JCorre, good for you – do it yourself, even if you have to replace the whole box. You can pop off you electric meter(s) outside the house, and you’re effectively disconnected. Heck, if you’re a little nervous about electricity, you could do the same thing just to replace the breaker. When I replaced my fuse box with a breaker box, the whole breaker enclosure with a bunch of breakers was only $50-$60 at home depot, plus some Romex, wire markers, clamps, a junction box, a phase-bridge (for my X10 stuff), an new ground rod, wire nuts, tape, and so on. You probably won’t need all that, since I actually moved my service entrance at the same time. In short, though, I’m NOT an electrician and did all this myself. City inspector passed me except for having to put a copper jumper across the water meter inside the house.
Did he ask you to bend over or did he kiss you or anything like that before he quoted his price? WOW!
I hope you understand that the guy performed the entire job, from beginning to end, right before your eyes, except he stuck your old breaker back in instead of substituting the new one he had in his truck.
I’ll second Crafter_Man – I’m in the wrong bidness too!
IAAE -
$625 is about what we charge for replacing the whole panel. By the way, I would not recommend anyone do this themselves.
The breaker price seems high, but demand for those types of breakers in certain parts of the country may be higher than others.
You may be able to get a different brand than Square D to fit in that panel. Some manufacturers design thier breakers to fit in different installations (universal types). Home Depot has a chart by thier breaker section that cross references what breakers will fit in what panels.
You said the electrician had the breaker on his truck. Did he replace it already? If he did and he only spent an hour there, the bill should be no more than $60 (trip charge) + 60 (hourly rate) + $85 (part plus markup of 20%). On the high side it should have come to $205+tax. I would feel guilty charging that and I do it for a living.
Wanted to let you guys know that I replaced the breaker last week and everything is working fine. Thanks for all your advice.
John
I just replaced a bad breaker in my breaker box. It was a zinsco 20 ampere breaker that I got at home depot for 19.95. To replace it, it took all of 5 minutes.