December we did the same job. 4+ car garage fed off pool house about 200'. We used #2. Why? Because we get hit all the time with oh by the way we are going to have this. Car hoists, electric floor heat, finish the 2nd floor, tennis / basketball court lighting, furnace, A/C, electric gate, ???.
We only had a few breakers but we still used a 20 space panel. Why? Because we are ready to do more work for them. If the customer spends more than my home cost on a garage then they desirve more that NEC minimums. There is also the other side of the spectrem where a person is running an auto shop out of his back yard.
The added costs for us was little. Does that make us a bunch of hacks for not calculating the draw of only what is on the print? Are we bad for making the EMT and boxes too big for the wire used also?
Tom
