How To Add An External Electrical Disconnect To Your Home

You see part of why I didn't want to turn off the utility here and I know I shouldn't compromise security so behind me here you'll see three things you'll see the set of pink notes to the left of the door here you'll see our orange permit and that's that we print them, they don't provide them to us, we put them on orange paper so that they are different from everything else because that is a requirement to have those permits posted on At each job site on the right you will see a small handwritten note that is a note from us to the inspector because our inspectors do not schedule inspections, they show up without prior notice, so we will leave you a safe deposit box, a key, a note and phone number and when you arrive you will see our note, call us and at least we will know that They are on site, if we are nearby and available we can stop by and do the inspection with them, I will tell you what happens if you are courteous and respectful and present for an inspection, it is infinitely better than if you are absent because the inspectors are left to their own devices. luck, they'll just mark everything if they're not sure, instead of and won't go either. take out a flashlight normally our inspectors know a flashlight.

I have never seen an inspector with a tape measure or a ladder. Can you believe this is crazy? So you have to do the legwork, you have to get things out. You have to show them that everything is fine and good because they are not going to do the work themselves, so if you are there for an inspection in Indianapolis, all the better, then the ping slips will be removed on Monday when I take the tour with the inspector, presumably he is satisfied with everything and we have had very good correspondence at this point, so I think he will be, so we are still in this house doing inspection number two, we are going to install a main

disconnect

right here, the inspector will requested because right there at the entry point to the house the panel is offset inside the house approximately 16 inches, that is 16 inches is the reason required by the inspector to add this

external

disconnect

.

He will see code interpretations and compliance migrate over time (codes change every three years, that's how often the national

electrical

code cycles), but it's the enforcement that gets more complicated. He was on the phone stating that some of our inspection items here were flagged and the guy literally told me Look, every inspector will be different. I laughed a lot after hanging up after that phone call, like I got it, but how are we supposed to do our jobs? And that's when I realized that they are not here to help us do our jobs well. We have to comply, play ball in the most friendly, reasonable and factual way.

We need to hold them accountable sometimes, but also the guys who show up to the inspectors want to be right, they want to find things that they want to feel like they're doing. Your job is to keep people safe so I give you credit for that at this point I'm going to pull out the meter and we're going to cut the conduit insert the 200 amp disconnect this will be fun we're going good so some of you are I'm freaking out now same because in

your

jurisdiction this is called meter tampering. Guess which utility company is probably the most forgiving in that regard and that's why I'm pretty comfortable with this.

This is called a self-certification label. This self-certification label was installed when we upgraded service and is a certification statement that our license is related to this work and is what is required for the utility company to turn on the power, so now everything around here is hot , I'm going to take out the meter. Turn off the power to the house, the owner expects this, there are no surprises. I don't recommend doing this unless you are a licensed electrician. There are many ways to go wrong here, for example, disconnecting the meter under a heavy load, you can arc and burn the terminals.

There are too many ways to go wrong. Our utility company does not allow grounding of a ground conductor. in this meter cabinet there are strictly two hot spots entering the top well let me show you that there are strictly two hot spots entering the top which is phase a phase b on the load side line side is phase a phase b and then the neutrals are connected in the center and the neutral here in the middle is connected to the cabinet, the ground this is actually a scr cable the ground has been cut here, the ground is recovered in the first means of disconnection , so that's really the only kind of complicated thing we're going to have to navigate here is where our grounding electrode conductor connects, how we size our equipment ground. conductor from the disconnect to what has just become a subpanel and then the separation of grounds and neutrals in that subpanel where they were formally connected and bonded, so the first means of disconnection right here, the new 200 amp disconnect, was becomes the common point for the neutrals and Common grounds means that they are physically, mechanically and

electrical

ly connected to each other and that is code, and then everything that follows is separate.

Think of it like this when you go to a receptacle, switch or light. Grounds and neutrals are physically separated that's where I think downstream here I'm physically looking at a device where they're separated the only place where they're common is the first means of disconnection so we'll navigate I'm going to cut a cardboard insert and put it here to help me stay away from the terminals in case I slip and request utility disconnection. Some of you are crying out for that right now, but I'm actually going to make this hot. I can't cut too much cardboard, which is also my trash box. little baby caution, let's unplug.

