October 2026
Stand outside and look at the eave first
Go out to the wall you were planning to mount the charger on and look up. If there is a roof edge above it, that is where a winter’s worth of snow is going to come off, in a sheet, with weight behind it. That one observation rules out more charger locations on a Show Low house than anything to do with the charger itself, and almost nobody makes it before they order the unit. People shop brands, amperage and cable length first, then ask what the install costs, and the answer turns out to depend on the wall rather than the box: how far that spot is from the panel, what is between the two, and what the roof does above it.
Distance costs money in a specific way
A Level 2 charger wants a dedicated 240 volt circuit, and a common install lands at 40 or 50 amps of breaker feeding a unit set to draw somewhat less. That is substantial current, and the wire has to carry it without the voltage sagging along the way.
Over a short run from a panel in the garage to a wall ten feet away, the conductor size is whatever the breaker requires and that is the end of it. Push the same circuit a hundred and twenty feet out to a detached garage across a yard and the math changes: voltage drop over that distance means stepping the conductors up a size, sometimes two, to keep the charger seeing what it needs. Bigger conductors cost more per foot, and they also need bigger conduit and bigger terminations.
Trenching is the other distance cost, and up here it is not trivial. Rock turns up often enough in this country to matter, and the trench still has to make depth with the right cover over the raceway. A detached garage with no existing feed is a different project from a detached garage that already has a subpanel in it.
So the order of preference, purely on cost, runs: a wall that backs onto or sits near the panel, then another wall of the same attached garage, then an exterior wall of the house, then a detached structure that already has power, then a detached structure that does not.
Before any of that: does the service have room
This is the question that stops some installs before they start, and I would rather raise it in the first phone call than after the charger has been delivered. It is also the first thing we check on any charger install in Show Low.
Adding 40 or 50 amps of continuous load to a house is a real addition. On a 200 amp service with a modern panel and gas heat, usually fine. On a 100 amp service feeding a house with electric heat, a well pump, an electric water heater and a range, often not, and the honest answer is that the service needs attention first or the charger needs to be load managed.
There is a calculation for this, and it is not a guess. Existing load gets added up per the code method, the new charger gets added, and either the service covers it or it does not. If it does not, there are two roads. One is a service upgrade, which solves it permanently and is worth doing if you were going to need it anyway. The other is load management, where the charger shares capacity with the house and backs off when demand is high, which is legitimate and considerably cheaper than new service. Both are real answers. Which one fits depends on your panel and how you live.
Snow, and where the unit cannot go
Here is where a Show Low install differs from a Phoenix install, and it is the part out-of-area advice gets wrong.
Snow comes off a roof edge in a sheet, with weight behind it. Anything mounted under that drip line gets hit, and gets hit repeatedly all winter. A charger is a box with a cord hanging off it and it is not designed to take a roof’s worth of snow landing on it. So the mounting spot goes out from under the eave line, or under something that protects it, and never directly beneath a valley where two roof planes dump together.
Drift is the second half. Snow piles against a wall and builds, and the pile is deeper on the lee side. Mount the unit and its disconnect high enough that you are not digging the thing out in January, and high enough that the connector is not sitting in wet snow when it is not plugged in. I set the holster above where the drift gets, not at the height that looks good in a photograph.
Hard sun is the third thing. We are high enough that ultraviolet eats plastics and rubber faster than people expect. A unit on a south or west wall with no shade will age visibly. If the siting choice is otherwise a tie, take the north or east wall, or put a small roof over it.
The cold cable problem
This one rarely comes up before the install and everybody who charges outside in winter learns it anyway. A charging cable at ten degrees is stiff. It does not want to coil, it fights the holster, and it will hold whatever shape it froze in. A cheap cable is noticeably worse than a good one at this, which is one of the few places where spending more on the unit itself actually pays.
Two practical consequences. First, get more cable length than the geometry strictly requires, because a stiff cable does not stretch the last foot. Second, put the unit where you can reach the car’s port without a hard bend, which usually means thinking about which way you park rather than centering the charger on the wall.
Carports, detached garages, and the open-air install
A carport is a decent answer up here. It covers the unit and the cable, it keeps the car off the drift, and the posts give you something to mount to. A detached garage is fine if it already has adequate feed, and the thing to check is whether its existing subpanel has capacity and a proper ground, because a lot of the older outbuilding feeds in this area were sized for a light and a receptacle.
Fully outdoors on a post works too. It needs an outdoor-rated unit, a disconnect where the code wants one, and the post has to be set properly because it will take wind and snow load for twenty years.
Permit, inspection, and the receptacle shortcut
A dedicated 240 volt circuit is permitted work and gets inspected. That is in the job and in the number, and it is not an upsell. The inspector is looking at the conductor size against the breaker, the grounding, the disconnect where one is required, and the outdoor rating on anything exposed.
There is a shortcut that gets suggested a lot, which is installing a 240 volt receptacle instead of a hardwired unit so you can plug the charger in and call it an appliance. It is legal when it is done correctly and it has one genuine advantage: you can take the charger with you if you move. It also has a cost, which is that a high-current plug and receptacle cycled daily for years is a connection that can loosen and heat, and the outdoor versions are the ones that tend to give trouble first. For a unit living outside through our winters I would rather hardwire it. In a dry attached garage, the receptacle is a reasonable call.
The site visit
The panel first: its rating, how full it is, whether there is a double-pole space available, and what condition the gear is in. Then the route from panel to the proposed spot, measured, with a note of what has to be drilled, fished, or trenched. Then the mounting wall itself, the eave above it, and how the snow comes off that roof plane. Then where you actually park and which side the car’s port is on.
That walk is where the real number comes from, and it is why I will not quote a charger install over the phone from a photograph.
If you are at the stage of picking a wall, that is the right time to call rather than after the unit arrives. Call (928) 358-2546 or describe the setup on the contact page and we will come look at it.