What should a new 240v circuit cost?

Get 3 quotes and then decide what's reasonable.

Usually you get what you pay for. You don't describe what you are getting.

one 240V 10A switch 2 feet from the mains = you are getting screwed

240V 200A service full of breakers, 100' run of cable to the pole and a new meter = sounds reasonable

Around here the labor cost would be about 100 per hour.

That means (aside from the materials cost which would be probably 25 dollars or so) they should be working full time for ten hours at this. Seems like a pretty long time to install one branch circuit.

Is there some other issue for the installation that would drive up the price?

What have the other folks who've come in to bid estimated?

Jim

Just FYI...

I had a 240 circuit put in my garage. The garage is 60 feet from the panel which is inside the house. The electrician came through the wall of the house, ran conduit to the garage (not a straight shot - it followed the edge of a deck), ran conduit in the garage to two plugs, and wired the whole thing. It cost about $1200. I live in San Francisco where I suspect the rates are as high as anywhere.

You don't give a lot of details, but if we assume you're talking about something like a welder outlet right next to the main panel in an exposed location in a garage and there are no "problems" such as a full or obsolete panel:

1 50A 2 pole circuit breaker $10-20 depending on brand 1 50A receptacle $20-$40 depending on type 1 box to mount receptacle in $5 1 offset nipple to connect box to panel $5 12' of 6 ga THHN wire $10

Figure 1 hour of labor for a simple installation.

So I'd say up to about $200 is reasonable, much more than that would be suspect in my opinion. As mentioned earlier that is based on an uncomplicated installation, a full or obsolete panel could well require a lot of extra work and justify a higher cost.

I'm not a licensed electrician, but I've done plenty of my own work so I have a good idea of time and materials.

For a price comparison, a friend of mine recently upgraded the service in his house from 60A fuses to a 100A breaker panel and a new meter socket. As the homeowner he can do his own work and pull permits, etc.

While he had added a circuit here and there in the past he was a little leery of tackling a project this size. As the more experienced electrician I gave him the "service upgrade 101" class.

The project probably took him about 10-12 hours of work total. The materials cost was about $300. The inspector *loved* the work and commented that it was a neater job than many done by commercial electricians he's inspected.

Pete C.

I am not an electrician, but I recently did a full blown subpanel in my garage.

Some pix of it can be seen here:

and here:

(before adding compressor)

The total cost was about $200-300 or so (I no longer remember exactly). I had to run 80 feet of 8 gauge wire, in 3/4" conduit, buy a subpanel, 1 60 amp breaker for main panel, 4 breakers for subpanel, premium 110V and 220V outlets.

My work time was perhaps 7 hours. I am emphatically NOT an experienced electrician, just a dude with pliers, screwdrivers and some common sense. I asked many questions in this ng and alt.home.repair, and used great expertise of posters quite extensively.

The result is nice, in the sense that I have many circuits for my garage. I use them mainly for heating it in winter when I have to work in it, in order not to catch a cold. It is very pleasant to work in a warm, brightly lit garage!

The garage used to share its main circuit with the kitchen microwave, the result of which was being unable to run any serious power there.

Now I have

a permanently installed 220V compressor

2 220V outlets 2 110V outlets on separate circuits each i

I am not an electrician.

First specify how many amps. The price will be somewhat dependant on this.

I installed a 50 ampere subpanel with a 6 gauge feeder in my garage. The run to the main breaker panel was about 60 feet. The total materials cost, including the new breaker in the main panel and a couple breakers in the subpanel was about $200. The permit and inspection by the city was about $50.

I don't think $1000 is too far out of line. The job will take some time and electricians aren't cheap.

Thanks for all the responses!

To add some details, i'm looking to add a 60A circuit in my garage, right next to the circuitbox. Nothing in the way, no problems, plenty of room in the breaker box for the additonal breakers. The guy who came to give an 'estimate' just had a book, and his book said $700 for a new 40A 240v branch circuit, $950 for a 50A. If I wanted him to run conduit and wire to the other side of the garage where a lathe is going, it would be more.

