Estimating 3" PVC FOR 400 amp service

[k7brown90]

I am new to estimating and am curious how my calculations are adding up to the market average. My most recent estimating that I have not given yet is this; at the residence there will be 2 sub panels, a 200 amp (100ft away) and 100 amp (100ft away). I used the labor units supplied by Mike Holts educational program to calculate the install of a 400 amp main panel, 200 amp sub panel and 100 amp sub panel with running the 150 ft of pvc underground for the service and it came out to a total of approximately 10,000 dollars. Is this a reasonable price or am I making a mistake in my calculations?

 

[James L]

Is it a new service or upgrade?
You running SER for subpanel feeds?
Copper or aluminum?
You digging trench or subbing out?
Grounding to water line?

Lots of variables

 

[cdslotz]

I am new to estimating and am curious how my calculations are adding up to the market average. My most recent estimating that I have not given yet is this; at the residence there will be 2 sub panels, a 200 amp (100ft away) and 100 amp (100ft away). I used the labor units supplied by Mike Holts educational program to calculate the install of a 400 amp main panel, 200 amp sub panel and 100 amp sub panel with running the 150 ft of pvc underground for the service and it came out to a total of approximately 10,000 dollars. Is this a reasonable price or am I making a mistake in my calculations?

How many man/hrs did you come up with? How did you apply your labor rate?

 

[k7brown90]

The owner is expanding their home and adding a new 400 amp main panel that will feed the existing 200 amp and a new 100 amp. The 200 amp panel will be upgraded to a new panel and SER will be used for the feed. The owner is doing the trenching, and grounding would be to the water line. The labor units are from Mike Holt's Estimating program and I am using this equation for the labor units.
For the PVC it looks like this (7/100*total conduit length) for this equation it estimates 10.5 hours for 150 ft of 3" PVC. I have calculated the Labor Hours at $100 an hour so for the PVC alone it would come out to $1050 + material. How is this process meeting up with the market?

 

[James L]

My first thought was $10k looks low.

After seeing you have almost $2,000 ($500 materials) figured just for the pipe in the ground, the other $8,000 looks REALLY low.

 

[k7brown90]

I made some adjustments to my excel worksheet and with the new formulas it came out with 85 labor hours at a labor cost of $16,415.50 and a material cost of $6,322.00 totaling $22,737.50
Here are the total values entered:
250' of SER cable $8062.50 with 65 labor hours
3" PVC Elbows (qty 3) $283.50 .96 labor hours
150' 3" PVC $4987 10.5 labor hours
400 amp panel install $1225
200 amp install $475
Breakers total $417.50
Panel and Breakers 8.55 labor hours
(conduit and SER supports are not in this example)
Does this seem more accurate to market value? I am hoping not to get a better feel for this because at the end of my first month as a sole proprietor I have avoided breaking even but also am not gaining value in my business.

 

[James L]

I made some adjustments to my excel worksheet and with the new formulas it came out with 85 labor hours at a labor cost of $16,415.50 and a material cost of $6,322.00 totaling $22,737.50
Here are the total values entered:
250' of SER cable $8062.50 with 65 labor hours
3" PVC Elbows (qty 3) $283.50 .96 labor hours
150' 3" PVC $4987 10.5 labor hours
400 amp panel install $1225
200 amp install $475
Breakers total $417.50
Panel and Breakers 8.55 labor hours
(conduit and SER supports are not in this example)
Does this seem more accurate to market value? I am hoping not to get a better feel for this because at the end of my first month as a sole proprietor I have avoided breaking even but also am not gaining value in my business.

My materials usually work out to be about 25-30% on a job like you've described. You're at about 28%

One thing to consider is an occupied place. Not sure what your pathways look like for running your sub feeds.

I had a generator job once at a house/winery. My pathway for feeder was through a wine cellar that was packed to the hilt with rickety shelving with crazy-expensive wine. Looked like 6-8,000 bottles.

It took an insane amount of "careful" time, swinging a 4/0 SER. Can't tell you how nervous I was.

Then the cleanup time, I didn't put anything in for it. But I had to drill through a few joists, and had wood chips all over the place. It took forever to cleanup

Short moral to this one - don't underestimate job difficulty, and don't underestimate cleanup time