Hey folks, hoping to get some opinions on something I'm wanting to do.
We recently moved to our new house and I finally have my very own detached garage / workshop!! YAY...unfortunately, the existing panel is being fed by a 25A breaker from the attached garage panel and is not acceptable for the machinery I have. After poking around on my own and having one electric company come out, it looks like the existing cable (romex 10 gauge oddly) is being run underground through 1.25" conduit and pops up in the wall of the detached garage. There's been no attempt yet to remove existing cable to know if it's possible to pull it out and run new through it, but I'm optimistic that I can get appropriate cable pulled for at least 60 amps and maybe more. I'll go as high as possible on the amps. I also want to put an appropriate surface mount panel and will run my own EMT and cable inside for outlets.
Oh, the distance from main panel in attached garage to new panel is approximately 70 feet (6 feet down + 55 feet across + 6 feet up + extra for bends.)
So, some questions I have:
1) Does this sound reasonable for what I want and trying to achieve?
2) Is there anything I'm missing or should be thinking about with this?
3) Assuming it is possible to do this, does a quote of $1827 sound like I'm getting ripped off?
The quote is really bothering me. It sounds terribly high and my reasoning is a quick estimate of materials that I could go buy at the borg:
70 feet x 4 conductor x 1.19/ft = $333.20 (I know ground is different, but keeping it easy and it pads the price a bit)
surface mount box = $150 (probably way cheaper, but padding price)
= $483.20
+ let's add 25% just in case = $604.00
Assuming that's even remotely close (which should be way high), that leaves about $1200 in labor and assuming $100 hourly rate, we're looking at 12 man hours of work? I just don't buy that and sounds like I'm getting ripped off. Would really like to know the opinions of others that have more knowledge about this stuff, but also don't want to get shafted and pay wayyyy more than need be. I have two other companies coming out this week to quote me too, so I'll soon find out what I'm getting into.
PS. The actual wording in the quote: "Tear out old 10/3 feeding detatched garage and running a new 100 amp line through existing conduit. Taking out 4 circuit disconnect and installing a 100 amp 20 circuit panel and tie back in existing circuits. Total investment would be $1827.00 with discount."