Rewiring a house???????

[69boss9]

My son is looking at a house that is 50 years old, it is a very good house however it only has 100 AMP service and the wall out lets are of the older two prong style. It is @ 50' X 28' single story house with a full basement. What kind of a cost would it be to rewire a house like this?

 

[bmcdowell40]

Without seeing it and not knowing what electricians charge in your area, it would be hard to even get you a "ballpark" price. I've rewired a bunch of homes working with my dad, an electrical contractor, and I can tell you no two are the same and none of them are easy.

A few things to consider:
1. If the service is shot and needs replaced, do it first.
2. Is the house going to be "gutted" and rewired or will it be rewired without opening up the walls? Are other renovations planned?
3. Is the house stud framed or is it double plank? Double plank homes are really labor intensive to rewire unless you use wiremold, which doesn't really look good.
4. Is any of the basement finished?

 

[Stuart in MN]

Is the basement unfinished? Is there access to the attic? If yes to both, the job will be a lot easier for fishing new wire. I would imagine a house in the US 50 years old or less will be conventional stud frame.

However, as said there's no way to even estimate the cost other than it will probably be somewhere between $1 and $10,000.

 

[porcupine73]

I live in a house my great grandparents built in the mid 1800's. In the attic there was still knob and tube wiring. It had double plank construction, and someone installed a bunch of wiremold some years back. The wiremold isn't the prettiest but it's OK.

It took this guy several weeks to 'rewire' the house. He had to drill through quite a few beams and various things that he was complaining made it take a lot longer than he estimated.

This guy that installed the wiremold was supposedly a licensed electrician. But looking at it now, he installed all grounded outlets, and cut the dang ground wire off in every outlet rather than connecting it!

In a few spots, I found where he had put an outlet flush mount on the wall, in no box, just fished the wire down between the double planks, and put the outlet right into the wall itself. It has taken quite a bit of work to reverse this stuff. He had no ground rod installed whatsoever, and that was with upgrading the main panel. How he got the meter put back in I have no idea.

 

[69boss9]

To answer some of your questions no the service is not shot it's just that it is a 100 AMP service , and no the house was not going to be gutted, and yes it is a stud framed house, and the basement is unfinished, and there is access to the attic. I know very little about this type of work... if it were a car I would have no problem but this is all new to me.

 

[bmcdowell40]

To answer some of your questions no the service is not shot it's just that it is a 100 AMP service , and no the house was not going to be gutted, and yes it is a stud framed house, and the basement is unfinished, and there is access to the attic. I know very little about this type of work... if it were a car I would have no problem but this is all new to me.

Since you're not doing anything with the walls, all your new wires will need to be pulled up or down from the basement or attic. This should be very easy since you have access to the attic and no finishing in the basement to contend with.

The price all depends on how many switches/receptacles/lights you have and what, if anything, you want to add while you're at it. You'll definitely want to make sure your fridge is on its own circuit as well as any other major appliance (washer, freezer, microwave).

 

[billh1963]

Thought my first post would be wityy and impressive; however, I can give you some personal experience. Just bought a 55 y.o. house with a 100 amp service and ungrounded outlets. The house is 3600 sq. ft., with a LOT of outlets, switches, etc. Upgrading to a 200 amp service and replacing all the wiring, outlets, switches, etc. is going to cost me close to $9,000.

 

[Stuart in MN]

Thought my first post would be wityy and impressive; however, I can give you some personal experience.

You should also mention what part of the country you're in, since the price will vary quite a bit depending on the location.

 

[kbs2244]

I don’t understand why you think you need to re-wire the existing circuits.
Even romex to two prong outlets will have the box grounded.
If it is a EMT install this is a given.
Just install the new outlets grounded to the box.

Why upgrade the service?
Are you planning some new heavy draw stuff?
There are millions of 100 amp homes out there getting along just fine.

 

[Stuart in MN]

Even romex to two prong outlets will have the box grounded.

This may or may not be the case here, but there are many older houses that have Romex with no ground wire in it.

 

[-Brent-]

My son is looking at a house that is 50 years old, it is a very good house however it only has 100 AMP service and the wall out lets are of the older two prong style. It is @ 50' X 28' single story house with a full basement. What kind of a cost would it be to rewire a house like this?

