wire estimating

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vilasman

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I think i will have 2 new houses to wire, beside each other , starting in march. ! is 8,000 sq feet, the other is probably 6000 sq feet witha seperate mother in law suite, and then a minor league commercial kitchen in a seperate building in the back yard. The owner is a chef, and wants to be able to prepare cateered meals out there.
I am looking at buying wire in 1000 ft rolls, looking a gang box to the basement colunms and then just spooling the wire out of the gang box as I pull the home runs and then carting the hopefully much lighter spools of wire upstairs when it comes time to do the branch circuits.
Normally I do the $45 per box base price and just keep buying 250's until the job is done, but that waste and because these houses are so big, I could end up under budgeted on wire.
How would you guess how many spools to get? There is a fairly good chance I will have some more big custom houses to do after these two so I am not terribly worried about left overs, but when I layout my itemized bid for all to see and I say 5000 ft of 14-2, I want to have some confidence that , that number is neither grossly high, or grossly low.
 
Re: wire estimating

Have done it both ways.The time dealing with spools just not worth it.Give thought to wire spinners and set up several at the panel.And they are easy to build for nothing.
 
Re: wire estimating

but when I layout my itemized bid for all to see and I say 5000 ft of 14-2,
Who are you showing this too? And Why? How will you waste wire by buying rolls instead of spools? You will still use the same amount of wire.

[ February 15, 2005, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: electricmanscott ]
 
Re: wire estimating

As for rolls and spools...
I have at least 4 pieces of 12 floating around now, from 50' or do down to 20, which is long enough to go from one plug to another and useless for much else.
The thought is instead of having 4 pieces totalling maybe 100 or so feet, I would have 1 piece of 100 or so feet and wouldnt have had to buy a 250' roll
(250' was $30, 100' was $27 and change and 50' was $15 and change) to wire a sump pump in a garage.

As for the estimate....
I am working with builder, who is developing 1-2 house tracks of land and financing through a bank.
From what I am hearing the architect, cause they are pretty much custom houses is giving the bank a fairly solid estimate of what each trade should get off the project the bank has a reviewer that is going through the prints and counting up what is going into the house and then coming up with a budjet of what the builder should expect to pay each trade.
Which is a little fishy now that I think about it, because the architect is requiring that the major trades go through the prints themselves and layout their stuff, because he dosent feel confident to do it.

But at any rate, I have already made it clear that I am going to go over the print and figure up myself what I think it should cost, based on book rate, Davis Bacon wage scale and my own personal hocus pocus and , if they, the bank or whom ever else dosent like it, well...

Which I am not really to worried about cause I am pretty dog gone good at my game and they aren't my only customer and they know I am maintaining another fairly substantial customer, so that if this situation falls through, I wont even think about it twice.

But I am the fourth electrician they have gotten too and they dont relish the idea of trying to find number 5.

But to answer your question, I know that the baseball park everyone else is working with is $13,000 to $15,000 per house, 400 amp service, mother in law suite, gas stove and heat, all else electric.

Which is semi reasonable depending on how crazy the architect gets and how much time you sink into putting together crazy chandeliers and yard lighting and other such stuff.

Given a pretty basic albeit large house, 13-15k is gravy for a house, and that dosen't include low voltage.

But given a house with 15 million reccessed lightsand big complicated ceiling fans and chandeliers or gourmet kitchens or gigantic bathrooms with hot tubs and showers that have their own water heaters, it starts eating into the gravy that you thought you had.

And this goes back to the wire question, you have a great big house that isnt really cut up, or a big one that is really cut up, you can sink thousands of feet of wire just into home runs if each room is on a seperate circuit

So when you get down to the end, and I want $17.5k
for this house that the money holders are thinking should cost $15k after there pencil pushers get through trying to estimate my work, I am going to throw itemized paper on them and demand to know how many custom homes they have wired.

Conversely, if I go through the print and see a $12k house and they are thinking $14k, I will queitly slip into the background.

But I believe and I may be wrongm that, you sorta need to know when you are making money, losing money or just breaking even.

What say you, oh great and wise electricians?
Now I have already made it clear
 
Re: wire estimating

Why would an electrician be buying romex in rolls of 100' or 50'? :confused: As for the pricing off the top of my head the 6000 sq ft house would be over $17,000.00 Basic code. The 8,000 sq foot house would be over $22,000.00. If you are letting people tell YOU what the price of the job will be you're in trouble.

[ February 16, 2005, 08:00 AM: Message edited by: electricmanscott ]
 
Re: wire estimating

We only use #12

A simple estimate of 12/2 you will use is:
Sq. footage x1.5

Then estimate the remainder:

25ft 12/3 per fan
50 ft 12/3 per 3 way
25ft 12/4 per HVL
 
Re: wire estimating

First things first. If you are an electrician of any sorts, 250' Rolls are a waste of time. Buy by the 1000', put it on a wire spooler and let it ride. Put your #14 and #12 on each side and fire away. No need to even lug it upstairs when needed upstairs. Use the leverage of a stud. When the wire get stuck becasue your pulling from side to side, just find a nice stud that is square right in fromt of the spool, and use it as a "pulley" so to speak. It will save time and money in the long run in redused labor and lug time. Less changes of wire too. As for wire you will need. Assume about a spool of 14 for every 1000 feet (avg) and about a spool of 12 for every 1600 feet. Of course you will make your money when you can place your panel in spots where you are in good proximity to all major appliances. Less wire, Less time and Less labor, More profit. If you have long wire runs and it seems theres no getting around it, than figure an extra spool of each.

