When to pull the plug on an electrician?

[Ole Anderson]

I wired my entire house including meter box and 200 amp panel under a homeowner permit. 47 years ago. Hasn't burned down yet. 200 amp seemed like overkill on a 1550 sf ranch with basement. That panel is now full.

[Bruce Wrenn]

An oral contract isn't worth the paper its written on.

Move on. A new service panel is a bit fussy, with potentially braiding the wires along the bus bars and wiring arc faults if that is code for your city. The city will connect the three wires to your box and the main shut off. The box has to be double grounded in our city (two copper rods pounded in the earth). Me? I'm a bit of an electrician, and would not do a panel change myself.

Some locations require four wire services. Locally here power company runs to your meter base, but in town (town power system) if it's under ground, you have to run to base of pole and leave enough wire to go up the pole. If it's overhead, you have to leave three feet of service wire out of the mast.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I'd suggest getting on the phone now and getting more current quotes.
We just had a meeting with the electrician doing the wiring on our new house 2 days ago.

If you got a quote based on prices from last November - there's no way the guy is going to honor them now.

Our electrician told us his materials have increased between 3 to 5 times what they were last October. Some of his copper changes every other day.

You current guy's behavior is normal for 90% of all the current crop of people in the trades. With our 6 rental houses, we deal with them all the time.
Even with that going for us, we still have problems getting someone to even return our phone calls.

If anyone wants to make a killing in the trades today, the easiest way to do it is to simply answer or return phone calls. That's it. You don't even have to have the best price or the best workmanship - just answer your phone.
That's sad.

[Zachary Hoyt]

If the guy had told me the price had gone up I would have been willing to pay more, within reason, but he hasn't mentioned that. I have left messages with 4 electricians and will see if anything comes of that, but I am not very sanguine. Monday I will call the utility and the town and find out if I am allowed to do it myself, and if so who I need to talk to to get my plan approved. The place where I want to install the panel is in an interior wall, so it would be about 20 feet horizontally from the meter, or 30+ feet of wire. I know I'll need to get a meter/breaker combo to be able to run that far inside the building, and the main panel will have to be wired as a subpanel with the ground and neutral separate. The old service runs about 20 feet around the outside of the house in conduit and then pops through the wall to the panel, but I'd rather have the panel buried in an interior wall than on the surface of the exterior wall. I need to find out from someone if the existing mast is OK for 200 amps or if I would need to replace it. I know the wire inside it would need to be larger.

One thing that I have been wondering about is whether the drop from the pole to the meter box is still live. It sounds like most often it is, so I would have to get the utility to come out twice, once to turn off the power at the pole and again to put in the new drop and meter and turn the power on at the end of the job. It does seem like materials are very high now, but if I can use aluminum for the 200 amp runs it wouldn't be too bad. By the way, what is the proper way to say 4/0? Is it four ought, or four owe, or four zero? I figure if I can sound like less of an idiot when talking to the inspectors and people it might help a bit. Thank you all very much.

[lowell holmes]

Find some help here,

https://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=m...al+contractors

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Too large a portion of Tradesmen here who are self employed seem notoriously unreliable. Years ago, I needed a short section of stone foundation wall repaired about 18 ft and 7 ft high. I didn't care if they wanted to just do it over with block. I called over 12 masons and despite 7 appointments to come and look at the job, only 3 showed up and only 2 gave estimates. The highest one was the guy who showed up wearing flip flops, driving a station wagon with a bag of sand in the back. A buddy suggested I call a friend of his that had a company that does foundations for new homes. I reluctantly called him and he said the winter always leaves him with idle workers and if they can put a scaffold up with a plastic tent over the job, they would heat it and do it for cost in January. Heck Yeah. A crew of 3 guys descended on the place, tore out all the rock, poured a new footer and had the wall built in three days. Total was $2,800. 6 years ago, I met a commercial electrician who was between jobs. I mentioned that I needed a generator tap in with safety cut off to power things down at the barn when the power goes out. He redid the box with a new one 100 amp, put in a manual safety switch, installed a 50 amp rv receptacle, rewired the pump house lights and installed a new dusk to dawn for cost of materials and $60 an hour. total was just over $570 and he was done in a morning. ( I did have the rv receptacle ) We had two houses near each other. Had a fire in one and it burned the overhead wire going to the second house. Cost $1,200 just to have a new place for the overhead wire to attach to the second house and run down to the main box. I was wanting and waiting for the inspector to approve the job so the power could be connected. Came home one night and noticed the lights in the second house were on. No body ever tld me the thing was approved and the power turned on.