I'm going to get this mini out of here. I'm going to pull the plug on that one momentarily, but I'll probably use it long term. This is a fairly simple job that will take in the range of about two. Hours, this is going to fall on us, we are going to take care of the client. The inspector removed two and a half pages of inspection items after a little negotiation, so I felt it could have been much worse, there were six to eight. Thousands of dollars worth of items on that list due to a misunderstanding about the scope of work, that's strictly what it came down to, so quickly after speaking with a supervisor he wrote that I always put the hardware back in the mini.

I don't want to lose that stuff, I have more, but it takes a long time to drop fasteners into the rocks and mulch, so now that I have some play in there, I might have to take that mini apart and I'm ready to assemble my disconnect, put it in Instead, I marked the conduit, cut it, installed my new hardware, and then ran the existing wire back into the disconnect. I'm using my lockless ones, guys, I love these things, every threaded ferrous connection, let me say it again. each ferrous metal threaded connection uses no locks that way it stays useful it doesn't rust grab it just take care of the next side look I have it in my bucket right here was that in less than 10 seconds it's a no brainer a no brainer now what I'm doing here is the space between the back of my disconnect and the hub.

This is a two inch threaded measuring hub. The space is not the same as that between the meter and the PVC here. So I'm using a PVC offset nipple to accommodate the differential between this rig and that rig. If you're new to the craft, this is one of the first lessons you should learn here is to get all the screws started before you fully tighten them, whatever you're assembling, whenever you're fastening, anytime, all the time, start all the screws before any of them are tightened, um, okay, these two little ones here, two little fasteners. Very important, I'm going to go ahead and unpack them and put them back before they get lost.

I'll tell you what they are for. This type is the screw to secure the inner cover. Come on, there it is and that's a number. two square drive or robertson I'm going to put it where it belongs, nothing worse than losing

your

stuff and being at the end of the job and spending another 15 minutes finding the nuts and bolts you hastily discarded and then this right here this is what makes it ground neutrals are common and ties the cabinet together right there, that little green screw is green by code and goes into the factory made hole and threads into the cabinet so the neutral conductors, grounding conductors and the cabinet have become electrically and mechanically continuous, that's really important, tightening it is vital and then I'm going to reverse the process inside the main electrical panel.

I'm going to remove this screw from what was the main panel and now it has become a secondary panel, so it goes in here it joins the neutrals and the grounds and it goes out to the main panel to separate the neutrals and the grounds, so this is a PVC connection to ferries. I don't really need to put any lock on it and it will be adequate. airtight since it's just rain, being rain tight isn't really what it is. I want to get at least three full threads as a matter of course for each threaded connection, regardless of whether it is a screw in the cabinet, three threads and machine screws are not proper.

Electricians don't use a lot of tappers, that's not our domain, that's for the siding guys, the roofing guys. I'm going to use a pencil for this in case I have straight marks on the duct. I really would. I like it to be clean and tidy, so what I'm going to do is replace this fitting with the offset nozzle so that the offset nozzle is flush with the bottom of the meter cabinet. Oh, hello, so I want to turn myself in. just a little bit of play because I'm going to have a shoulder on the new fitting here, so I'm marking a quarter inch about a quarter inch below the bottom of the disconnect.

There we have it, this cable is now de-energized. the house when we pulled the meter, that's what happened and then because the cable is currently installed inside this conduit, I'm going to use a PVC hole saw or a friction saw to cut around the cable without damaging it, it will be very difficult. I've done it before, but it's complicated trying to use a saw to do a job like this or an oscillator, nothing like having the right tool for the job, so I finally got this two inch knockout out of here. I'm going to delete this mini reuse.

That bra, of course, I love. I don't need the spacer, which is a very useful spacer and I am always conscious, especially when it comes to wood siding, to seal unused holes because each penetration becomes a path for water, not definitely. a path for water, so I sealed that hole with a little bit of and I just keep a resealable putty in my bucket and then each new penetration is also cocked, so let's do a test to see what we have here. I really love these spax t25 screws they are so sturdy they have aggressive threads that grip really well lots of holding power they will never shear they cost like 10 times what a drywall screw costs but heck they also work 10 times better and have a head big enough to grip, no you don't have to look for washers, the head is the all length washer, that's really all I need because I'm not gripping, it may or may not be sinking under this, just I want to, but I can say that I grabbed well all those beautiful, okay, okay, okay, ah the other way around.

