Coppersmith
Senior Member
- Location
- Tampa, FL, USA
- Occupation
- Electrical Contractor
A guy called last week and wanted me to replace his air handler and compressor wiring. It's aluminum and he wants copper. He had both A/C units replaced. A/C company tech told him he needed 150 feet of 8-2 and 80 feet of 6-2 to rewire. I give him a quote over the phone, he accepts and I did the job today.
The night before the job I get out all the 8-2 NM and 6-2 NM I have in stock. I unroll it, measure it, reroll it, pile it on the truck.
When I get there I discover both air handler and compressor are 30 amp units. No apparent need for 8-2 or 6-2. But I need a bunch of 10-2. Somebody's tape measure was broken too. Longest run was 70 feet. Since the wire was cheaper and the distances were shorter I should have made a good profit on the job, right? Wrong. The conditions were not as expected. Long story shortened*: Three hour job became six hour job.
*I actually wrote out the whole long story and found it so boring I deleted it to save you the pain.
The night before the job I get out all the 8-2 NM and 6-2 NM I have in stock. I unroll it, measure it, reroll it, pile it on the truck.
When I get there I discover both air handler and compressor are 30 amp units. No apparent need for 8-2 or 6-2. But I need a bunch of 10-2. Somebody's tape measure was broken too. Longest run was 70 feet. Since the wire was cheaper and the distances were shorter I should have made a good profit on the job, right? Wrong. The conditions were not as expected. Long story shortened*: Three hour job became six hour job.
*I actually wrote out the whole long story and found it so boring I deleted it to save you the pain.