Strathead
Senior Member
- Location
- Ocala, Florida, USA
- Occupation
- Electrician/Estimator/Project Manager/Superintendent
You have two basic choices. Use other people's "rules of thumb" or develop your own. From a labor perspective I believe you are best off using others, at least to the point where you have done enough to know when to adjust. Where one task may cause you to miss on the low side, the next task is likely to average that out.
From a material perspective though, this also goes for take off quantities, short cuts are fraught with peril. Since you are doing this for yourself you aren't paying someone by the hour to estimate, take all the time it takes. Do this for the first couple of houses, until you develop a feel. Decide exactly how you are going to run the wiring and take it off foot by foot. Take off every single box, every double box, every ground termination and every switch cover. Add 10% for the things you missed and send a list off to your supply house for a price. When you are done, divide the number of devices by the footage of wire and after a couple you will come up with a method. Myself, I use 15 feet of 12-2 per recept and I always roll home runs to the area. But again you have to do it yourself first, so you know when to add or subtract from that, which I do all the time.
From a material perspective though, this also goes for take off quantities, short cuts are fraught with peril. Since you are doing this for yourself you aren't paying someone by the hour to estimate, take all the time it takes. Do this for the first couple of houses, until you develop a feel. Decide exactly how you are going to run the wiring and take it off foot by foot. Take off every single box, every double box, every ground termination and every switch cover. Add 10% for the things you missed and send a list off to your supply house for a price. When you are done, divide the number of devices by the footage of wire and after a couple you will come up with a method. Myself, I use 15 feet of 12-2 per recept and I always roll home runs to the area. But again you have to do it yourself first, so you know when to add or subtract from that, which I do all the time.
