New Work Only?

[brantmacga]

I do not wire new houses except for the occasional custom build. I would rather flip burgers at McDonald's than do new tract home wiring.

The real money is in BUILDING McDonald’s

I do a few custom houses, and even with my base price being 2-3 times the going rate, I don’t have a lot of profit in it. 95% of our new work is commercial, so we don’t have the low paid help to compete in the residential market. I really only make money on doing custom lighting, home controls, home networking, and whole-house audio systems. At this point, I’m only doing them because I sort of enjoy it. It’s a nice break from what I’m typically doing with a much more relaxed schedule.


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[DBoone]

I too would rather do anew. Sometimes I will refuse to have anything to do with an existing circuit, But sometimes it's just not right and working on the older circuit is the way to go.. the thing is, on the invoice "from or on existing circuit" I am not responsible for existing parts of the wiring.
I was actually turning down alot of work being afraid to work on existing circuits, then saw here a few years back about all the work I was throwing away.. so I use better judgement, make sure my insurance is paid, and sometimes loss alittle sleep and pass buildings a few times to see that they are not on fire.........speaking about not on fire............
I'm sure we've all been there..seeing wiring that has been functioning for years thats a mess and considered dangerous... hundreds of old clothe wiring in boxes or not in boxes above enclosed ceiling fixtures with 3 bulb sockets rated 60 watt with 100 watt bulbs in them...... switches with several conductors looped around the device screws for splicing, miss matched wire sizes of 14-12-and lamp cord on 40 amp breakers....
In all reality, there should be thousands upon thousands of fires a day................................... but there's not.... Baffles me....

I feel you man. It’s the internal battle between wanting to always do all new, everything as perfect as possible and the real world of having to make hard decisions sometimes and take some work and maybe lose a little sleep for awhile.

Someone, maybe on this forum, once said electricity is a lot more forgiving than we give it credit for.