Is your apartment going to be separately metered?
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just replace the sub-panel feeding the house with a larger sub-panel?
Can you use tandem breakers to get in more circuits? These babies:
They are a life-saver in a small panel.
Those are good questions. The panel down at the house is only 100amp and all slots taken up. There’s another 100 amps up at the main panel supporting garage, pool and nonexistent spa. There are 2 circuits running to the back now basically supporting the lights and outlets. We will need to add 3 more circuits for refrigerator, laundry, microwave, wall convection heater and dishwasher (probably more if we were going to be perfect). If I bought a larger panel with more slots he would have to rewire everything into the new panel. And we still have to run 3 circuits under the house to the back.
It is actually going to Cost less to add a small sub panel and run one giant wire to the back and only have to wire up the circuits to a new small panel in back. The cost to trench is cheaper labor cost than paying an electrician to rewire 20 circuits on house panel and still have to run more wiring into the house.
I have spools of regular wire leftover in the garage. The only cost is going to be the fat wire to back and 2 small panels.
No attic? But could you conceivably add a faux (hollow) beam, and run the wire through there instead of under the house? Or even peripherally under crown molding at the roof/vaulted ceiling juncture?
Well…if you are going to upgrade the electrical…add the drawer lights ???
I suppose CB can run the wire in the middle of her beautiful high ceiling and add LED lights around the wire to make it look like a light fixture! ? ?
You’re putting a shower in for your tenant, I presume it will have colored lights, right?
Apartment is not separately metered. That would require a big permit and waiting months for SDGE to come analyze everything. Rent will be ‘including utilities’. My bigger problem with utilities is that my wifi gets very weak back in that room and Internet is important. So, I will need to figure out a booster or something. There is an Ethernet direct cable they can plug into in the desk area.
I really cannot run the wire north/south across my vaulted ceiling in the middle of the house because the beams run east/west. There would be a lot of punching holes through beams. Someone got those wires running north/south under the house so we will have to get a SAP down there to investigate. Today we are going to o pen up the floor in my laundry room (since it is getting refurbished with new flooring anyway) and poke around under the house to check the gas line and how we are going to get the wires to the back room.
The reason I don’t want to open up the flooring all the way through the house (to make it easy to work on these lines) is because I still haven’t decided if I am going to put in new flooring throughout the main part of the house. Currently have Merbau hardwood floors in the main great room. I either have to replace all the flooring into office, middle bedroom and master, or try to find the same flooring (which is proving impossible) to install and weave into the great room.
The laundry and powder room are getting 12x24 porcelain tile that I inherited from a contractor friend as leftovers from his recent project.
If you have an ethernet cable to the rental space, why not just hook it into a wi-fi router there in the suite? I had to run an ethernet cable to the farthest away space and put a wifi router there to get good service there and it works.
^exactly!
the rental space should have its own wi-fi router. problem solved
I’d repurpose the wire for the outdoor pool, it is easy to pull it out.
The main question is that if you want to make it a real “rental”. you need separate meter for everything and that is extremely expensive. Otherwise, it can only be marketed as an “in law unit”, you have to bear the cost of all utilities. Even if you can have the tenant pay for a part of it, it is always difficult to calculate.
What about the ac/heating unit? I know San Diego does not have much of a winter, but I guess you have to account for it.
Before you really start the job, you should investigate the rental market and find out a unit like your design will rented for. Its too late if you find the cost/benefit does not work out after the fact.
I am super sure CB and her RE agent got that figured out. And she said utilities will be included in the rent.
And no, CB is not going to pull her pool wire - this I am sure, too. 
Having a shared meter supports the higher rent that the agent recommends. Although we don’t use that much energy here, it’s very expensive, as is water. Cb could determine the square footage of the apartment as a percent of all floor space and apply it to the last year’s utility bills just to get a ballpark figure for the rental. Then consider that figure when setting the rent. My very rough just-a-guess would be somewhere in the $75-100 range monthly. Not very scientific of course, but even energy efficient appliances do use substantial energy.
The assumption all along is that it is an ‘in law’ unit. This is really what the purpose of this unit is for. I always assumed utilities would be included in the rent. Probably will have to put some kind of wifi router in the back.
There is no way I can pull the wires going from main panel out on garage under the yard to the place where the wires are sticking out of box (unused) at the other end of the yard. We are just going to use those same wires to junction (inside a special outdoor junction box) to continue down to the house. Essentially there will bethree panels involved to the back unit. One up at the meter main panel on garage which has a single 50 amp switch to the wires going to back of house (through a junction box in yard), one on a new small panel (one 50 amp switch) on back of house and one with all the separate circuits inside the unit itself to control the circuits separately.
And, of course, all I care about is where I am going to put this little sub panel so it doesn’t ruin the decor
@Marilyn - you are absolutely right about the cost for utilities. When D2 lived in the 505 square foot studio near us her utility costs were around $60 per month with no washer/dryer or air conditioner.
If you are not pulling the pool wire, it is better to run a new wire using that breaker space in the main panel. Leave the pool wire capped and unused. Its not advisable to run a spliced wire from the main to a sub panel. You need an electrician.
CB has an electrician. 
Who said wiring can’t be spliced? Yes it can be. In a proper junction box.
Yes, licensed electrician is going to do a junction box. He’s completely no back one more time to analyze. We will just dig the trenches and do the pulling of stuff through the crawlspace