I just rewired my whole house, it was 70 amp and no grounds. I went to 125A, arc fault, etc. As well, we did recessed lights and had to put in hard-wired fire alarms since code requires it and everything needed to be to code since we were touching the electrical. It wasn't cheap, in materials alone we were near 7k. Then all my walls needed to be repaired (that's being done now). And, of course, paint to follow, etc.

I took advantage of having the walls open and ran data and cable within the walls (that stuff I didn't include into the cost of the upgrade and it's expensive).

Other requirements of meeting code were GFCI in bathrooms and vent fans too. We planned them anyway but had no idea the fans would've fell into the code requirements of our city.

 

[Motofixxer]

My house is a ranch and about 60 years old. There is a mix of conduit and bx(metal flex). It's all 12ga wire and had no grounds. All it needed was some ground pigtails in the boxes and new outlets and switches. I installed gfi's and separated some of the circuits.

 

[theoldwizard1]

My niece had the same situation except that it was 60 Amp service !

Built on a slab with no attic access, the biggest cost was patching all of the walls.

 

[-Brent-]

I should mention at 70 amp and the age of the home our insurance broker was hesitant to insure the home. The minimum for many insurance companies is now 100A, so I was told.

I wanted 200A but was coerced out of the overkill for the house size. The garage is getting a 100A or 125A sub panel though.

I'm still learning but the electrician (hate to call him that) left me a lot of repairs to make, so I've learned a bunch.

After the inspector failed us multiple times (which I had no problem with as I want my home to be safe and the guy definitely had our best interests in mind) I decided to make the corrections on my own. I felt burned by the "electrician" at first but now I take pride in the job seeing how far it has come along.

 

[rburke65]

Yes, a location might help us answer some of your questions. A 100 amp can be a very adequate service. it depends on what type of heating you have. If you are all electric, then maybe not. If you have gas heat, gas dryer and water heater, moderate climate, I can't imagine an average household pulling anywhere near a 100 amp. And pull out some of the outlets, maybe you will find that there is grounded romex already there!

 

[frank_c]

i've got a gas boiler and water heater, getting by with 100 amp here just fine. i do live by myself though, and like a dark house.

the PO had some...um...let's call it unconventional groupings of fixtures to breakers, which is getting addressed.

 

[bczygan]

Many places a homeowner can do their own electrical and even pull the permit. There is no big secrets to electrical, just a lot of little details a newbie won't know. No reason you can't do a lot of the grunt work if you find a friendly electrician to supervise and plan the work. Even helping him pull wires will help. And you can certainly do the work in stages. I wouldn't pull a permit for minor changes as long as I knew what I was doing.

 

[Falcon67]

This may or may not be the case here, but there are many older houses that have Romex with no ground wire in it.

And it may well have knob and tube also. I've rewired two houses DIY - never tracked all the materials, but it takes a lot of thought, time and work, maybe not so much money in the past when 250' of 12-2w/g was $25.

 

[-Brent-]

...in the past when 250' of 12-2w/g was $25.

We'd need a time machine to get those prices again. 250' goes a lot faster in a rewire vs. a new build, too.

 

[metal1313]

i'll be doing the same soon. we have a 200 amp service, but the house was biult in 1875. it origonally had gas lights, then a 60amp service. it has knob and tube, bx, older romex and new stuff too. the main issue is ungrounded outlets and overloaded circuts. some have way to many draws on them, others have one light bulb.

its all complacted by the fact that over the years so much has been changed that its hard to follow lines around in the basement, there are tons of unused wires, wires that lead no where. ive removed a ton so far and have more to remove before i can start rewiring the older part of the house. im lucky to have an unfinished basement and attic, as well as a 2ftx2ft chase in the middle of the house.

for anyone doing this i recommend buying some pex to protect wires form chaffing as you pull them. its a two man job but ive seen i help alot. one man pulls, the other holds the pex and feeds the wire. and buy some glo-rods or similar by greenlee, they help alot

 

[KenC]

I haven't seen mention of GFCIs instead of replacing the wire on outlet runs. It is legal to use a GFCI at the first outlet on each run then label each outlet on the circuit as GFCI protected - no ground. That provides the needed ground fault safety and will save a lot of labor and wire.

New circuits need to be grounded. So, replacing main panel and installing additional circuits as needed is a lot cheaper that a wholesale rewire that may not be needed.

This all assumes that your existing wire is physically OK, just does not include a ground.

 

[69boss9]

Thanks.. for all the feed back, been quite busy this past week. We are in Illinois, in the north central area.