Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote:

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:
1. Attaching to existing electric company service at the drop (about
20 feet above ground where it enters the house from the street)
2. Running new cable/conduit from the drop to a new outdoor ground
level electric meter with new 200A main breaker
3. Running cable into basement and then about another 25 feet to
current location of old 100A box
4. Installing new 200A 42 circuit panel alongside old 100A panel
5. 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.
6. Sinking new grounding bars to provide ground service (since the old
water pipe method is no longer to code)
7. Ripping out the old 100A main breaker switch and wiring that
originally went from the drop to the old panel

Thanks,
Jeff


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.

Bob