"Jeffrey J. Kosowsky" wrote in
message ...
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

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.

Phil Scott