[Jim Becker]

Zachary, right now, every electrician I know is using aluminum for the big feeds because as expensive as it is on its own, it's a fraction of the cost of big copper at the present time. The only downside is that it's physically larger by a magnitude which makes routing it a whole bunch of fun. Even the short length from the generator transfer switch to our main panel was a two person exercise when the generator went in recently!! The sizing requirement for 200 amp service is "big".

Absolutely ascertain what the status is of the existing drop from the power company. If the meter is pulled, you can still use a meter to check for power if you want, but confirming with the power company is always a good idea. The drop may need resizing anyway if it was installed long ago for lower amperage service.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I'm not looking forward to running the aluminum, but I think I should be able to do it with suitably large conduit. The drop will have to be replaced with a larger wire, I would think, as the old service was 100 amp and the new will be 200. I just need to find out from the town if I need to be getting my design approved by them or by the electrical inspector, and then find an inspector who is willing to look at it, and then I should be able to start. I'm hoping that by doing it myself I'll be able to get the power on relatively soon, but that may not be realistic.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I had a call back from the local electrical inspector and he was very helpful and kindly explained a number of things that I didn't understand. I hadn't thought I would hear from him till Monday at the earliest. He says that since I am putting in a meter main and wiring the panel as a subpanel I can use SER cable from the meter main to the panel rather than individual conductors in conduit. I'll still have to stuff 3 conductors into the mast, but that will at least be outside instead of in a dirt floored crawlspace off the basement. I've ordered the wire online since the box stores are out of stock, and will hope to pick up the panel and meter main on Monday in Syracuse. Thank you all very much for your help, and for encouraging me to think about doing it myself. I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that I could, and now it seems a little daunting but well within the range of the possible, and doubtless it will be educational too.

[Brian Elfert]

I replaced the meter base and added an exterior disconnect switch at my house in late 2020. Mine is underground service. I pulled a permit and had to have it inspected before the power company would reconnect. It was done in a single long day. It was unseasonably cold which caused it to take longer due to working slower in the cold.

Nearly all electrical panels are indoors in Minnesota. I had replaced the main panel inside a few weeks before replacing the meter base.

[Brian Elfert]

Our electrician told us his materials have increased between 3 to 5 times what they were last October. Some of his copper changes every other day.

What electrical materials have increased that much since October? I follow the pricing for electrical materials from a distance and not seeing prices up anywhere near that much since October. Certainly, electrical materials prices are way up over the past two years. Romex has gone way up over the past year, but it doesn't seem to have climbed that much since October.

The price of raw copper is only up about 9% in the past three months and 11% over the past six months.

[Rich Engelhardt]

What electrical materials have increased that much since October?

I didn't question him about specifics.
Since he's doing all the wiring in the whole new house, it could be anything.

If I run into him again I'll ask him - but - I doubt I will. His part of the electrical doesn't include the actual hands on work.

[Andrew Joiner]

---Maybe the disappearance of the electrician will turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

I like your attitude Zachary.

[Steve Jenkins]

Glad you jumped in and did it yourself. Congrats

[Zachary Hoyt]

It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to do it myself if Steve Jenkins had not suggested it, but now it seems like it should be something I can do with input from the inspector. I am just hoping that the septic system installer does follow through with what he has said he'll do in May or June depending on the weather. I have dug a couple of foundations with rental trackhoes, but a septic system is a whole other thing.

So far I am 0 for 2 on hiring work done, first the mason last fall and now the electrician, but it'll all work out in the end. It'll mean more time but less money put into these jobs, and that should be a good tradeoff.