I want that locknut to be oriented so that the teeth grip and hold well. Maybe I'm being too picky, but I want the prongs to grip the steel of the cabinet, that's really important if your conduit is your ground path, but in this case I just don't want it to move and come loose, that's the only reason why I am demanding. -If this were steel conduit, I would be using a bonding ferrule that would actually have a bonding conductor or a jumper that would jump from the plastic insulated metal ferrule to my ground screw or some ground terminal here.

I like how it looks. Well, everything is taking shape here enough props under enough tension. I'm using my channel locks to compress it so I can turn that nut back on there. The goal is not to close that space. That space is intentional if this length of PVC was too much. Longer, I would really like to be sure that the PVC can slide in the fixture due to the expansion and contraction characteristics due to temperature, but this is such a short length from here to there and that extension too that that doesn't go to come into play, but I don't want to close that gap that is not beneficial or not planned.

Now it's time to glue on that accessory. We are not hitting for the same purpose. Plumbers. It is not designed to be a waterproof exterior conduit. In fact, the code considers it a wet location. it's not evenconsidered waterproof nor dry, so anything that goes into an outside condo must have an appropriate moisture rating, so again keep in mind that this level here is life-threatening. I'm trying to keep a little distance and, uh, but this is all de-energized, definitely don't try this at

home

, so you see, what we ran initially was overkill, it's a four-conductor cable, we have two neutral points and one land, but by chance.

This is perfect because now we need a grounding conductor and this conductor is sized according to table 250.66 in the nec. This would be two piece aluminum, so we're set. This is a properly sized driver. All I need to do is cut, strip them back to size, finish them, no, don't block them, finish them and then take them out and make a connection to the meter before energizing the service. However, I am going to work on the subpanel in the basement to separate the neutrals and ground so I can do that without power, it will be much faster and much safer put the disconnect in the off position off down it should always be off off it should always be facing down or side to side but never reversed so that up is off and down is on that's a violation Okay you know what I love about this scr cable is that this thing smells just like a new pair of shoes from high school gymnastics like for example and some basketball shoes smell exactly like that goal line store it's just delicious, I love that throwback memory.

I like to use this as an air freshener. I don't know what is toxic. I'm probably going to start with my grounding conductor. I'm not going to create big, thick loops here. I need a pair of big wire cutters. so I need ratcheting wire cutters that serve like 2 000 casey mills, it's like 400, so salty, salty is all, so this is actually a plumbing tool, but it's very nifty because you have 360 ​​degrees of wire brush. I can take that thing and it's so fast and complete that I recommend it. There will be a link in the description for that thing to be useful as everything turns out fine, so what I did was apply a rust preventative compound and I wire brushed it.

I'll tighten it in a minute, but I'm going to go ahead and do the loosen, tighten, move, tighten method, and that's because you want all of those conductors to sit and compress well because there can be room. between them and it feels tight until you go through the proper process of tightening, loosening, tightening, moving, tightening some more and then tightening it sounds a little clunky, but you have to do it because that terminal will be back here in six to 12 months. and you're doing some kind of service and you're thinking who made this, none of this is tight, well initially it was and it actually got loose with expansion and contraction, temperature, electricity, heat, all of that and now it's loose. and now you have an arc connection.

You have one that maybe doesn't arc, it's slow burning because it loosens over time because it wasn't initially tightened or tightened properly. Really important, very, very important. Okay, I'll get my hands off that meter cabinet. In fact, I'm going to do the neutral at the end. I'm going to connect this cable. I want to connect them in their natural order as they come out of the cable which will give me the best placement in the cabinet. and the least amount of fight, so they are actually b phase terminals, they are just covered, they are insulated to prevent accidental contact, so what I want to do is make sure the wire is the correct length and understand exactly where There are those terminals.

Since you can't really see them well, there's a 5 16 Allen that I'm using. I want to make sure that Allen is fully open, that's what I feel inside because on that lug is the set screw. it's on the lug itself, it's going to prevent me from inserting the cable, so I want the set screw to be completely released, so I have a nice clear channel to accept this aluminum 4. Now there's no doubt this is a bit of a fight. If it gets really bad, I can remove the breaker and slide it down over the wire, but I don't think it will get to that level.

