Printable View
My fathers house has an old wiring system and there is no grounding wire. The plugs are all 2 prong and becuase of this the insurance company has demanded to have this upgraded or premiums will rise. my question is this....for an old house how does one estimate the cost of the job? Its plaster and lath and likely it will be difficult to fish new wire. Myself i have no idea what the cost could be. Thanks in advance. :)
Too many variables to even venture a guess. I'd suggest getting 3 or 4 estimates... then you will have a better idea. You may need to replace everything from the street, depending on what is there.
It'll probably cost way more then the premiums will rise. Old BX cable with metal boxes? Put in grounded outlets and ground them to the box. It'll show good on a tester.
How about a totally different idea? Look for another insurance company without this requirement. Now, there is nothing wrong with doing this for safety and reliability reasons, but if just to keep insurance it may not be necessary.
My former neighbor's daughter is an insurance agent. She wrote a quote for her mother and it would have required lots of tree work be done. Her mother stayed with her current insurer.
Hehe.... I hear you! Was just replacing a couple 2 prong outlets today in a house I'm fixing up. The electrical on this house is horrendous, at least 5 breaker boxes from the main feed... still haven't figured it all out yet. Anyways I would look for different insurance cuz replacing all the electrical would be a complete nightmare.
If it is plaster and lath, it may not be armored anything. Knob and tube was used up to the 30's, believe it or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo Graywacz
You'd come out better in the long run to find someone highly recommended who will work by the hour. Anyone who will quote a price on it will triple what they think they might can do it for, at the least. Anyone who gives you what seems like an unbelievable deal will probably discover pretty soon into the job that's it's takes way more time than they thought, and just leave. Nobody will be able to tell you how long it will take to do it properly to start with.
We did one last Summer, a single story over a basement with no ceiling in the basement when we started, that was built in the 1950s. There was not a staple in the wall anywhere, so it only took us about a week. We could pull a tape with the old wires in the majority of the cases. It really wasn't that bad.
We did part of one this week that was built in 1934, and it wouldn't have been so bad if it was just the original wiring, but it had been worked on, and "improved" several times since then. It took use two days to redo one side of the first floor, before finishing that side of the basement.
Both of those jobs were just parts of the overall job in both cases, and I have no idea what just the wiring part cost.
Plaster and lath is really not that bad, but having the little camera that you can stick in the wall can be a big help in a tight spot, as can be the little whisk that you catch with a hook. There are all sorts of cool tools that make a big difference. Sometimes a long complicated run for one wire might be required to avoid tearing into a wall. Old work boxes help a lot too. Sometimes you can disassemble/demolish the old metal box, let it fall down in the wall, pull the new wire, and use the old work box.
I even use old work boxes on new work, and have for years. The box is installed when the finish wall goes up. It gives you more freedom for exact location of a box, can be sealed all around the back before putting whatever it is going on the wall, and it gives a perfectly spaced mount for the wiring devices. You can only do this if you do all the work yourself, and you might have to explain it to the inspector to start with. I haven't run into one who didn't like the idea, and also the way I run a dado in the sole plate to pull the wire along the bottom of a wall without having to drill holes, and cut insulation to try to fit around wires.
If knob and tube, I wouldn't bother to take any out of the wall or attic. Just disconnect it so no one can ever use it again, and pull all new stuff.
Once on an old house with well finished interior, and exterior walls, we pulled the baseboards off, and ran new wire in the wall behind the baseboard. This made it easy to make a run up to a switch. We did have to make a couple of holes in the plaster walls, but plaster is easy to fix, and actually makes less mess overall, than having to do the same in sheetrock.
I recently bought a house built in 1980. The house needed a complete renovation due to massive neglect. My father and I did a bunch of electrical work to fix issues and modernize things. We replaced all of the outlets and switches plus all of the light fixtures. We did not replace any of the concealed wire, but we did add new wire in some walls. The general contractor estimated an electrician would have charged between $10,000 and $15,000 for the work we did and we did not run all new wire.
I probably spent over $2,500 on wire, new breakers, fixtures, and outlets/switches. I had to upgrade to arc fault breakers. Any rewire today is more expensive with code changes requiring arc fault breakers and tamper proof outlets.
The electrician wants $30/hr to do the job. Probably a lot cheaper to switch insurance companies as has been suggested.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Elfert
That's cheap! At least I'd never work for that price...Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Wintle
You have to take into account what the prevailing wages are. A carpenter in Nitro WV makes a lot less than one in NY cityQuote:
Originally Posted by Dan Hintz
Must be 30 bucks an hour for each man in a three man crew. I know a lot of people charge like that because they think it sounds like a better deal, than 90 bucks for three men when two are just laborer/helpers. I'm straight up about the cost to start with, and don't try to put dressing on the price. It's not a one man job, or else it would take forever. For three men than can get along pretty good with the work, it's not bad. That's what we get, and people think they are getting the best deal in the world.
What Mr. King says above. Two men will finish multiples faster than a single man. Take it from a guy that has pulled a lot of network cabling by himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom M King
A big problem in rewiring an old house is likely to be design. Unless the old house had an extraordinary electrical plan, the number and location of old outllets is probably inadequate. Simply duplicating the layout of old wiriing with modern wires seems a waste of time. Without a specific plan, I don't know how you can get a reliable estimate of cost.
One would think that any electrician who bids a rewire in an old house would suggest more receptacles and more circuits. In fact, my understanding is if a house is totally rewired you would be required to bring most of it to code which would include minimum two 20 amp circuits for the kitchen and a separate bathroom circuit. Arc fault breakers are required any time a circuit is touched. I would talk to the local electrical inspector to see what would be required during a total rewire. Even just rewiring only the receptacles to add grounds would require those breakers to be arc fault.
My father and I easily spent 150 to 200 hours on my electrical work. An experienced electrician with a helper could probably have done it in half the time, but I bet it would have cost $10,000 or more for labor alone not including materials. Most of the time it was just one person working on the electrical alone.