Cost to wire a new garage

So I built a new metal building to use as a garage/work shop next to my house. After waiting 4+ months to get it built because the builder and the town kept jacking me around. Now I am getting quotes to have it wired. After finally getting an electrician to actually come out the first quote is $3820. This is for a 100 amp service, led lighting, six 110 receptacles, and one 240 receptacle. Plus the cost from the power company for a separate service. Anyone have any residential electrical experience? Does this seem like a decent price?

Do you need conduit? What is the wall situation? It this a sub box from the house? Or does the house panel have enough overage to run the garage? (You probably don't want that even if you could). Do they have to dig a long trench to the garage?

Lots of variables, can you narrow it down?

install new 100 amp under ground service to feed garage
- install 100 amp meter combo on garage and indoor 12/24 panel
- install ground rods and bond wire
- install new emt conduit and wiring inside garage including:
- 3 dedicated 120 volt circuits feeding 6 gfi protected receptacles - welder circuit and receptacle ( size and location TBD )
- 4 8' strips with LED lamps, with switch to control
** proposal includes permit
** proposal does not include any cost from FPL for service installation and account activation ** 50% deposit is required before work begins

I spent about $900 in supplies and tool rentals doing it myself with regular florescent lights and tied into the house 40 feet away instead of a separate service.  I believe the quote I got to have it done was around $3000 but it was about 10 years ago.

I bet half of that quote is just to run service wire to the garage. That probably includes digging a trench (18 to 24" down and however long, plus going under any sidewalks or driveways), laying conduit and transitions, pulling wire, and hooking into the box. 

The other big part is bending up and installing all the interior conduit and pulling wire through that. Definitely time consuming operation. 

Easily over $1000 just in supplies

You can save a lot in labor by doing the interior wiring yourself. Once the box is in, it's not hard from there, just time consuming.

One thing to consider about the service.  If you run a separate service to the garage, it gets billed at a commercial rate.  If you run a subpanel and feed it from the main panel in the house, it gets billed at a residential rate.

Do you have to run conduit inside the garage? 

rustybugkiller said:

Do you have to run conduit inside the garage? 

I would in a metal building. 

That doesn't look much out of line to have an electrician do the work. You can save money if you DIY, but not much with an electrician. 

I ran all my boxes and conduit in my garage and the electrician I hired was excited he didn’t have to.  He wired it all up in 4 hours ($70/hour) plus some material.  

I don’t think your price is bad.  I might have $500 in my garage wiring?   

Price doesn't seem unreasonable for the the work listed.  Underground service and all conduit will take some time to do. 

Before you think about DIY, check on local regulations.  I could do all that myself, but around here if i do not have a registered electrician sign off on it the power company will not hook it to the grid.

The electrician actually said the separate service would be cheaper labor wise than running it from the house. The main houses electrical is getting old and my main panel is only 150 amp. 

The local code regulations/enforcement is a joke here. You can only pull permits on Tuesday and Thursday from 2 to 4. I have seen dope houses with tents in the back yard with electricity. But you let me not do one thing and they all of a sudden they want to enforce it. 

Just a heads up, when I ran power to my shop, the electric company buried and connected everything for free as part of some infrastructure initiative. They trenched, fed the wire, and hooked it up on each end. They even leveled the dirt and spread grass seed when they were done. I just provided their specified conduit and the meter base was installed per their requirements. Mine was a separate service from the house, and 200 amp panel, so that may have played a role. Or I may have just gotten really lucky, but it might be worth checking to see if your utility company offers something similar as it could save some cost.

LED lights are another thing that might save a bit of money. They can range from inexpensive to pretty costly depending on the brand and the location that they're purchased from. It might be worth checking to see if you can get a better deal than what's been invoiced by purchasing the lights on your own. Amazon, and Costco seem to have good prices on LED light fixtures.

Overall, the quote doesn't seem unreasonable to me for the amount of work though.

In reply to STM317 :

Unlikely.

Electrical quotes pretty much never include the light fixtures.

In reply to SVreX :

That's interesting. Do they just assume that customers will supply whatever fixtures they want? How does the electrician provide an accurate quote if they don't know what fixtures will be used? It seems like it could potentially cause issues/liability that wouldn't otherwise occur if the fixtures aren't compatible for some reason.

I just assumed that it was included, based on the post upthread that looks like a quote for the job and mentions "4 x 8' strips with LED lamps and a switch".

I looked back through some paperwork and found a rough, "Back of the napkin" kind of quote from a contractor that I had bid on building/wiring my building. It mentions $4k just for burying the power line to the building (about 50 ft), and LED lights were a $3k upgrade over fluorescents. He admitted the final cost would likely come in under his estimate based on previous jobs but wanted to avoid having cost overruns (LOL). I didn't go with that guy obviously.

I ended up having another contractor set my panel/meter base for under $1k.

I bought about $40 worth of conduit, and the electric company buried the line for free

I bought 10 kickass LED panels on Amazon for $750 + ~$200 worth of framing to hang them

MrsSTM's cousin (a commercial electrician) and I wired it ourselves over a couple of evenings. I bought the materials (3 240V receptacles, the lights wired on 3 circuits, and 10 120V receptacles, Plus all of the romex and heavy gauge wire). I got a family discount on his  labor but he wasn't working for free. Total was under $1k + pizza and beer

So, my costs were around $3k doing it kind of sort of myself.

You have fewer lights (and they should be cheaper fixtures), fewer receptacles, and probably less total wiring, so your material costs could be quite a bit lower than mine. But for the work listed, I'd say the quote you got is pretty fair.

Price can vary a lot depending on where you are. Right now, a lot of these guys have more jobs than they have time to do, so the price needs to justify the logistical effort.

As hinted, Code requirements also tend to vary a lot depending on where you are. In many cases, a panel needs to be signed off by the local inspector and you may need a permit.  Usually, a service installation needs to be done by a licensed electrician, but branch wiring can be done by the homeowner. 

I would make sure you actually need a 100A service to the garage.  From what you have listed device-wise, it sounds like you won't be pulling anywhere near that amount.  Future plans?

As a general rule, it will be better for the property if you spent the money to upgrade the house service and then sub-fed the garage.

I agree with first and foremost calling and talking to your electrical provider(s). It is highly local dependant but they can often subsidize your house and garage upgrade if you transition to energy efficient lights and HVAC systems, backup power fuel cells etc. Usually they want to add a remote meter that sends it's reading to the power company. They may want it to allow the new meter to auto shutdown your garage power and A/C power if they have an overload situation. 

If you have a tube bender then running your own conduit and placing boxes inside with pull cords can help with the price.