Same process, a generous helping of anti-rust compound and a complete solution with the wire brush. it makes for a messy final product and a good, tough fight. I want to make sure it's completely grounded and it doesn't come out if I squeeze it if it's not all the way in and I don't get a good type. of um bump on the side if the wire is more like that and the terminal hits it here, it can actually pull the wire out, pinch it enough that you're not sure you don't know it's come out so be careful. aware that it feels good, and if you're not experienced you don't know how it's supposed to feel, but it should feel good, I don't really have any movement, so I'm going to use the titan loosen and tighten, so that's my first titan and I haven't set the torque yet, I'm just getting it, just getting started and then we'll tighten everything down there, everything's going well, we're in, I put a little bit. there are scars on that jacket, but that jacket is pretty heavy, I'm not worried about the inside of an enclosure holding a little pressure, make sure it stays there, nothing worse than loosening a main connection, making it bad.

Only the fiberglass side of the breaker lost a chip when I was forcing that wire in, but that's okay, I definitely try not to do that, but it doesn't require freak mode, okay, tighten it about two, okay, neutral, now all drivers must be marked in a manner that meets the code and fortunately they are. We have a continuous white stripe on the neutral that is code compliant. We have a solid red stripe to differentiate phase b from phase a and then we have. I have a bare aluminum conductor for the ground, so everything is fine. I want to make sure that if we use a single thread, we recognize that we're going to have to apply it and that everything is black.

We're going to have to apply it. labeled but that's been covered in this install I have to fight this they won't be too bad now the order in which I'm going to do this is I'm going to make these connections first and then these connections two reasons one, this is completely de-energized, but More than that, these are not drop-in terminals like these. These terminals are very easy to land because you don't need to push them, so while they are free, finish on this side and then once they are. They are secured in place on one end and terminated on the other side which will be much easier, a nice clean fit without any exposed conductor and without any insulation on the terminal.

You have to be careful because these terminals are somewhat fragile and with a torque wrench this size, if you're just being quick and careless, I've done it before you can break one of these or blow out a lug such that the wall of the lug it literally cracks on the side and it just opens, yeah, and then you're in it for another, you know, 160, unplug, change parts, stuff, run, it's not fun, okay guys, we get it, pull out a cable from the store's junk bin, essentially free, easy, careful, careful, still energized. This will be our neutral conductor.

We're going to relabel it because it's black and it has a red stripe, so we're going to mark it on both ends and that's allowed. You see part of why I didn't want it. use the utility disconnect here and I know I shouldn't compromise safety for efficiency, that's broken thinking but the reason I didn't want a utility disconnect here is that they would install a ladder power disconnect on the weather head and then you would be at your mercy as far as reconnection and that man our little detail here this utility company used to have 400 linemen on staff w-2 employees covering the city of Indianapolis right now they have about 40 and everything else has been outsourced, what that means is if there are tornadoes in kentucky, the lion kurds or anywhere really on the east coast of the midwest in the south, if there are, if there is an opportunity to make money because the utility company does not control the line crews, those line crews will go and make a lot of money. uh repairing storm damage and you know what they really should do that's great we want those people to get their power back but since there's no control over when they come and go we can have incredible wait times for service , a job I did recently.

I waited at a client's house until I called to reconnect, which is supposed to be a one to three hour period. I called to reconnect around 3:15. I sat there in wet clothes. I've been working in the rain, it was about 41 degrees. I sat there until 9:15 at night waiting for that reconnection to make sure everything came back and activated and sometimes aligned. If they see an interesting situation, they will back off and just not call, they will just push the customer away. The service aspect is very poor and then you know the client calls me at midnight and asks me where is my power.

I don't know, let me check, so I stayed there, made sure it was re-energized, but it's incredibly inconvenient. Working with our utility company, this is a quick job of about 90 minutes, which is how long the customer will be without power from start to finish. I should have recorded this before messing around, but it could easily turn into a six or eight hour ordeal, huh. The client works from

home

both he and she, so being without power for the rest of the day is really impossible, so one thought process for you is to try to be safe and work in the real world since it is legit, already knows. restrictions and parameters What do you do?

