Just painted some backboards...

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quogueelectric

quogueelectric

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Location
new york
I do it on the fly the morning of the service change. Get 1/2 sheet 3/4 from home depot already cut. Set it on my foldup table that fits in the truck. 2 coats of either Battleship grey or Hunter green customer preference. A 2in throwaway brush and as I am setting up the paint is a drying. Once the old panel is stripped a few shots from a hilti dx 36m and bing bang zoom the panel is going up already knocked out and ready for wire. Many many customers have comented on how nice it looks and believe me I am charging them for the extra 20 bucks in material.
 
P

Poolside

Member
mdshunk said:
Basement panels, mainly. When the basement has a block wall or poured concrete wall, many installers favor fixing a piece of plywood to the concrete or block onto which the panel is fixed and it gives them a place above the panel to staple the cables to. On older buildings with stone foundation walls for the basement, two parallel 2x4's are "hung" from the floor joists next to the stone wall, and the plywood backboard is fixed to those 2x4's. I have a job coming up where a subpanel will be mounted on a backboard which will be attached to an existing 6x6 wooden post in a basement.
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Thanks. Very very few basements out here.

- Greg
 
tonyou812

tonyou812

Senior Member
Location
North New Jersey
BryanMD said:
Sub it out to a cabinet shop.

panel saw, router table, spray booth, no saw dust, no spilled paint
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If im doing a pool I like to dress up the boards that the pool equipment goes on. I love it when the pool guys do a double take and say wow thats nice.
That and I love to work with wood.
 
J

jdsmith

Senior Member
Location
Ohio
mdshunk said:
Yes. You'd still have to stand there and watch them cut them (after you already waited while they were summoned), which is about the same amount of time it took me to put a couple marks on the plywood and cut them myself.
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Hard to believe you couldn't make a phone call and have them cut to size waiting to be picked up at a lumberyard. If you made a phone call to a cabinet shop I would think they'd round over the edges too after they cut them. This is an equivalent level of service to calling in a wire cut and having it waiting at the counter 15 minutes later ready to go rather than waiting while the guy walks to the other end of the building, measures and cuts, drags it back, and complains about the weight and how much he hates wire cuts while the invoice prints.

I'm curious about the megger results too. Next thing you know the megger can be used to determine how sharp the router bit was.:grin:

Edit: Wow, i type slow. 11 other responses while I was typing!
 
mdshunk

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
jdsmith said:
Hard to believe you couldn't make a phone call and have them cut to size waiting to be picked up at a lumberyard.
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Oh, I suspect that I probably could if I wanted to look into it enough. My main points were to both demonstrate how expensive something like this can potentially be (which some guys might be giving away for free) and to demonstrate simple job costing for a simple unit task like this. Additionally, I hoped someone might chime in with a way to get these things made up for free that I hadn't thought of. It just popped into my head that we have a retarded person's place here that makes things for companies for a small fee, and they have a wood shop. Something to look into, maybe.
 
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mdshunk

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
tonyou812 said:
Now that you bring it up I bet alot of guys never even account for something like that. It can really add up when your in your leauge.
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Regardless of what arbitrary 'league' a guy thinks he's in, he should not give anything away for free if he can help it. A couple of years ago I figured out that I was giving away thousands of dollars worth of unaccounted for hardware, like bolts, washers, screws, etc.
 
S

SiddMartin

Senior Member
Location
PA
mdshunk said:
:grin: That would be a lot of dumpster diving. I do in around 200 service upgrades in a year's time.
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that comes to like 1.1 services everyother day, 7 days a week or 3/4 of a service everyday 5 days a wk. Is that all you do?:grin:
 
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BryanMD

BryanMD

Senior Member
Location
Maryland "the land of pleasant living"
mdshunk said:
Regardless of what arbitrary 'league' a guy thinks he's in, he should not give anything away for free if he can help it. A couple of years ago I figured out that I was giving away thousands of dollars worth of unaccounted for hardware, like bolts, washers, screws, etc.
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As a customer I hate to be nickel and dimed.

Charge an extra dollar for a part if you must but don't clutter up the invoice with errata and then make me pay for your time to write out that errata.
 
mdshunk

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
BryanMD said:
As a customer I hate to be nickel and dimed.
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Neither do I. I only want to pay for what was used on my work. :wink:

BryanMD said:
Charge an extra dollar for a part if you must but don't clutter up the invoice with errata and then make me pay for your time to write out that errata.
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If you itemize invoices, that's mistake #1. You're begging to be hassled about the bill.
 
stickboy1375

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
e57 said:
No basements in my area - but why install a back-board at all? :-?
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Imagine mounting all this to concrete...
octobernovember07126.jpg
 
stickboy1375

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
BryanMD said:
Can't cite the code (probably a bldg code) but it is about insulation & condensation effects in often untempered rooms with the metal against masonry.
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Your thinking about 312.2(A), but most panels come with a 1/4" bump on the back from the factory....
 
e57

e57

Senior Member
Location
San Francisco, CA
stickboy1375 said:
Imagine mounting all this to concrete...
octobernovember07126.jpg
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Hilti gun... BLAM - BLAM!!! (Edit: Hilty gun some uni-strut and hang the whole mess on it...)

BryanMD - never heard that one. Never seen any damage from being on concrete... Then again - sub grade conditions are rare here. And we hardly have weather - so to speak.... :D
 
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