upgrading from 60 to 100 amp necessary?

[John Thuesen]

Hi Everyone,

I have a triplex with 60 amp service. My insurance company is demanding I upgrade to 100 amps. $4000 is my lowest bid. There are 2 small 1 bedrooms and a1 2 bedroom. Each apartment has an electric stove and window AC in the summer, otherwise no special electrical uses. Is this necessary to do this upgrade or can I save my 4 grand and change my insurance Co. Thanks in advance for your reply.

[Pat L.]

Definitely a good idea to upgrade the panels & it sounds like you don't really have any other option. Here's just a heads up when you pull that required permit & get the bldg., inspector involved.

You will need to run new service wiring from the new weather head(s)  to each new meter & then into the panel. The utility will run new feeds from their poles so you may have a couple of days down time (ours was 4 days) as an inspection must be done to clear the ESOP for each panel. Hopefully you have grounded circuits throughout the building.

The panels may also require AFCI breakers (new code requirement) for each new circuit, the last pack of 10 (20amp) we bought was $300. Code should require you to run new dedicated circuits to some of the appliances on 20amp 12/2 wire & definitely to all the required GFI's. We had a local investor run 14/2 & had to rip out all the kitchen backsplash to feed 12/2 to the GFI's.

The last complete single panel one I did myself (2 story Cape) to code & permit sign-off ran about $1200 in supplies (+ $375 for the tax grab permit) & 3-4 days of very frustrating pulling of wires & then drywall repairs. A 200 amp service I did last year for another of our properties ran $1800 in materials & again I re-wired the entire 2000 sq ft with 12/2.

So given all that & the time involved the $4000 for a licensed sparky to do 3 of them is not that expensive.