Be careful. Well, I'm just going to mention it. One-handed operation of a two-handed tool. Does not comply with the manufacturer's instructions. You just have to be careful. And you know what I mean. The little hacksaw is nice. which is a one handed tool, both milwaukee and dewalt make this great saw a lot of power, but I would probably buy the hacksaw for an electrician and that it is enough for almost everything an electrician would do if you're like a contractor of remodeling, you probably want the juice, you probably want the size of the most powerful cordless tool that they have because you're cutting a lot of big things, but that's not what we normally do as electricians if." you're an electrician all battery tools not corded tools I'm telling you we need to stay away from that it's very labor efficient having corded cordless tools so labor efficient very well these terminals have a left and right orientation this is On the left that horn faces outwards this is a hot terminal but that is where the meter itself makes the connection from the line to the load.

The largest meter that I know of that actually passes power through the meter is for the 320 amp meter base, anything higher than that will be measured cp and that is where you are using current transformers to read the power through which the energy really passes. You could pull the meter and everything would stay energized but squeaky, the meter is only there to measure electricity but it doesn't. actually part of the driver pass that's weird it has stops I don't know why it didn't stop let's go there wait to hear the first click and stop there it's fine um you know what I'm going to do here it's getting a little tight, but that terminal isn't as far in as this terminal and I'm wondering if they didn't do all their due diligence so I'm going to sneak in there cautiously look at that honestly it's probably me.

I'm going to loosen it up, do it again, they probably just set it up the first time and it had another full turn and I'll even get more this time with it loosening it up and going back for more, there it is now. You can see the depth of the lugs is the same and it should be because there are four on both sides, the same lug on both sides, okay, let's check our torque settings here, okay, just we're all on the same page here, these terminals. They are still hot, this is a non-insulated torque wrench and these are not electrically insulated gloves, so as soon as they come into contact, I have a path to the ground through my feet and probably through my heart, just not the touches. they, no, no, 250 pounds per inch, it'll be just under 22.5, well, right there, oh, there's an interesting story here on a torque wrench real quick, there were two electricians on a job site, two supervising electricians, There was a connection that was loosened in a large team. and it burned, caused a catastrophic fire, went to the insurance and fire investigation services.

Both electricians were called true story. Both electricians were called to testify on the stand and the question asked of each electrician was: Do you have a torque wrench? Nothing else. Do you have a torque wrench? One of the electricians could truthfully and honestly say yes, the other said no because heIt was a loose connection and no one knew who had made that connection. assigned to the electrician and made sure he didn't own a torque wrench because if he was told that if he didn't own one then he couldn't have done it correctly to spec, regardless of who and what, all that information was lost. until that decision came down to do you have a torque wrench, the answer is yes, I think we're good, put the lid on and make sure everything still looks and feels good, you feel tight, clean up the mess inside to finish the other end. hot up on the side of the line again alphabetical order line load not hot on the load side the top is always lying down the bottom is always loaded I'm going to insert the meter and that will physically be the path that the current will take from above From Side by side it has an up and down as you read in the letters.

I uh, there may be a little bit of resistance on these. I'm going to burst at the bottom of the rock to the top, there it is, now we are energized to the side line terminals I have the disconnect in the off position. I'm going to leave it there until I finish the work on the panel. A side note. Some utility companies will assess handling fees. They have RF meters and they will. can tell if there is still power but the meter is losing power, it will send a signal and a lineman will come out and evaluate If you work on a meter without a disconnect order, you will be assessed a fee of up to $250 and could be shut down if you are working without a permit, this or that, so it can get ugly.

Make sure you understand. your jurisdiction, your utility company, the applicable requirements and you have the proper license to perform the required work, so you might be wondering how is this well connected, this is the main point of a disconnection and if this had been here since the principle, what would happen is we would have two ground rods eight feet deep, the entire system buried, the clamp connection on top of the ground rod. We have a video on this, check it out and the copper conductor between the ground bars and We would be reaching into this blind spot and grounding our grounding electrode conductor, which is just a fancy copper wire name for copper wire here same on this terminal, but in this case the grounding electrode conductor has already been terminated on the inner panel, which was the first. means of disconnection and where it should be located what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to dig up the grounding system and bring it to this point this ground wire this is technically this point no, it would still be a ground connection The electrode conductor or an input system bonding jumper carries the path of the grounding electrode conductor from the ground to the secondary panel to here and breaks at the point where those terminals land and then the connection to the gas and water is made from the secondary panel. inside, so there's a technicality that's not going to be absolutely perfect, but I'm potentially going to cause more harm than good by ripping it all out and rerouting it here, so I'll check those connections, the cable is the right size and the path is intact and definitely we have created a safe environment.

