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With inflation climbing and backlogs in supplies, what would the average cost be today to upgrade/install to a new Siemens Residential Electrical Panel to include 2 new grounding rods. Florida house. Current panel is 150amp and about 30 years old. No problems with current panel, just looking at expanding some and updating for resale value later on.
Thanks!
WAG (due to current economy, supply chain, COVID, and any other excuse one can devise)-
$2500-$3500. To include permit and all of those BS AFCI that will be required. Might as well throw in the additional smoke detectors that the AHJ will probably require also.
And if you have to have the meter box replaced also- add another 5 bills and several bags of ice to keep your freezer from thawing all the contents!
If 150A service is still adequate for your needs, there is no damage, and you have a sufficient number of branch circuits, why change it? (Unless there is some specific issue, e.g. Federal Pacific or Zinsco of certain ages which are known to be problematic.)
As noted already, replacing the panel will likely also result in needing GFCI and AFCI protection to circuits which don't already have them, assuming you do everything by the book. And in addition to all that cost, if you actually want to increase from 150A to 200A service or more, that could involve another big bill from your power company, and not just to run a new drop or service lateral - It could be that they'll want to uprate the transformer and factor in a significant portion of that cost as well.
Yes, a second electrode is required if the resistance of the first is over 25 ohms. That's been the standard specified for several decades. It never hurts to add extra electrodes, however. The lower you can get the resistance the better. If you use extra made electrodes (i.e. rods driven specifically for the purpose rather than utilizing rebar, water pipe & well casings, etc.) then they should be spaced sufficiently far apart that their resistance gradients don't overlap, which generally means at least 6 feet, sometimes more.
Thanks for the input. 150 amp is very sufficient for this house. Just looking for upgrade panel to add a main shutoff breaker, a surge protector, 3 additional outlets in garage/shop area, and 3 outside conversions to GFI. Quotes so far well above 3K.
Thanks for the input. 150 amp is very sufficient for this house. Just looking for upgrade panel to add a main shutoff breaker, a surge protector, 3 additional outlets in garage/shop area, and 3 outside conversions to GFI. Quotes so far well above 3K.
Main breaker/disconnect: Nice to have, but the NEC "rule of six" is still in effect. So long as you can disconnect the entire house by opening no more than six breakers, it's compliant (although you may have local codes amending that, but if it was compliant when installed there's no requirement to change it).
Surge protector: You can add one to an existing panel.
Additional outlets in garage/shop area: Are these just for convenience, or to take additional loads? If they are for specific, new, fixed loads then you may need to add dedicated circuits. If it's just for convenience, then you can likely add them to the existing circuit.
GFI: Easy enough to accomplish with either a replacement GFCI breaker in the panel, assuming it's a type you can still get, or by converting the first receptacle on the circuit to a feed-through GFI type.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PBC-1966
If 150A service is still adequate for your needs, there is no damage, and you have a sufficient number of branch circuits, why change it? ...
Do you have space to add a sub-panel for extra circuits?
I would tend to keep the job as simple and clean as possible. A new panel can create a lot of work (extending all circuits., cosmetic changes due to new size, + expense and trouble and permits for disconnecting service)
As PBC mentioned, there are ways to rectify existing circuits for GFI.
Thanks for the input. 150 amp is very sufficient for this house. Just looking for upgrade panel to add a main shutoff breaker, a surge protector, 3 additional outlets in garage/shop area, and 3 outside conversions to GFI. Quotes so far well above 3K.
They wanted 2 k to redo mine when i got a EV. So i just bought a 2 way cord for my dryer outlet for $60 and saved about 2k ray.
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