Even funnier, the guy said his company was expensive, and he'd be happy to come in on the weekend and do it for half the price on his own time....

Nice installation.

*ahem*

The 120 volt receptactles are installed upside down - the ground connection goes on top, the way the 240 volt ones were done.

Just a nit pick!

Jim

Do you mean right next to your main electrical panel?

If you are going to run a single short circuit all within the garage, any $$amount is too expensive. This is a perfect beginner level project for you to do. ask questions in alt.home.repair, get a permit if you like, and go ahead.

i

Yeah, the next electrician said he'd do the outlet right next to the panel for $100. Meithinks the first guy is trying to rip me off....

I'm probably go> > Thanks for all the responses!

I've seen a lot of debate about that with various reasonings.

The ground pin up so anything metal falling on it hits ground and not hot argument would seem to cover a pretty low probability event.

The ground pin up so that gravity will tend to push the hot and neutral in instead of pulling them out seems to be a cover for low quality outlets and many connections have cords pulled in directions other than that of gravity.

Either way, you will find that a substantial percentage of wall warts are clearly designed for ground down mounting, even ones without a ground pin.

The last time I looked through the NEC book I don't recall reading anything about receptacle orientation. Granted that was the 2002 edition and I wasn't specifically looking for such a thing. I'm not sure where my code book is at the moment.

Personally I don't think it really makes much difference which way they are mounted, particularly when you consider the case of horizontally mounted outlets. In that case should the ground be on the left or the right???

Pete C.

It may vary by location, but usually the homeowner can do their own work, but they need to pull a permit and have it inspected just like any other job.

Pete C.

That seems ridiculously expensive from the description you have given. Point of reference, I had a whole new 3 phase service install from the pole to my shop for $1600. I am a more than competent "sparky", but playing with "hot" transformers is not something that I am willing to do. I farmed this one out. Otherwise, I have done all of my wiring at home/shop. As close to NEC as practical.

JW

Left, so that the uppermost blade is the neutral blade, not the hot blade.

A long long time ago when my Parent's shop was inspected by OSHA we got dinged (but not cited) for having outlets with the ground pin up, the reasoning being that with the pin down the last thing that'll go will be the safety ground.

Since then I've always installed them with ground pin down, and IIRC most power strips have them down when the writing is correct.

Of course the inspectors seemed to be much more heavily schooled in the idea that if you have employees you're automatically evil than they were in electrical theory, but still...

It'll vary from state to state but here in Oregon anything that's not a repair should be inspected. Of course if you own the place nobody will know if you do the work yourself, but that can cause trouble down the road if you have a fire -- even if it's from a gasoline tanker running into your house and bursting into flames the insurance company will try to pin it on uninspected work.

From what I hear the inspectors are generally on your side as a homeowner if you're reasonable, but that will vary from inspector to inspector, and as a function of the quality of your work.

[ ... ]

Pete,

Could you please change the format of your munged address? The format which you used:

generates problems (the inner set of '' cause the problems when I try to save a copy of what you posted. Since I run my own news server, I could go in and edit the offending string so I could save it, but most don't have the privilege -- or the knowledge -- to do this, and can be stuck unable to save an article. One modification which I have tested, and which at least works on my system is:

(Substituting "{}" for "", which at least has no problems on my system.)

I wish that spammers would go away, so nobody would feel the need to do this.

Thanks, DoN.

De-munged, or at least differently munged. I used the . since that should be legal for any system. Until recently I had a fully bogus address there since I didn't intend for anyone to respond "off-line".

Pete C.

Makes some sense, but if I were an inspector I'd be much happier to see people installing spec grade receptacles diagonally than to see residential grade installed at all, ground up or down.

The quality of the residential grade receptacles goes from "iffy" from the major brands to "downright scary" for lesser brands.

Pete C.