Whole house rewire.

[green2012]

I have never priced out a rewire and I was looking for some advice. Is there an easy way to estimate this? I have read 1 post that said there is a per foot price that you can use. Its a 2300 square foot home. Someone said he charged 4 dollars a square foot. This doesnt include a service upgrade. I live in a suburb of chicago so everything is in pipe. Does anyone know a general way to estimate this?

 

[Dennis Alwon]

When you say rewire you are really meaning wiring with the walls stripped or not. I would never give a contract price on a retro job with the wallboards still intact. Even using NM cable I will give an estimate but I also do it per device /outlet not by the sq. ft. Of course my price will do no good for up there.

 

[Ponchik]

I agree with Dennis.

When I rewire a house, i open the outside walls 2' AFF, the interior walls get opened only one side, if there is no attic access then parts of the ceiling sheetrock gets opened. Here we can use NM cable which is a lot easier than EMT. Every contractor pricing is different so as far as pricing i don't know if the forum can be much help, but I am sure members will give you suggestion on the installation part of the rewire.

 

[kwired]

I agree with Dennis.

When I rewire a house, i open the outside walls 2' AFF, the interior walls get opened only one side, if there is no attic access then parts of the ceiling sheetrock gets opened. Here we can use NM cable which is a lot easier than EMT. Every contractor pricing is different so as far as pricing i don't know if the forum can be much help, but I am sure members will give you suggestion on the installation part of the rewire.

Why so much destruction?

I have rewired both residential and commercial buildings for around 25 years now and have never torn up that much wall covering on any project. Most of the time I never even remove any wall covering, but multifloor building with no access between floors sometimes you have to at least make a few holes somewhere that need repaired later.

Now maybe the type of construction you encounter vs what I usually encounter has some factor also. High pitch roofs usually equate to easier access to exterior walls from attic spaces, and most places here have basements or crawl spaces. This makes lighting on the first floor of a two story home the only place that usually involves much of any destruction because there is no easy way to fish to ceiling locations when there is no access except through finished surfaces.

 

[Ponchik]

Why so much destruction?

I have rewired both residential and commercial buildings for around 25 years now and have never torn up that much wall covering on any project. Most of the time I never even remove any wall covering, but multifloor building with no access between floors sometimes you have to at least make a few holes somewhere that need repaired later.

Now maybe the type of construction you encounter vs what I usually encounter has some factor also. High pitch roofs usually equate to easier access to exterior walls from attic spaces, and most places here have basements or crawl spaces. This makes lighting on the first floor of a two story home the only place that usually involves much of any destruction because there is no easy way to fish to ceiling locations when there is no access except through finished surfaces.

Well opening that much sheetrock is not happening all of the time, i have had several occasions that the rewiring was done through the attic and the crawl space with minimum opening. But if they have remodeling going on, the house is vacant i would rather open up walls and make my job easier and probably less labor ( i would think) than without the walls opened an going through the crawl space.

But at any case it seems like i open more sheetrock than you do.

 

[kwired]

Well opening that much sheetrock is not happening all of the time, i have had several occasions that the rewiring was done through the attic and the crawl space with minimum opening. But if they have remodeling going on, the house is vacant i would rather open up walls and make my job easier and probably less labor ( i would think) than without the walls opened an going through the crawl space.

But at any case it seems like i open more sheetrock than you do.

When I am doing a total rewire, it is always plaster and lathe. If there is sheetrock it is never a total rewire, and often is just particular upgrading.

There are times when we are in a total or at least major rennovation, then we may open things up that we otherwise would not if the only work being done is rewiring.

 

[John120/240]

When doing a remodel on a two story house, I try to talk the home owner to replace carpet

above the affected rooms. Then it is realitively easy to take up the floor, wire, replace floor

 

[masterinbama]

If it's all in pipe just pull out the old, pull in the new and install new devices. Or are they adding a ton of stuff?

 

[green2012]

yes masterinbama, i wouldnt need to remove any wall or floor covering. Its all in pipe. I need to remove the old stuff and pull in new wire. They have cloth wire and its getting pretty bad. The costomer just replaced all his outlets and etc. Most of these replies seem to be in a romex or flex situation. Anyone have any experience in places were all home wire is installed in pipe?

 

[ptonsparky]

For new pipe in existing wall finish that stays....good luck on that bid. Even on easy rewire where the finished wall stays where possible, my EWAG is at least $110 per device plus the service. Using NM cable.

 

[green2012]

I may have typed that in a confusing way. I am not replacing the existing pipe. Just the wire in it. On some of the larger homes in my area a branch circuit may need to travel over a hundred feet before it even starts splitting off. 7500 sq foot homes. would you still price by number of openings? There has to be a standard way of pricing this.

