Wire by the foot

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Fred B said:
How do you all calculate the length to charge for wire by the foot? You have a meter to pull it through as you unspool? Use an simple ohm reading and calculate? Or read before /after on the spool of wire maybe with a greenlee cable length meter like this? Or just guesstimate?
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In general, as an estimator, I would say the footage of the conduit times the number of wires, times 110%. This is for branch circuit wiring as I assume that must be what you are referring to. As someone else said, you can count the number of conduit sticks, or you can roll or scale a plan and add the up and down. If you are doing it after installation, this can be quite accurate, because you know how you ran it. The 110% only works for moderate runs at least, say a cumulative of 100 feet or more with 2 pulls. If you have many short pulls, then you need to increase the multiplier. Don't forget, you have to account for that 50 feet left over that you scrap because you can't be hauling around a bunch of small spools and the 300 feet you had to pull out yesterday because one wire was 5 feet too short, etc. You aren't ripping off the customer any more than the guy who sells soda at the ball game. Cost is driven by many factors. If you prices are in line you are in line.

Edit, what I mean is, it sounds like you are putting too much thought in to it. Your time figuring it is money also.
 
So guys, went and bought the greenlee meter, it has been fairly accurate on the #12 and #14 NM that I've used it on so far. Did test it on a known piece of 12, on the 20ft it ohmed out 20ft.
Problem has been cheating myself on charges # of feet, and now got 3 guys pulling wire so not always getting a count, so I can measure each day when trucks return, or after each job to bill out the wire.
Knew I had an issue when reviewed wire bought against wire billed and was billing much less than bought, so had to do something.
 
It varies but mostly it is an educated guess. On small jobs I would, for instance, count the 10' sticks of emt I used and if there are 3 conductors then I multiply by 3 and add about 20' for terminations.

Larger jobs like rough ins on a home we count the number of reels we use. If we open a reel then we mark it on a stud and at the end of the job we count up what we used. If the last reel is half used we charge for the entire reel otherwise we estimate.
 
Fred B said:
How do you all calculate the length to charge for wire by the foot? You have a meter to pull it through as you unspool? Use an simple ohm reading and calculate? Or read before /after on the spool of wire maybe with a greenlee cable length meter like this? Or just guesstimate?
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Are you talking about feeder runs or wire for branch circuits?
 
Fred B said:
Right, the $/ft not issue, just how to get the footage used at a job is. Currently use guesstimate, but on a given job maybe over or under. Would like a more accurate means (but cost effective) so as to not short change myself or be over charging the customer. Historically it seems I've been shorting myself overall, but with markup kind of break even on my cost of a roll, but would like to keep more of the markup that I built to help cover smalls that customers complain if I list separately as "nickle and diming".
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It would be nice if all wires and cables were marked per foot on the jacket like some low voltage cables.
 
Fred B said:
Either, most issue is branch runs as most of my feeder runs will just buy what is needed.
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I suppose there are a variety of variables when estimating wire runs, In California a roll of lets say 100' of 12/2 Romex is 109.00, I add 10% tax =119.9 rounded up 120.00 x 50% for markup ..cushion, =180.00 / 100 = 1.80 ft .. then I simply estimate the run as I wired it or plan to wire it, counting going up the wall across the wall then down the wall rounded up lets say 40ft x 1.80 + 72.00 .. then price everything from boxes, devices, connectors ..etc .. I stopped charging for wirenuts years ago ..
 
cdslotz said:
I can't believe anyone would set foot on a job not knowing how much wire you need......or anything else for that matter
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You being an estimator, you probably haven't done any type service work. Sometimes we don't know what we are getting into, much less any materials needed. We may go in for a certain project and find we have to do other things to accomplish it. Also, customers often add to the job while we're there. If we know we need more wire than what might be on the truck, we just get a roll and use it. Then we have to either guess or backtrack to come up with amounts of wire (or anything else) that was used.
Now a planned job is a different story. We do a walk through, including taking measurements, to get a material list. Even with this method, there is often unknowns we encounter that might lead to using more materials than was planned for.
 
Does anyone use one of the devices that the supply house uses to measure your cuts? Could thread one wire of a set through the thing and get a reasonably accurate reading for a pull. Or even measure the pulling line coming out of the pipe when you do the pull. (Won't work for everything, but will for some.)

Something like this-

Small Wire Length Counter | Wire Length Measurement Device

The LR100 is a simple cable and wire length measurement device with either footage or metric wire length counter units with inch or 10 cm length increments.
www.taymer.com www.taymer.com

Better question is "how accurate does it need to be?" and "how much effort will you put into measuring?"
 
zbang said:
Does anyone use one of the devices that the supply house uses to measure your cuts? Could thread one wire of a set through the thing and get a reasonably accurate reading for a pull. Or even measure the pulling line coming out of the pipe when you do the pull. (Won't work for everything, but will for some.)

Something like this-

Small Wire Length Counter | Wire Length Measurement Device

The LR100 is a simple cable and wire length measurement device with either footage or metric wire length counter units with inch or 10 cm length increments.
www.taymer.com www.taymer.com

Better question is "how accurate does it need to be?" and "how much effort will you put into measuring?"
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Looked at something like that but none available in feet only metric were available. And look at the price, also that was not practical on a constantly moving jobsites.
 
Usually just guess it. At a previous place I worked, they had an old scale, so I tried to figure out weight per foot and subtract the weight of the spools. It worked pretty well, but I was the only one who really knew how to do the conversions. You can't just use the published weight data from Southwire, because most of them don't have enough significant figures to really get an accurate length. You have to weigh a known length to get your most accurate weight per foot.
 
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