One thing you might want to think about a bit and before you run your power for the welder is pros and cons of different places you could put the welder.

Mine is right next to the garage door opening (back up against the wall just behind the welding table shown below). That way I can weld outside on a vehicle or on my welding table rolled into the door opening.. btw I built the welding table out of scrap and left the under/back side of the table open where it can roll over the welder when not in use... With the welding table, it's much easier welding stuff at standing height than squatting over to do it on the floor...

<img src="http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/d/a/dandeman/weldingtable.jpg" alt=" - " />

Any time I'm welding directly on a vehicle, I always like to have a water hose turned on and ready to squirt in case the unthinkable would happen.. You can see the hose connection just outside the door in the picture above..

and.... god it just keeps coming... if you have water and sewer drain connections close to the garage, put in a laundry sink as BobG mentioned above..When you are filthy dirty and greasy this is very handy to have rather than going in the house... I built mine into the work bench as shown below..
<img src="http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/d/a/dandeman/photos/workbench.jpg" alt=" - " />
This is what the bench looks like when I'm working on car stuff and welding.. Alot of the stuff you see on the shelves above are for building amateur radio repeaters.. which I do here after I ummmm, clean up the place a bit.. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

If you build any wood shelves or work benches, take the time to soak the wood with a thick layer of polyurethane.. The surface will be much harder to dents and leaking, grimy oil from something you are working on won't soak into the wood. The bench surface you see above is just plain old soft white pine shelving boards, but after 20 years of pretty hard use still look pretty good thanks to the polyurethane coating.

Now if I only had a vehicle lift, instead of crawling under to do welding.. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

<small>[ June 12, 2003, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: Dandeman ]</small>