 

[John120/240]

I may have typed that in a confusing way. I am not replacing the existing pipe. Just the wire in it. On some of the larger homes in my area a branch circuit may need to travel over a hundred feet before it even starts splitting off. 7500 sq foot homes. would you still price by number of openings? There has to be a standard way of pricing this.

Now that you told us this: If there are no significant changes, figure how much wire it will take,

how long will it take to pull wire & terminate, Then how much are you worth per hour.

Only YOU can answer that question green2012.

 

[Fulthrotl]

I may have typed that in a confusing way. I am not replacing the existing pipe. Just the wire in it. On some of the larger homes in my area a branch circuit may need to travel over a hundred feet before it even starts splitting off. 7500 sq foot homes. would you still price by number of openings? There has to be a standard way of pricing this.

ok, you are repulling emt that has old solid wire
with cloth covering, so it's been in there since
what, the 1930's? and it was pulled with whatever
lube they used in the 1930's, or 20's maybe,
so for all we know it was wagon wheel grease.

and you don't know what goes where, and tugging
on it won't tell you much other than it's stuck good.
the quickest way would be to split them and tone them.

so, you have nice little small junction boxes with fat
thick wires in them. glued with sheeps fat or whatever.

getting the wire out of the pipe is gonna be time consuming.
if there is a grip you can put on small wire and a mechanical
hand crank boat winch tugger to break them loose and get the first few
feet out, i'd look to something like that. i think maxis makes one

you probably won't have enough wire on the end to tie on the new wire
so you will have to refish..... buy yourself a brand new stainless steel
fish tape, a greenlee 200 footer... if you've never used a SS fishtape,
just trust me, you'll thank me later.

i'd try hooking on 1,200 lb mule tape onto the old wire and try pulling
that in when the wire comes out....

i'd figure two weeks for two guys. you'll need a helper for this one.

2500' spools of simpull #12 thhn stranded, you'll probably use two
of each color, so 20,000 feet, plus the devices..... and some of
the boxes won't accept wire AND a GFCI...... so there will be some
changes.

160 hours labor, and the material, and you should be ok. not being
able to just glance at open walls, and see what you are pulling is
gonna slow you down a lot..... and lets not talk about chinese hickeys.
they were usually used only on ridgid, but i've seen emt with some
radiuses that looked like process pipe guys bent them, or used the
curvature of a tennis ball as a pattern.

good luck, and have fun.

 

[kwired]

Give them an estimate that is high, tell them it is high, and that if they want more accuracy of the estimate it will take some time doing some of the work to figure out just what you are going to encounter. Then you can give them a more accurate price. Leave yourself and the customer places to opt out of continuing the project if either one of you does not like where it is going. If they don't like it, let someone else lose money on the job.

 

[kwired]

When doing a remodel on a two story house, I try to talk the home owner to replace carpet

above the affected rooms. Then it is realitively easy to take up the floor, wire, replace floor

You don't even have to replace carpet. I have done this before. Once on a brand new home that I wired. about a year or two later they wanted to add something and easiest way I could come up with was to peel back carpet in second floor room cut access holes in sub floor to get cables fished to where they needed to be, fill in holes in subfloor and have carpet re-stretched, which was not hard at all as it was already cut to perfect fit. Was faster and a lot less mess than cutting holes and patching them in the ceiling below.

 

[220/221]

Does anyone know a general way to estimate this?

Certainly not by the foot.

I would simply estimate how long it will take, multiply it by my hourly rate, estimate the retail material cost, then I add them together with any applicable permit fees, drywall repairs, etc.

It's simple math combined with the experience to know about how long it will take. I also guess high on this stuff. Worst case, you do get the pleasure of retro wiring an entire house in conduit

I would also run as much exposed conduit as I could get away with, which means around the perimeter with JB's at each interior recep location.

 

[masterinbama]

Non staining low odor canned smoke is your friend. Blow it in a conduit and have your help find the other end. Start at the panel and map each home run to the end. Work on one home run at a time and your job will go much faster. I rewired this building in about 3 weeks.

 

[Fulthrotl]

Non staining low odor canned smoke is your friend. Blow it in a conduit and have your help find the other end. Start at the panel and map each home run to the end. Work on one home run at a time and your job will go much faster. I rewired this building in about 3 weeks.


View attachment 7634

smoke? really? how cool... where do you get smoke?
(all my j boxes i let the magic smoke out of)

 

[kwired]

smoke? really? how cool... where do you get smoke?
(all my j boxes i let the magic smoke out of)

I think he is talking about a product used for testing smoke detectors.

 

[masterinbama]

I think he is talking about a product used for testing smoke detectors.

Yes and the plastic tube from a can of WD-40