These labels received the disconnection and I forgot I hadn't done this yet so I picked them up off the floor to clean them, but I'm going to put one label that says main as clearly and straight as possible and a second label that says service disconnection. This is the main disconnect. If there is a label like this inside what used to be the service disconnect in the basement, I'm going to remove that label because now it's no longer the service disconnect, so that's all that's required, that's all that's required. is required here, okay, we're in the basement, here's what the main 200 amp panel was.

Now it's a secondary panel, the disconnect is turned off outside, so we are completely de-energized inside that ground conductor is made up to this ground bar all of our grounds on this side of the panel are connected to that bar of Earth. I'm going to do two things, check it out, three things, this neutral bar here really fits in there tight. The neutral bar that runs here to this terminal is currently isolated from the cabinet with the exception and it runs behind the bus here and connects here with the exception of this screw right here, that green ground screw, so the first thing we're going to do What you need to do is take out that union screw, remove it completely, I'm not just going to loosen it because if someone comes across it in the future and thinks, oh, this is a loose connection, that's not good, no, no , it's intentional.

I'll take it, save it for the next job, so I removed the ground screw that effectively isolates these bars from the cabinet. I'm going to use my multimeter and do a continuity test just to make sure the connection is in place at the end. What we want to do is inadvertently energize one ground bus, leave the other one de-energized, you know, disconnected from the neutral and then we have floating neutrals and all kinds of hell breaks loose, so step no, that's step number one. , step number two, is me. I'm going to reach in here and pull all these conductors out of the cabinet, I'm going to create some space back there and I'm going to install this nice big bossy ground bar right down here and that's where all my ground conductors that are here, I'm going to remove them and finish them on this ground rod, but it doesn't have mounting holes, so I'm going to do some very modest field modifications.

In short, this is what I do. I'm going to remove two terminal screws all the way, I'm going to drill those points, sure enough, I just created my mounting holes, I'm going to slide it in there, I'm going to finish drilling, always before I touch with my fancy Smancy Klein faucet kit that you have. 6 8 10 32 10 24 quarter 20. This kit costs like 45 dollars, so I'll just use a simple drill bit. I'm going to pre-drill. I'm going to match the size of my drill bit to the size of my tapping bit and what I want to do is wear this bit out if it snags and breaks.

You know, I've ruined a one dollar drill bit, not a seven dollar one, so that's just my little common practice there. and in fact I'm going to make one hole at a time. I'm also going to reduce the torque so as not to brighten it up right away. I'm going to do one hole at a time because it can be a little tricky. If you offset your holes, if you're doing both at the same time, then they don't match up and you'll have to force the screw in there, so I'm going to take the handle off since I'm drilling with a very small drill bit.

I'm not worried about torque, kickback, and kickback, and I've reduced the torque almost completely. I'm going to use an extension so I can put the bit back in there, it's that easy right? there it's so easy that it almost felt like it didn't do anything, but it's smooth as butter, there it is, so now I'm ready to secure it to the cabinet, one more thing, make the other hole and make it bigger, there it is, there it is. so I enlarged my two mounting holes to a little bit more than the size of my 832 screw, slide it in there and line it up almost there, which I think a tap set is one of the must have tools for an electrician, really very good and this one doesn't It's a time to use self-tapping, that would be a code violation.

I love it, straighten it out. Get my drivers out of the way so I can get in there with my gryphon again. Touch my second hole. Put my second pre-drilled. my second hole first again just a little extra care those little taps cut like there is no tomorrow they are quite fragile even though they are quite expensive very easy easy put in my second mounting screw I wouldn't trust just one screw to do let that be for sure, not by any stretch of the imagination and if you guys have better products, better practices, man, I invite you to share that in the comments below so we can all benefit from it, okay, so that's not So. going anywhere is nice, very comfortable, the last step here before we get up to code is to remove my ground conductors from the neutral bus and transfer them to my new ground rod, just my ground conductors.

