Ripped off? Circuits were tripping so I replaced breaker box($1700). Now electrician wants $900 for new line.?

Call the company back and talk it over with them. No reputable electrician does side jobs behind the companies back. Your job is the companies work, not his. He is being dishonest. Ask for another electrician from the company to come out and look. It sounds bogus to me. $900 is way to much anyway.

The adding up of the circuit breakers means nothing. None of them are running at full load and some are using none or very little. If there is a problem, the 200 amp main will trip. Is there also a main in the new panel? What size?

Email me if you need more information about this. Don't take electrical advise from the untrained, unqualified people on yahoo. Read my profile to find out why.

You should have a 4/0 entry cable running from the meter to the breaker box outside and the same size cable running to the box inside. The cable costs about $5 a foot. I have a roll of it here now and do my own electrical work and my work always passes inspection even though I am not a licensed electrician. Look at the cable running from the outside box to the inside box. It is probably gray, and there should be numbers printed on it and it should say 4/0 somewhere on it with the letters AWG.

He may be right about you needing a larger cable, but the price he gave is way too high and it is not ethical for him to offer you an under the table deal. It's back-stabbing his company at the very least and at worst will make you responsible should something go wrong, including if someone gets killed because of a mistake he made.

I would not trust this man and I hope you will make an anonymous call to his boss and tell him that their employee is using his position to do questionable things.

If you were my friend I would help you do the job for the cost of the cable and maybe lunch. People like him are why I do my own work...

As for counting 500 amps, that is normal. There will be a big breaker, usually at the top of the box, that should say 200 on it. This is the main breaker and all other wires are connected to it so this limits the total amount of amps that can be used at the same time.

There has to be some other reason this started happening all of a sudden.

There may have been problems with the ground, as mentioned by others, and they may have been fixed by a new installation, but it would have been good to know SPECIFICALLY what the problem was, and know it was corrected.

You said you knew you needed a new panel because of all the stuff., but that quote should have included EVERYTHING.

In the united states such a job by a professional requires a permit from the govenment in most areas, and an inspector would not approve the finished work if the main wire was too small. Professionals who do not get a permit are afraid their work is not good enough to pass and should be avoided.

The wire from the pole to the meter on the house has to also be changed to the larger size, by the electric company. This is usually cordinated by the electrician you hire, to happen at the same time as the panel work.

unless your wiring is old and the insulation around the wire is old or worn out it probably does not need replacing.any overloads will not cause an explosion the breaker will trip off,like what was happening already.a lot of times you can simply replace a smaller breaker with a larger one to accommodate your power needs.i would call the electricians` company and tell them what is going on.i personally think you already got ripped off.i put my hot water heater on the same circuit that my dryer was on and all i did was to put in a larger circuit breaker.someone who works for a company and wants to do some work on the side is taking work from his employer and should be reported to them.here is a free example of being taken advantage of,a local garage where i live used to find extra things wrong with my car when i would take it to be inspected,of course it costed me extra but i needed it inspected,so one day they told me i needed three lights replaced for three dollars a piece.i took it somewhere else and all my lights worked,i never went back.basically if it sounds wrong or too costly you are more than likely getting ripped off,you probably did not need the breaker box to start with,only a few circuit breakers which are only a few dollars a piece at your local home improvement center.good luck.

Why didn't the person selling the service from the company pick this up? Before adding a new 200 amp panel it is usually a good rule to make sure that the existing service will handle the upgrade. I would be calling the company and ask a few questions as to why this wasn't done at the beginning and included in the price.

The guy wants to make some money. 25 ft. for $900 is a bit high. It would help me give advice if I knew what size wire is currently there. It is very possible that what you have is adequate. What should also concern you is that if this is a reputable company, they would not have installed a new box if the wiring did not meet code for it to begin with. If it were to catch fire, he has set himself up for major liablity.

The $1700 also seems a little high to me if all he did was replace the breaker box.

If your breakers were tripping at random it sounds like you might have a bad ground. Do the lights in your home go brighter when you turn on any large appliance? Measure the voltage from a 240 outlet (electric stove, dryer) does it read 260 or 280 or something outrageous? Knew somebody it happened to and they fried their big screen tv and the computer. I would definitely get a second or third opinion

If you have a ohm meter ,take the wire off the breaker and place one probe of the meter on the wire and the other to ground and see if you get a reading, if so , then there is a short. If no reading is shown, then replace the breaker. Breakers do go bad. Just make sure that before you run the test, that all appliances are unplugged and everything is turned off.

I would wait and have a second opinion before you did this. The reasoning on his part sounds true, older homes service had a different set of codes to build by. these codes are updated frequently as the needs of are electrical consumption increases. I would think he was being honest with you, but as a company owner I am suspicious of employees taking work from their bosses on the side. As a side note if you pay him and something goes wrong he is not insured nor do you have anyway to regain what you have lost thru him.

In addition to the good answers above, when you are adding up your breakers for total amps, add only one side of a double breaker, ex: double 30 is 30, not 60. Anyway, get a second opinion.