Home Owners - What would you do? ( Wiring House/Garage)

You should probably call you town/city to see what their requirements are.
Just don’t call from your house :smiley:

They might need to inspect it. If you skip out on it, when you sell, a good home inspector will look for that inspection sticker and you will lose money.

i dont think angel would be all that upset about pissing outside, maybe sober

i want to get my electrical re-worked also… i’ve done some upgrades myself but my incoming service is only 60 amps which fucking blowssss (house built in 1927). I want to get more service brought to the house and would really like to have everything cleaned up since there is a hybrid of old and new electrical in the house with much of the old electrical not even in service anymore…

so what i’m saying is if you guys find someone good with reasonable prices i’d love to get their # :slight_smile:

For something like the main-panel and such; I’d have someone licensed do it (also, don’t forget to have a permit pulled or have them do it). For little stuff; like rooms and in-house (other than panels) it’s easy.

If you are changing out your main, you are better off having a contractor do it. The downside is some local codes require smokes to be installed as well as then meeting the GFCI AFCI codes for bedrooms, hallways, bathrooms and kitchens.

I can get you all material at my cost which is a HUGE savings over having the contractor supply it, or even going to Home Depot. If you need a contractor, I can set you up with 3 of my most trusted customers to come out and give you estimates.

if it were me, id have a professional do it with some kind of warrenty. when we put the addition on my garage, my dad and his friend that apparently knows what hes doing, ran another line to the garage and wired in everything. well couple years later none of the lights work. plugs work fine but somewhere between the switch and ballasts its dead. i gotta sit out there with a trouble light now to work until it warms up and he gets out here to rip everything apart to find the problem.

Why don’t you ask your insurance company?
If your house burns down and you tell them your buddy did the work they won’t be happy.
Don’t be pennywise and pound foolish.
Another thing is, having friends do that kind of work can kill a friendship. I mean building a fence, etc is one thing but wiring is a little different.
I had a friend help me one time and I was not happy, so then what, sue your friend?
My 2 cents.

When I first bought my house we had to do the same thing. I had a licensed electrician put in the new box, run an outside outlet, and run 20 or so feet to the garage with 220v. I want to say it ran me about 2 grand for him to do it, that included bringing in the backhoe and digging the trench. The rest of the wiring in the house I updated myself, I just have to get it inspected before I can sell the house (which means I’ll probably have to pay someone to fix something).

I can say that running a sub feed in the garage is easy. Nearly anyone that has a good knowledge of electrical and the codes can do it. I have done several, and have yet to have any issues. I even ran electrical, data and water to a barn 1 acre away from the house 10 years ago in Rochester. I was 16, it is all still functional.

…you’d be a complete idiot if you told them anything that would go against you in that situation. :confused:

I would say have the box switched out by a pro, and do the rest yourself. This way the box needs to be to code, but the rest of the house you can update as time and budget allows. The last thing you want is a guy to quote you $1000 to do the work, and then the asshole building inspector come in afterwords and require him to do another $2000 in additional stuff like upgrade the wires, the outlets, hard wire smoke detectors, ect.

x…

^You get my point though, right?

Data to a barn an acre away? Nerd :stuck_out_tongue:

It was WAY beyond the max length for a data run, but it worked just fine and made the laptop work on wireless way out there. It was also primarily for wiring the phone out there so you didn’t have to sprint back to the house when it rang.

The previous owner of my house in west seneca was an electrician. He did all the work himself, but there are no stickers on the new breaker boxes (two family)…

My dad’s place in the town of tonawanda had to be inspected by the town, and they affixed a sticker to it before the electric company could hookup the power.

They also made him put in hardwired smoke alarms, that is a town code as well.

Really depends on where you live, I would call around and make sure you get it to code.

Sure, remind him to not say anything to the insurance company about running his own electrical. :lol:

X…

Tonawanda is crazy with their codes. You will hit more snags there than in most other towns.

If you want 220 in the garage your probably going to have to run a new line. Direct burial wire can be pricey, like at least 5 dollars a foot. I bought some wire on ebay a few years ago and saved some $.

if you do this yourself, keep in mind that you will need a 4-wire feeder to a sub-panel in a detached garage. inspectors will probably check for this.

looks like you want quite a bit done, be prepared to spend a good bit of cash in materials alone!

It is going to cost a good bit of $$, but the wire is not that bad, only a couple $/ft. What you need to be sure of is that if you are not running conduit, you need a direct burial rated cable. URD is appropriate for this situation. If you are running conduit then you can use thhn or xhhw wire.

Make sure that you size the wire properly based on the NEC code, and that you take into account voltage drop based on the distance that you are running.

Whether the inspectors check or not, you still have to have a 4 wire cable to feed a 240v sub panel, HOT HOT NEUTRAL GROUND.

Also keep in mind that there is a requirement on the depth of the trench and the fill. I have a simplified residential code reference book if you want me to scan in some images for you.

He has a company, but he is a good friend of my brother-in-law.