I'm going to leave all the white conductors all the neutrals exactly where they are uh good time for the needle nose pliers, you know, that's um, the needle nose pliers are like the European electricians, the biggest problem with American electricians, the Europeans do everything with needle nose pliers, it's like their number one choice and I have to say no. It didn't draw my needle nose much and when they heard they liked to flip, they were pretty sure I wasn't a genuine electrician at the time. . It's quite funny, it's a little tedious, but it's only nine, nine drivers tell you that.

What does a service disconnect like this add to the exterior of a house? If you're doing a freelance project, you're probably making easily between seven hundred and twelve hundred dollars, that's material work plus a permit, but it's really if you do it all once. dial back dial square to start the project, it's really only a three to four hour project, but one of the biggest contingencies is how full the panel is and how difficult it will be to separate the neutrals and grounds, it's a kind of silence. killer here, it could take up three or four hours in some cases if you hadn't taken the time on your estimate during the inspection to take a closer look and one of the things we do is we don't provide free estimates.

Since we abandoned that process quite a while ago, that's one of the best things we've done for our company. There is enough demand for electricians in central Indiana that we don't have to provide free estimates. That's a thing for the last two. As soon as you tell a client that we offer very high value estimates but there is a fifty dollar fee, it will become known very quickly if you are a tire kicker and you get four or five offers, guess what I don't know. they want to bid on that job and they don't want to pay my 50 dollars and that excludes them, so it has positively affected our conversion rate, um, substantially, double-digit positive effects of just offering a bid from everyone to everyone who is breathing . offering deals only to serious clients who had done their research and were pretty sure they wanted to work with us on a first name basis is a very good decision for us, I think to some extent you have to have a reputation to guarantee that, so people will they are reaching out to you and not just a general electrician and then you have to be able to communicate to the customer that the value that will be provided and we will tell you things like the estimate that we provide will be exceptionally valuable so that Even if you don't decide to work with us, you will You will have benefited from the information we have provided and are more than capable of taking that information as an informed consumer and comparing it if you wish.

Of course they don't do that, but when they hear language like that, they're hearing a trusted advisor, that's a powerful phrase, they're hearing a relationship, they're hearing transparency, they're hearing the things they want to hear from the contractor. they want to work with others when they are oh yeah I'll do it for free well guess what if someone does something for free people subtly if that's the status quo that's one thing but if there's another option and there's another message , then free can inadvertently be devalued both in the eyes of the provider and in the eyes of the customer because it is free, people who get things for free don't always treasure them, but a customer who has paid $50 for a quote tends to come.

In a little more one more they tend to come more prepared. I love seeing a client with a handwritten or even printed note in their hand when I come in for a quote and they know that husband and wife are present. are ready to make a purchasing decision they have pencil on paper and thoughtful decisions prior to making decisions they have a priority structure and we will tell you this you know that an effective relationship is carried out when both parties give their best effort because customers They will make a half-hearted effort on their part of the transaction without fully understanding that they are integral to the success of the transaction and are putting all the responsibility on the supplier and then walk away disappointed in trying to figure out what went wrong, you You know what sometimes goes wrong is you, Mr.

Client, Mrs. Client, are not putting in your full effort, you don't have a written timeline of your hopes and dreams so that the contractor can step up and deliver for that fifty dollar estimate fee. be pure magic, yesterday's free estimate mate, good electricians are in high demand, I shouldn't be giving away any free services now, that's a bit contradictory to what I'm doing now because it's free. It is not a cost to the owner, it is something that will fall on us due to the changing demands of our municipality, but that is different, if you are going to charge a client, you must communicate it in advance, those costs must be up front.

At this point, this cost would be on the back end and we're not going to do that. We value too much theword of mouth reputation of the relationship, you know, take what two hundred and twenty-five dollars is going to cost me out of my pocket and uh, throw it away. for them more profit margin more labor more more more so it's not going to happen but don't do anything for free on the front end if you can help us let's put the panel cover on uh no actually let's power up Outside, we're going to run tests inside, then turn the main unit back on one at a time so we know everything is okay before we power up the whole house, find out we have a problem, and then fry electronics and appliances and we're in it. for thousands and thousands of dollars, so it's my digital multimeter, my client was the one who screwed up, man, it's like my heart broke, I got it wet, so it could be my fault, it could be his low battery. problem, but the screen is just playing.

I don't have backup batteries, so I'll make the obvious comment next time. By any chance, click below and subscribe to electric pro academy to get real skills to make real money and watch our next video.