Your 6000 square foot house should take around 5 to 6 1000' spool of 14 and 3-4 1000' spool of 12. Its better to have alittle more than not enough. You can always take it back (uncut). Gas is expensive these days, so you don't want to keep running. You'll get better, just pay close attention to what it takes to get the job done right.

[ February 16, 2005, 09:12 PM: Message edited by: aelectricalman ]
 
Re: wire estimating

All jobs not the same.Lot depends on how many men and time of day.With less than a hour before end of day would you set up a spoll of 1000 to finish a bedroom ?or would you say forget it.Then again i could easily grab a roll and keep going.Should be no waste either way.There are plenty of runs to use that 10 foot piece.
 
Re: wire estimating

If you use 250' rolls, you say there is waste. How much waste are you saying there is? I use 250' rolls . When I get to the end of one. I set the left over piece to the side and use it for the next short run I have. At the end of the job I might have left over pieces that total maybe 50'. But lets just say I had 250' of pieces left over. First, I would roll up the responsibly long pieces and use them on the next job. Second if I threw away the 250' that would be $30.00 my cost. I would hope that my profit wouldn't be so small as to have to worry about $30.00. You would hate the slack I leave at each box during the rough.
 
Re: wire estimating

a custom home of this size should have a custom price and this price should be on the high side. if your worried about scrap wire on a 8000 sq. foot home, you need to stay out of the "custom home" business. the other four contractors backed out of their contracts or bids as soon as they found out the contractor was telling "them" what the price should be! both the home owner, and the home owner's contractor should be looking for a honest-reliable sub contractor for each trade concerning this house---- and since they are shopping price---stay away from them like the others have!!! just think--one change in the chief's kitchen could cost him $400.00 in electrical costs --- now how much scrap wire can you buy with that much money? you cannot be successful in the electrical contracting trade when intimidated by anyone you work for--your price is your price---period!!!
 
Re: wire estimating

I watched another contractor rough a house and was amazed with their efficiency. They had a small box truck they had their 1000' reels in on stands. 1st floor they pulled though the door. 2nd floor they pulled though a window. These guys flew. 2 men service and rough 2 days. This was a 4,000 sq ft custom house. I am sold this will be the setup I use when I can afford another truck or get some housing contracts. I do mostly commercial now.

[ February 17, 2005, 09:55 PM: Message edited by: highkvoltage ]
 
Re: wire estimating

thanks for the insight, I dont have a problem with turning down the job, because i couldnt get my price...
As you can tell I am fairly new at doing houses on this scale on my own. And I am not totally detached from the Master who has brought me to this poiint and shown me the way, but he isnt the best business person,he's from the keep buying wire till the job is done school of thought.

But on the other hand, while I dont believe you can be tight about money...
I do believe that one needs a war chest in this business. Just as you need a truck full of good dependable tools with good locks on it, you need a bank account full of money that you can both live off of, if you need to, and that you can float an entire job or two if you need to and it not rock your financial boat. If I go beyond cusotm residnetial I will probably go less than 1/2 million $ goverment contracts where they take forever to pay
If I can wire a few custom houses and keep myself afloat and save up so that living exspenses cease to be a concern, it sorta makes you more confident about going after jobs that you want, instead going after stuff you are fairly sure you can get , just to keep cash flowing.
 
Re: wire estimating

IMO 250' roles are a waste of time. However I still have a strong back and am fairly young. 31. Not sure if I want to be lugging those things around when I get older.
 
Re: wire estimating

val,
you are working for a guy who has learnt the hard way. but he has the correct attitude. i have worked in the trade for near fourty years. i only worked for one company that was efficient enough to truely control material. this one guy was a german estimator and we knew when the job was complete because "we were out of material", and this was a company that did mainly printing installations.

when i first went in business, i had two men running some 1/2" emt control pipe. i thought the job would take about three hours. three hours later, i came by and seen that they were only half way to finish the pipe work! i questioned them about it and asked them why they had chosen the nastiest route to run the pipe? they told me "hay, we saved over fifty feet of pipe running it this way!" --- savings on pipe and fittings $10.00 ---- difference in labor $280.00?

before going into business, i ran two ten story high rise condos, each building had 178 units to wire and we had approval for romex. we only used 250 foot boxes --- they were easy to move from one apt. to another! we had a 55 gallon waste drum the apprentics thru their scrap wire in, this scrap also included "ringing and splicing" scrap. at the end of the job the drum was "almost" full. there isn't too much waste in romex --- there can be if the rough crew gets sloppy!

the guy you now work for realizes he plans on being in business for enough time to use up the scrap! i told my men went i went into business "just think that we also own a supply house" ---- always consider labor costs vs material cost...
 
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