Pre-fabricated houses

[jaylectricity]

I have a potential customer who wants to buy a pre-fab house. He needs an estimate from me on the wiring to give to the bank before they take out a line of credit. He said I can price it high just to make sure we cover anything. Any money they don't use, they don't have to borrow.

I've never done one of these and am not sure how to price it. I'm not really in danger of losing the job but I'm sure there must be some cutoff where the bank will say, "No, I don't think you need $25,000 to wire the house."

It's basically a three bedroom, garage and basement None of the light fixtures will be installed. I'll need to install the service and the heating equipment. He wants a disposal...He's not exactly sure of everything that will need to be done. Anyway to ballpark this?

Does $7,000 sound too high?

 

[Buck Parrish]

$7000 should cover it.

 

[iMuse97]

Is this house not yet built/installed? If so, will you need to provide a service? other connections? or is that all done and utility just hangs their meter?

 

[mcclary's electrical]

The last prefab I did was 4000 sq ft. two stories. The same way, I installed all fixtures. There were about (20) 4" square boxes to join the two halves. Cutting in and making up all those connections eats up 4-6 hours easily. Then the inside and outside units, sewage pumping system, this house had a few homeruns missing that need to be refed, a few light legs missing, no lights in crawl or attic,no receptacle by outside unit, adding DATA outlets, phone system wouldn't work, motion lights not working properly, with all that having to be done, it took almost as long as if it was a stick built home.

 

[Buck Parrish]

Is this house not yet built/installed? If so, will you need to provide a service? other connections? or is that all done and utility just hangs their meter?

Most of the time the panel is on an outside wall. So you install a meter. Then have the poco bring the latteral to it under ground.
Although some times a garage might make the outside wall become an inside wall. Then of course you would need to install a disco. And include the price of wire.

 

[mcclary's electrical]

Most of the time the panel is on an outside wall. So you install a meter. Then have the poco bring the latteral to it under ground.
Although some times a garage might make the outside wall become an inside wall. Then of course you would need to install a disco. And include the price of wire.

A garage installed here would make the wall a firewall, and the panel would be illegal.

 

[jaylectricity]

The last prefab I did was 4000 sq ft. two stories. The same way, I installed all fixtures. There were about (20) 4" square boxes to join the two halves. Cutting in and making up all those connections eats up 4-6 hours easily. Then the inside and outside units, sewage pumping system, this house had a few homeruns missing that need to be refed, a few light legs missing, no lights in crawl or attic,no receptacle by outside unit, adding DATA outlets, phone system wouldn't work, motion lights not working properly, with all that having to be done, it took almost as long as if it was a stick built home.

That sounds pretty thorough. This gentleman was under the impression the home runs would be dangling in the basement and a panel would need to be installed. We don't do circuit panels outside of houses here in MA, so I assume they wouldn't have it installed on the outside.

 

[jaylectricity]

Is this house not yet built/installed? If so, will you need to provide a service? other connections? or is that all done and utility just hangs their meter?

From what I understand, as soon as they get all the stuff together for the bank, they buy the house and the house is shipped and installed on site. It is not there now or I'd take a ride.

We also install our own meters, risers, feeder conductors and point of attachment when building a house. The power company only provides the service drop from the street and the meter.

 

[iMuse97]

From what I understand, as soon as they get all the stuff together for the bank, they buy the house and the house is shipped and installed on site. It is not there now or I'd take a ride.

We also install our own meters, risers, feeder conductors and point of attachment when building a house. The power company only provides the service drop from the street and the meter.

I've never done one, but have heard of the connections boxes like McClary mentioned. I'm interested mostly because I've never actually done this. Seems you might want to up your estimate a bit, depending on what you can find out from Mfg., if anything. If, as your client said, the bank just needs a ballpark figure, I'd still want to be higher so as to not completely surprise customer later.

 

[Buck Parrish]

A garage installed here would make the wall a firewall, and the panel would be illegal.

Not where I'm from.

 

[jaylectricity]

Thanks guys, maybe I'll make it for $10,000 just to be safe. I will also do well not to count those chickens before they hatch.