We have an old Victorian home built in about 1870 with 100A service. We are looking to upgrade to 200A.
Our electrician quoted a price of $2800 (14 hours of labor for electrician plus assistant at $110/hour plus about $1200 in parts). - Does the 14 hours of time for master electrician plus assistant sound right for this job? (includes maybe 2 hours of commuting time) - Does $1200 in parts (assuming they mark up parts about 20-30%) sound right?
Note we are located in a Boston suburb.
The job involves:
Attaching to existing electric company service at the drop (about 20 feet above ground where it enters the house from the street)
Running new cable/conduit from the drop to a new outdoor ground level electric meter with new 200A main breaker
Running cable into basement and then about another 25 feet to current location of old 100A box
Installing new 200A 42 circuit panel alongside old 100A panel
Making existing 100A panel into a subpanel of the new panel and connecting to new panel. I believe this involves separating the grounds from commons on the subpanel and adding a 100A breaker to the new main panel.
Sinking new grounding bars to provide ground service (since the old water pipe method is no longer to code)
Ripping out the old 100A main breaker switch and wiring that originally went from the drop to the old panel
The "parts" sounds really high to me, but I haven't bought huge copper wire in a while. (is he using copper or aluminum for the service entrance and feeder conductors?) No matter how much the copper costs, $1200 for parts still sounds high.
The labor doesn't sound unreasonable, but it depends on how difficult it is routing the big conduit/cable, and whatever hassles from the permit office and the building inspector.
Half assed shortcut, IMO. Rip out the old panel, stick in a new one with modern hardware and breakers. This should be no big deal. By leaving your old panel in place, he's saving a lot of time - time that it sounds like he's quoting you anyway! Further, you just paid 3 freak'n grand and you're still stuck with a bunch of (100 year?) old gear.
Still no big deal.
Sounds to me like this job should be 800-1500 bucks, but I can't see your basement from here, nor your 100 year old wires.
I'd get another quote.
Using the Yellow Pages? It's a sure way to get a get a greedy moron over to your house.
Maybe call a HVAC contractor or two and see who they use for their electrical. He's probably unlisted. People upgrade their panels all the time to handle new air conditioners.
When I put a 100A subpanel in our detached garage ~7 years ago, we were looking at something like $700CDN (~$450US at the time) for 110 feet of #4.
4-ought for 200A is likely to be about double that.
So, $1200 may not be that unreasonable for parts - new conduit, meter base, everything.
If it's within the OP's comfort zone, he may want to ask the electrician to recompute using aluminum conductors. Cut our parts cost in half.
14 hours does seem a trifle much for two professional electricians (or at one with a decent helper), but without seeing the situation personally, I'd take that with a grain of salt.
Prices for construction vary widely for a lot of reasons... some hasher might be able to put that in for you perfectly well for half the money...and you would luck out... or he might do something stupid that leaves your house and lives at risk such as improper bonding for the new heavier service or overloaded neutrals or whatever.
To me 2800 sounds reasonable enough for quality work... a rip off guy would nail you for 4 or 5k or more... much under 2k the guy is running thin, he is selling his expertise short for some reason... any kind of reason, maybe he is cash only, no taxes etc at 2k. that could come back on you. Then there is the logistics of the job.
On balance his figure considering everything these days is in the mid range... and the time? He has to figure all of the time, permitting, gathering the parts (3 hours easily) some travel... some contingency for hassling... he is not giving his labor away...but he is getting a fair price. The sign of a competent person. But you could shop around and maybe save
500 dollars...if you save more than that its getting risky.
When the dollars go too low the tendency to cut corners to save ones ass and pay the rent goes way up.
Na... the house is old but a 100 amp panel could easily be only 1=20 or 30 years old.
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can't see your
Not many quality guys I know would dream of going that much work for such a small amount of money. But yes one can beat himself into the poverty class with low ball bids if he wants...Ive done it on occasion. its not bright though. and does not sustain a top quality operation ...for very long at least..
The wiring may well be 100 years old, but it may not be..at that age wiring would not support our living styles even 40 years back... the place has probably been rewired as evidenced by the 100 amp panel... 100 years ago 30 amp buzz fuse boxes and 110 service was all you got.
You can always find a cheaper guy..around you can get chinese guys who have just snuck off of freighters working for underground chinese contractors who will do that job for parts cost and two bowls of rice.
In the US historically we have had a live and let live as long as its reasonable way of doing business...thats been viable, everyone makes money.. the cash flows...its a good thang.
In the third world with half the people starving its a different scene, every single penny is worth a screaming match, accusations of fraud etc.
Another contractor sent me a Korean customer, slum lord sort of property, a triplex with 45 people living in it.. black mold... rotten sils, holes rusted in the bathtubs. ... I sent a man to start the job to see if if could fly... day two I get a call from the Korean... he had been utterly sweet two days prior... I arrive at his laundry business and he is still sweet...doenst speak much english so communitcation is hard until we get to the pricing my guy put on his invoice for calking... $2.27 a tube, one tub.
