Cost for underground service?

[jkeyser14]

I had an electrician come out to upgrade my panel to 200 amp. A major issue came up during inspection. The lines coming off the power pole run over top of the last couple feet of the corner of my roof. As far as I am concerned this is outside the scope of work that I was having done and shouldn't have been an issue for inspection. The inspector and his higher ups in the county won't budge on the issue and say that since the roof is walkable, the lines need to be higher up. They want a 4' tall galvanized mast on my roof that gets bolted through the side of the house for support. This is obviously going to be hideous and I'm considering underground service now instead.

Does anyone have any estimates of what their power company charged for a 200 amp underground service, about 100' run from the pole? My local power company has a long drawn out process for getting an estimate done, so it looks like I'll be waiting on them for a few weeks before I get actual numbers.

 

[Stuart in MN]

It's really pretty hard to say, since every electric utility has their own rules and standards for that sort of thing. Some utilities may put it in for free, others may charge you thousands of dollars, others may tell you it's your responsibility to hire an electrician to run the wires underground and they just show up to make the final connections.

 

[kbs2244]

Will they let you put the top of the drop under the eves?
I see a number that way.

 

[Aceman]

Stuart hit the nail on the head.

Usually we can't put the drop under the eave due to overhead clearance issues. I've done quite a few service changes that were under the eave(with obvious clearance issues) and had to punch them up through the roof just like the OP described to get the height required to pass inspection.

 

[hetkind]

I just paid 3k plus to the power company for 400 amp underground service, including a transformer...and this is just the conduit, cable and tranformer, to the transformer and not the trenching or the service from the transformer to the panel...not cheap.

Howard

 

[sberry]

Here it would be 6$ a foot trenched in by the poco to the meter. Half that if you bury a pipe to the pole.

 

[jkeyser14]

Just wanted to give everyone an update. The power company wanted $3k if I trenched and ran my own 4" electrical grade pvc conduit at least 28" deep. They wanted $5k for them to do the work and bore the entire 100' run. After looking at the cost to rent a trencher and material costs, and thinking about having the yard torn up, I decided to let them do the work. They sent out two teams of contractors (4 guys in total) and it was finished within 2 hours. Two guys dug a 3' deep hole at the meter and ran the boring machine, and the other two took care of running and hooking up the electrical. The workers were very happy that I didn't do it myself as it seems they haven't been very busy in this economy and I was one of only a couple small jobs they had this week.

Now if only my cable provider had agreed to have their lines run underground as well my house would look perfectly clean out front.

 

[Gary S]

The pole on the roof would have been a cheap and easy alternative. When I built my garage, the power line crossed over the roof too low. The power company had me add a 5' pole on the garage roof and they connected their wires to it for free. My cost for the pole and installing it myself into the roof was about $50.

 

[hetkind]

I ended up putting in almost 500 feet of underground electric, 2.5" continous conduit from the nearest pole to the transformer, new transformer and base, then 150 feet of 3" schedule 40 pvc to the meter socket...

3.5k to the utility
3k or so trenching
2k meter socket, switch gear, breaker boxes, and conduit
still waiting for the bill from my electrician for the meter socket, switch gear and wiring the building bill

So I am guess 10k in electric before I am done.

Howard

 

[checkthisout]

I ended up putting in almost 500 feet of underground electric, 2.5" continous conduit from the nearest pole to the transformer, new transformer and base, then 150 feet of 3" schedule 40 pvc to the meter socket...

3.5k to the utility
3k or so trenching
2k meter socket, switch gear, breaker boxes, and conduit
still waiting for the bill from my electrician for the meter socket, switch gear and wiring the building bill

So I am guess 10k in electric before I am done.

Howard

Holy ****!

I dug the trench and the power company charged me $3.50 a foot for whatever size cable is required for 320 amp service in 3" conduit. The cost to me was $220.00 (60 feet).


The cost for 2 200 AMP disconnects,1 320 amp meter socket, 1 40 space breaker panel, ground rods, copper grounding wire, 100 feet of 4-0 4-0 2-0 and #2 ground to run to the mobile home from the garage, conduits, all the fittings and paying an electrician to do some of the connection work and pull the permit was about $2000.00. Rental of the CAT 305CR has been an ongoing saga as this super-cool rental place has let me have their machine for 2 months but is only charging me for the hours on the machine.

I made some errors which resulted in the destruction of about $200.00 worth of conduit and fittings but even with that I now feel much better about my project cost! LOL