unit is the prettiest charger out there

That's the Christmas version is it? No "L"? ...

I'll get my coat ...

 

[busaman]

i had my 32a polar fitted free when i had my i3 (uk grants may still be available) EU type2 and works just fine with my model s..

 

[Penfold]

View attachment 259902

What length cable does your Tesla charger have?

 

[DJP31]

What length cable does your Tesla charger have?

The longer one, 7.5M I think. It was more expensive than the shorter one, but now rather strangely they are both the same price I believe. I really couldn’t see the point of having the shorter one tbh.

 

[Penfold]

The longer one, 7.5M I think. It was more expensive than the shorter one, but now rather strangely they are both the same price I believe. I really couldn’t see the point of having the shorter one tbh.

Thanks very much, I was thinking the longer would be better but was worried about the cable being untidy but yours looks neat

 

[DJP31]

Thanks very much, I was thinking the longer would be better but was worried about the cable being untidy but yours looks neat

I must admit it’s bit of a mission to get it like that and it tends to have fewer longer loops now. There is a technique to looping it back which I haven’t quite mastered and it can kink a bit. I’d still have it over the shorter one all day long though.

 

[Peteski]

I'm actually thinking of going with the shorter one, but then I'm installing it inside the garage and the car will sit in exactly the same spot while charging. I can only see the point of the longer lead if you actually do need the extra reach.

 

[DJP31]

I'm actually thinking of going with the shorter one, but then I'm installing it inside the garage and the car will sit in exactly the same spot while charging. I can only see the point of the longer lead if you actually do need the extra reach.

You never know when you might need the extra reach, e.g.maybe one day you'll you need to store something in the garage and the car needs to sit outside. I don't see the point of not getting the longer one, even more so as I think they are now the same price.

For me it's a bit like the CHAdeMO adapter, I may never need it but if I do it could make the difference between getting to the destination or not. That's £350's worth of one off insurance I'm more than happy to pay.

 

[Peteski]

You never know when you might need the extra reach, e.g.maybe one day you'll you need to store something in the garage and the car needs to sit outside. I don't see the point of not getting the longer one, even more so as I think they are now the same price.

For me it's a bit like the CHAdeMO adapter, I may never need it but if I do it could make the difference between getting to the destination or not. That's £350's worth of one off insurance I'm more than happy to pay.

In that case, the longer cable wouldn't reach outside anyway as the charger will be located on the back wall in the middle of the garage. One thing I will check though is that the shorter cable is able to reach both spaces in our double garage. If not then I will need the longer one, but I can see it ending up a tangled mess if not careful.

 

[ojock]

Inside the garage:

View attachment 259903

IMO the Tesla unit is the prettiest charger out there

Hi, inside the garage picture, the box that's labelled "Tesla EV Charge Point" - what is it ? It comes with the Tesla Wall Connector ?

Was the earth rod installed close by ? My electrician suggest it's some cable running down from bottom of charger, which sounds a bit ugly looking, but your outside picture looks fine ?

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Welcome ojock

The isolator switch inside isn't part of what you get in the box from tesla, that's been added separately as part of this installation.

 

[ojock]

Welcome ojock

The isolator switch inside isn't part of what you get in the box from tesla, that's been added separately as part of this installation.

Perfect, thank you

 

[SageBrush]

Only OCD need read further:

I loop counter-clockwise to match the placement of my plug holster, and I marked the cable with a ring of fluorescent tape to show me where to start the first loop. I like big-ish loops that are about a foot above ground to avoid tension on the cable.

 

[Smiddy]

I went with the Tesla unit as well, mostly because we are looking at getting 3 phase in the future and Tesla unit can do both. I currently get 28 miles/h and on 3 phase that should go up to around 45 miles/h which means getting more miles on the car during the cheap rate over night.

So far its worked perfectly and compared to the quotes I got for zappi and some others there was that much in the price and the others included the OLEV grant (£500). installation and equipment came to £430 mostly due to a certain RCD you need for the Tesla unit which cost £140 on its own. I needed around 3.4m of armored cable, garage box for the RCD, RCD and then they wired in extra tails from the meter to the new garage unit.

Our house electrics are fairly old so we didnt want to touch them at the moment, we will rewire the house when we do the extension in a couple of years anyway.

 

[SageBrush]

Our house electrics are fairly old so we didnt want to touch them at the moment, we will rewire the house when we do the extension in a couple of years anyway.

Our 32 Amp Clipper Creek EVSE (on a 40 amp breaker and 60 Amp wire) serves our EV heterodoxy quite well but when the LEAF goes to hell I'll swap it out for a 48 Amp upgrade with a Tesla wall charger for bragging rights.

 

[arg]

Was the earth rod installed close by ? My electrician suggest it's some cable running down from bottom of charger, which sounds a bit ugly looking, but your outside picture looks fine ?

The earth rod wants to be installed somewhere "nearby" - like within a few 10's of metres - but it doesn't have to be right underneath, that's just (usually) the easiest option for the installer if you don't specify anything different.

The earth rod needs to be in soil, in a place where driving in a rod that's at least 1.2m long isn't going to hit anything (plumbing, foundations), and the wire connecting to it needs to be green/yellow insulated.

So if the chargepoint is on the wall of the house by a gravel drive, the easiest thing is to run a green/yellow cable down the wall, out across the top of the gravel for a short distance to miss the foundations under the wall, then an earth rod with one of those "safety electrical connection do not remove" covers over it - dead ugly but straightforward, and if the supply cable is also running up the outside of the wall it's maybe not much worse.

There's a whole host of things you can do to make it look better:

• Put the green/yellow wire in black conduit so it doesn't stand out so much (or paint it if appropriate, eg rendered wall).
• If the supply cable is coming through a hole in the wall behind the chargepoint so the earth cable is the only reason for having an ugly cable on the outside of the wall, you can take the earth through the hole, run it down the inside of the wall, back through a (smaller) hole just above damp-proof-course level and back outside as before, eliminating most of the visible cable outside.
• If you are doing that, the place the cable comes back outside doesn't have to be directly below the chargepoint: if the chargepoint is over the driveway, maybe you can run it horizontally a short distance and come out over a flowerbed or suchlike that's a tidier place to put the rod.
• Rather than one of the really ugly rod covers like this one, sitting above ground level where you notice it (and maybe trip over it), you can go for the style designed to be buried flush with the ground and look much tidier, like this or perhaps this.
• If we are talking about a chargepoint fitted to the front wall of a garage on the side of the house, there's nothing stopping you taking the earth cable down the length of the garage and putting the rod in the back garden if that's less trouble (eg. if front is all concrete/paved driveway).

Essentially this is the difference between a good installer and one just doing it for the minimum price - the good one will look at the situation and look at the tidiest way to do it, perhaps offering you options to spend £50 extra and get a better job. The cheap one will just slam it in whichever way gets him onto the next job as quickly as possible...

 

[DJP31]

Was the earth rod installed close by ? My electrician suggest it's some cable running down from bottom of charger, which sounds a bit ugly looking, but your outside picture looks fine ?

The earth rod is just the other side of the fence you can see the edge of in the pic of the charge unit