The Korean guy screams at me...T000 DOLLAHHH! TWENNY SEBEN CENZ!! I BUY DOLLA NINEY ATE!! YOU FUCK ME! YOU FUCK ME! .... that went on for a while as the man tried to get the material below the retail sticker price on the tube... I had quoted him 30,000 dollars for the work he needed two days before... we lasted one day on the job.
29 cents worth, my guy billed him the calking at cost though for various reason..it was a two bit item etc.. That philosophy of utter ruthlessness and human stress and strain over pennies creates a non viable business environment and that creates third world conditions...and we have those in many of our US cities today... trade rates are going lower... sone trademen get to have no retirements now, no savings for the kids education..and no health care. But yes, one can still drive the prices lower, particularly if his kids start going hungry... you can get him down another 400 dollars.
the mentality that one can always drive the price lower, with no regard for others or the man doing good work for you is
It's not much work, and it's way, way too much money if they are leaving the old panel in. I would wager he will find a very wide spread in price if he gets 1-2 more people in there looking at it.
[Tons of completely irrelevent BS snipped]
The perception that quality work and price are somehow related is an expensive misperception to hold. If someone comes in and tells me that he wants to, basically, save time for himself by leaving in old work and still charge a lot of money, there's not much more I'm interested in hearing from that person.
Good question. The current 100A panel is in good shape and by its looks is no more than about 20 years old.
In general I would agree about ripping out the old, I am just not sure it will gain me much.
The current panel if full with 30 circuits. The biggest panel we can put in is 42 circuits.
We are planning on adding 2-3 central AC units plus adding a number of new circuits to fill in around the house (it's a big house and many of the rooms have only one outlet which in some cases is ungrounded, so we are going to fill in with new circuits).
Though I would aesthetically prefer it all in one box, my concern is that if we consolidate it all into one box, we will be left with very little space for expansion.
Any disadvantages of aluminum for Main's wiring vs. copper (other than snob appeal)?
[I know that for circuits, aluminum has had problems in the past]
Also, is it really true that the biggest parts cost may be the wire as opposed to the panel, main breaker, grounding rods, meter box, and miscellaneous connectors?
Heya Jeff, I just had mine done...I'm in Milford, MA cost me 950$...thats for a new line from the peak of my roof, new 200a meter, 200a large breaker panel with about 15 breakers installed. The guy I used is named Mike at Milford Electric, it was him and a helper. Took them most of the day. If your in their service area give them a yell, I can't say enough good things about them, very profesional, very clean and treated my wife and kids like royalty. 509-473-8283 Take care,
I like consistancy, myself. I also like having lots of room, so I use 1/2 height breakers. 20 years is pretty old. Can you still easily find breakers for it?
There you go.
I recently paid exactly the same for the same in Colorado - except my house has Al wires, so lots of expensive wire nuts. He wired up a new AC as well. A quick check of my records shows 40 bucks/hr for 16 man hrs and 300 bucks in gear. It's all Siemens equipment. Fine stuff. 3 of those man hrs were not spent at the house - basically quoting, specing and purchasing the equipment. I got the permit in my own name. I paid on a T&M basis. I think I was on the generous side in calculating their hours. The guy certainly didn't argue. I cut the check before he drove off. Heck of a lot cheaper than 2800.
We are also in Boston, and paid $3300 about 2 years ago for roughly the same thing. Yes, we know we paid more than the average, BUT we had hired Robert L. Pann company (sort of a jack-of-all-trades contracting company) knowing they were more expensive, because they were available to do it in the timeframe we wanted. I would imagine if I had been more flexible on timing, I could have gotten it for between $500 to $1000 cheaper.
These guys got the whole thing done in a day, but they had 4 people on-site the whole time (one of them appeared to be more of an apprentice though). They didn't mess with configuring the old service as a subpanel, they just ripped out the existing fuse box and pulled all the new circuits over to the new breaker panel. There also wasn't room on the basement wall where the tiny fuse box was mounted, so they knocked together some plywood and 2x4's, secured it to a different wall, and mounted the new breaker panel on that. They also found an old Edison Electric index card under the fuse box from 1929, presumably when the thing was originally installed -- that was kind of cool.
As another point of comparison, Pann charged $700 to run a new circuit to our furnace when we found the existing one wasn't working (again, this was on a couple hours notice, outside of business hours, but I was annoyed at myself for not just running that circuit on my own).
No. Provided that the service equipment (the main and the sub panels) are rated for Al - most are. The electrician has to remember to use the proper de-oxidant grease and proper workmanship, but aside from that, there is no increased risk.
[Branch circuits in Al are a different story of course. Most jurisdictions prohibit it.]
Well, it depends on how long the feed wire has to be versus how much other parts you have to buy. A service upgrade _could_ just require _no_ new wire, just a replacement panel (many power companies are installing 200A (or even 400A) service equipment no matter how small the main panel is going to be) and some labour to shift things over.
Or it _could_ require LOTS of 4-0 cable and no panel.
Depends on the circumstances.
In my case, upgrading my garage (from a single 15A circuit to a 100A subpanel) cost approximately $600 in service wire (Al), and about $400 in panel, breakers and fixtures - over half of the $400 was lighting fixtures!
Plus $200 for the electrician - a personal friend. The parts were "at cost".
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