Working with an electrician to add a breaker and subpanel
#11
I'm looking at wiring the garage in our new house (moving during COVID - wish me luck!). The garage is, of course, on the opposite side of the house from the master breaker panel, which means running wiring. There is a crawlspace, but the emphasis is on the "crawl" - it's about 2' high. 

What I'd like to do to save on expense is to do as much as I can myself. I've done this in the past, but it was a different state and about ten years ago. Is doing your own wiring a thing - particularly in California? Should I just contact the city and ask if a homeowner can connect to a panel, and talk to the electrical company to disconnect the works prior to electrocuting myself?

If not, what's the best way to convince an electrician that I actually do know what I'm doing and have them do the final connections?
Computer geek and amateur woodworker.
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#12
A friend of mine is a licensed electrician. Our wives were in the same room at the hospital as they were going through labor on our first born (how we met). We served together on the school board for years.   Our kids went to school together k-12.  I was his son’s cub scout den leader.  My wife was his daughter’s religious ed teacher in middle school. We had worked together on a project in our school working on Saturdays, I helped him feed wire as he pulled it, handed him parts of ceiling fans as he installed them (this was not a paying job he donated the work for our kids’ school).

When I wanted to upgrade my service panel I asked the same question.
 No, nope, nada, nothing, no way.
Ain’t going to happen. 

In our city at that time a homeowner was allowed to wire their own residential house subject to getting a permit and having it inspected (no longer the case-now we can only do branch circuits after passing a homeowner’s electrical exam).
In the end, he offered to look at my work before the city inspector did, and he gave me a bottle of noalox.  No advice, no connections, no remediation of any of my work, no touching it in any way.
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#13
No offense but if you think you need the electric utility to disconnect your service to put a breaker in your panel you don’t know what you’re doing. Time to hire it out.
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#14
I think I'd just do it myself. You don't need the utility company to turn anything off.

An electrician would wire the panel live.
Neil Summers Home Inspections




I came to a stop sign and a skanky tweaker chick in a tube top climbed out of the brush and propositioned me.  She looked like she didn't have any teeth so I counted that as a plus.


... Kizar Sosay





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#15
(07-28-2020, 06:54 AM)Snipe Hunter Wrote: I think I'd just do it myself. You don't need the utility company to turn anything off.

An electrician would wire the panel live.

"If not, what's the best way to convince an electrician that I actually do know what I'm doing and have them do the final connections? "
He didn't convince me from the statements made and I would never suggest that he could do it hot when he is not confident on how to work in a hot panel.  Roly
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#16
(07-28-2020, 06:54 AM)Snipe Hunter Wrote: I think I'd just do it myself. You don't need the utility company to turn anything off.

An electrician would wire the panel live.

Yeah.  at our old house I needed a panel upgrade.    I ended up doing it myself, the guy who was going to got sick.  He was going to work with the meter hot.  I wasn't comfortable doing that so had the PoCo turn the power off at the transformer.  I've worked in a live panel before.  I don't like doing so.  That and my wife got as angry with me as I've ever seen her.
Smile  

For the OP, whether or not you are allowed to do your own work depends on local rules.  Here I am allowed to.  Of course if you don't pull a permit then it doesn't matter whether you are allowed to or not.

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#17
I'm not going to try to talk anybody into doing something they aren't comfortable with, especially in a service panel. Assuming the panel has a main breaker, and assuming I was wasn't comfortable with electrical work, I'd just flip off the main breaker and kill the panel. The mail lugs would still be live but the work wouldn't be near those lugs.
Neil Summers Home Inspections




I came to a stop sign and a skanky tweaker chick in a tube top climbed out of the brush and propositioned me.  She looked like she didn't have any teeth so I counted that as a plus.


... Kizar Sosay





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#18
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#19
(07-28-2020, 12:32 AM)abernat Wrote: If not, what's the best way to convince an electrician that I actually do know what I'm doing and have them do the final connections?

I don't know how it is in California, but I don't know anybody who likes crawling around in a low crawlspace (or attic) to run a cable.  Like trenching for a cable.  It's hard, lousy work.

Discuss the work with a small licensed electrical contractor.  You do the cable run, with his or her advice on cable (4-conductor, since it's a sub, but NM or other type as local codes require), with appropriate support (8-gauge and larger cable can be run on the bottom of joists without a backing strip), and bring the cable up to where the main and the new sub panels are and leave a big loop at each.  


Connecting the panels is the easy part, but if you can't (with permit) or won't (permit notwithstanding) do the connections, then it's an hour's work for the sparky as long as there aren't any curveballs, and he or she will have the appropriate strain reliefs and breakers on the truck already.  Nobody has to tell the inspector you did the wire run.  It's just a cable, after all.  But the sparky will want to get paid, and since you're doing the heavy work, he may insist on providing the panel or cable (with generous markup).  All subject to negotiation prior to awarding the work, of course; if it doesn't go the way you want, find another sparky.

What are you using the subpanel for?  An inspector is going to wonder why there's a new sub with nothing connected to it.
Tom

“This place smells like that odd combination of flop sweat, hopelessness, aaaand feet"
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#20
I'm comfortable with running new circuits and installing new breakers, but I drew the line at a subpanel installation. Similar situation, main panel was some distance from the location of the subpanel, and I wanted to make sure the run was sized correctly, so I hired out the subpanel. Thereafter, I did all my shop wiring myself, three 220 circuits and four 110, 20a, GFI circuits (one dedicated to lighting). This was the third shop I had similarly wired. Years ago I came across a Taunton Press book, "Wiring a House" which I used for the first shop wiring (only two circuits) and it is the best I've come across, so much so that I bought the updated edition. It's soup to nuts, service to rewiring a lamp; I find it most helpful when wiring multiple wall switches.

https://www.amazon.com/Wiring-House-Comp...ustrations
Credo Elvem ipsum etiam vivere
Non impediti ratione cogitationis
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