Well, we are still in the process of trying to buy a house that we had found. We finally agreed on a price, but there are a few items that came up during the inspection that need taken care of. One is a bulging wall (only is bulging about an inch and the source of the bulge has been taken care of so we will just have to get wall anchors at some point) and the other is the electrical line coming into the house.
Currently the mast head on the electrical line is broken, which can let water into the line, also, there is no drip loop installed which further increases the chances of water in the line. I am wondering how much this will cost to get fixed. Also, if there is not enough excess line to make the loop, the electrician may have to run a new line down the side of the house.
I know some of the guys on here have experience dealing with electrical or home improvement issues before. Does anyone know how much I can expect to pay to get this electrical issue fixed?
If water got into the conduit, your meter socket may need to be replaced. Check to see if there is any corrosion in there. A new service head isn’t that expensive. If you need to replace the service entrance cable, that is going to be a little more. I would guesstimate 2-300 for a electrician to replace the head, and about double that if he has to replace the entrance cable. That’s if its a simple easy to get to and not too long of a service entrance. The power company ties into the service drop, so it would have to be coordinated with them.
Is your service cable in conduit, or is it just SEU strapped to the house?
It is only a ranch house, the it is pretty short and the entrance is not that high off the ground and the entrance cable is pretty short, so hopefully it would be easy for the electrician to get at. I am not really sure what the answer is to your last question though (conduit vs. SEU).
Any chance of a picture or two? After 25+ years as an electrician, I have found that a picture truely is worth a 1000 words. But from what you are saying, without seeing it, I would est. under a $100.00 to change the weatherhead. If the cable would need replaced also, then you talking about reinspection, the possiblities of other items not meeting current codes, meter socket water damage, ect, ect.
Personnally if it were my house, or soon to be mine, I would pay for an electrician to come open the meter socket, check for water damage, and if none were present I would have him change the weatherhead, and look at the drip loop as a non-issue. I say this because, I have done 100’s of services over the years, leaving anywhere from 2’ to 6’ for the power company to connect to and leave a nice drip loop. They always cut it back to around a foot, and leave little to no loop.
You may have copper in there.
I think there are a few electricians on Pittspeed that might be able to hook you up. I work in the supply end of the electrical business, but have done plenty of wiring. What you need done is pretty easy. A new head is about 20 bucks, and the cable might cost 30-40 bucks.
So from the sounds of it, it should be mostly labor that I am paying for correct? I shouldn’t expect to see a huge bill. I expect to pay like $100 an hour for the labor plus parts, would that be reasonable? I usually deal with Peter’s Electric in Bethel Park.
Not sure what Peters charges, but 100/hr sounds a little high. I would think more like 60-70 for resi work would be reasonable. Maybe Tom could answer that with a little more current experience. But yes, it’s ,mostly labor. Like tom said, have them check that meter socket for possible corrosion. That would be a future trouble spot if it were corroded. Otherwise, it’s not a big job to correct your problem.
No problem and good luck. If you are planning to replace anything electrical inside, like switches and receptacles or anything like that, hit me up i might be able to help you out.
I definitely will. I plan on replacing all of the plugs, switches, receptacles, GFI’s, etc. And my wife loves to get fancy switch and receptacle covers for some reason.
$45-70 an hour would sound right to me, but I’m in Fayette county, and the prices are a little less. And for me the price is based solely on the attitude of the guy, that knows a guy, that knows someone that does the same work for $10.00 an hour.
its going to be hard to find a guy to do a service for hourly rate. The standard is a set price. I can usually replace a 100a service in about 4 hours by myself. My trouble shooting rate is 119.50 for the first hour and 69.00 there after. (the first hour covers drive time and most trouble shooting takes about an hour). My standard price for a 100a service is 1475.00. You cant make any money doing it for 69 an hour after you pay your bills you will not have anything left over. Just our advertising is almost 40k a year.
If your in the city it has to be done my a registered electrician.
How does the mast run up the side of the house? Does it go through the roof? If it runs through the roof, it can be a real pain in the ass. Plus you have the minor costs of flashing, shingles, etc.
BTW, telephone and cable are not allowed to attach to the same mast as electrical service. You might be able to leave the existing mast in place for cable and telephone and install a new mast for the electrical.
who is footing the bill for this? how up to date is the whole service? is it breakers instead of fuses, etc?
i dont think its very uncommon for this to be updated when a house is sold. if its not on your dime, just request that they change the whole thing.
UPDATE: Well we aren’t getting the house anymore. The guy selling it was a real tool. His asking price was $149,500, we offered $140,000 and he said no, that he would only take asking price. We countered with $142,000 and he laughed and said we were crazy. After that, we said we weren’t interested anymore because the guy was being so difficult to work with, so we walked away from the deal. Well it turns out that his mother is on the deed with him and called the realtor when she found out about our offers and asked if we would consider $145,000. We agreed to that and started to move forward with the inspection and mortgage application. We went for the inspection and found out that there was a bowing wall in the basement, the water heater sprung a significant leak while we were there, the electrical line needed fixed, the roof was already 15 years old, the windows were single pane glass, the A/C was ancient, none of the GFI’s worked, and the Radon gas was over the acceptable limit. We asked for the wall, electrical, radon, and water heater to be fixed but he refused to spend any money on the house. He said that he didn’t have the cash to fix the stuff and he wouldn’t change the price, so we walked away from the deal. I still can’t believe that the guy wanted $149,500 for a 3 bedroom ranch with a 2 car garage (2 cars deep not side to side) with an un-updated finished basement, old windows, an un-updated kitchen (still had cabinets from the 50s), and had all the issues that I mentioned. Not to mention the second bathroom that was in the basement needed completely redone. I think he was lucky to get any offer at all in this market. He will be sitting on this house for years if he keeps being such a prick.
Thanks for all the help and recommendations though.
Wow, that sucks. That guy really is a tool. Your requested repairs were quite reasonable (except maybe the radon thing, to me thats nothing but a huge scam, but thats JMO). Those items were basic mechanics, that he is going to have to deal with anyway. I don’t blame you for walking, i think i would have flipped the tool off on the way out the door.LOL:finger:
I would have considered it if I hadn’t looked up his criminal history using the link in this thread, haha. Not exactly the type of guy I would want to piss off.