Westcott (Monte) came over for the initial scoping of the project, and then Jim and Mike were the electricians who performed the upgrades over a period of two days.
The project was to upgrade my old Federal Pacific 150A load center (30 circuits) with a Square-D QO 200A load center (54 spaces 64 circuits). There are now *plenty* circuit breaker spaces free for future additions, or for MWBC conversions to more modern wiring standards which use AFCI or G/AFCI (which do not, for the majority of cases, support multi wire branch circuits, aka "shared neutral", 120V-N-120V setups).
Also upgraded my 150A service to 200A service. This required NYSEG to come in and hook up the new meter and such after about 2 weeks. During this period of time, the new load center was jumpered in from the old load center's range circuit breaker, via a short length of service entrance cable, hooked up into a double pole, 50A circuit breaker in the new panel. The old panel and jumper were removed by Jim as the final cleanup and finalization process.
Value wise, well, I won't sugarcoat it--it was expensive. But then I realized there were 2 people who worked 20 hours over 2 days, and it was pretty hard work too, definitely they've earned it. The cleanliness and organization of the work itself was great. They used EMT conduit, junction boxes, and THHN wires running between to eliminate having to use NM wires for the ~3ft extension to the new load center's location, which would have been both ugly looking and clunky. I also had my contractor, who used to be a telecoms engineer as well as an electrician, look over their work, and he agreed it was well done. read more
