Matt and I have been talking about having a whole house generator installed for some time now. It’s one of those things that we talk about, and then forget about. We only seem to remember it when our electricity goes out, which happened twice during the month of May. But then once the electricity is restored, and we get on with normal life, the whole house generator is not top-of-mind anymore.
But ever since the last time it went out a few weeks ago, Matt has been very adamant that we need to put this at the top of our priority list. If our electricity goes off during the heat of the Texas summer, it can be very dangerous for Matt. Because of his M.S., he is incredibly sensitive to heat, and any increase in temperature makes him very weak. So the whole house generator is now top of mind, and I’ve made steps towards making that happen.
I considered purchasing a generator from Home Depot and then finding someone locally to install it. But then I ended up on the Generac website trying to learn more about exactly what we’d need to purchase. I finally realized that I’m way out of my depth with this, and I really do need a professional to help me with this decision. So after looking at their list of Generac dealers and installers in our area, and then looking up all of those companies and reading reviews, I finally decided on the electrician I wanted to use to help me decide exactly what I needed and get the job done.
Well, he came over yesterday to look at the house and look at all of our electrical stuff and determine what we need. I really liked him, and he seemed to know his stuff. The good news is that the cost of the generator and installation is about what I expected. He recommended a 26kw generator for our house, which runs about $7,000. We’ll be getting this Generac (affiliate link), and I had already heard from many people that you can expect the cost of installation to be about the same as the cost of the generator. So when his estimate came to $13,500 for the generator and installation, that’s about what I expected.
But what I wasn’t expecting was all of the other bad news he had for me. So let me back up a bit and tell you about our electrical service upgrade that we had done. When we bought this house, it didn’t have central heat and air. It had a huge, scary furnace that made a big KABOOOOMMMM sound that rattled the entire house about 50% of the time when it came on. It sat in what is now my studio half bathroom.
And then it had about four window unit air conditioners, like this beauty in the living room.
It took us about two years to be able to get a new HVAC system, but in 2015, we were finally able to do that. We selected the company we wanted to work with, and they sent their person out to look at the house, measure stuff, and determine what we needed. And then he gave us three different options — a top-of-the-line system, a middle-of-the-road system, and a bargain system.
Naturally, we thought the top-of-the-line system would be the best, so we signed the papers for the top-of-the-line Trane HVAC system. That’s a decision I’ve regretted so many times since then. We spent $18,000 on our HVAC system, and it has been one headache after another. Matt hates it. He has suggested several times that he wants to have the thing removed and get a very basic, no bells, no whistles Lennox system (which is what I have in my studio, and have never had even the slightest problem with it), but that won’t happen. We’ll keep that frustrating Trane until it won’t run anymore, which may be sooner than later.
Anyway, that’s a whole different topic (and clearly source of frustration for us 😀 ), but another thing that frustrated us about that whole experience was that the company we were working with failed to determine if our electrical system was even adequate to run a brand new Trane HVAC system. And…it wasn’t. At that time, we only had 100-amp service to our house.
So at the last minute, before our new HVAC system could be installed, they scrambled to find an electrician to come out and upgrade our electrical to 200-amp service so that our new HVAC system could even run. It was an added, last-minute expense that we weren’t expecting, and it wasn’t cheap. I don’t remember how much it was exactly, but we were scraping our pennies together to make it happen.
Well, fast forward nine years to yesterday, and the electrician asks to see our outdoor panel. He had already explained to me that the building code in our city requires a whole-house kill switch so that the entire electrical system in the house can be shut off with one flip of the switch. He wanted to be sure we had that, and he wanted to be sure all of the outdoor electrical stuff looked okay.
As soon as we rounded the corner of the house and he saw the boxes on the side of the house, he said, “Those aren’t up to code.” I had already told him that we were planning on adding on to our house, and he said that there’s no way that the city would pass those boxes as they are. They would require that I have them fixed before they pass them. He said that the electrical inspectors are some of the toughest inspectors, and they’re sticklers for having things done precisely to code.
So what was the problem? They’re installed way too high. These boxes — the boxes that were installed by the electrician hired by our HVAC company nine years ago — are supposed to be installed between 4 and 6 feet from the ground.
I’m five feet tall, and this is as high as I can reach on the box.
The one on the left is especially important. That’s our whole house kill switch. I struggle to reach the box and get it open.
But then once it’s open, there’s no way I could ever reach the actual switch. That thing is at least 7 feet from the ground. My reach maxes out at about 6’2″. I would need to have a ladder or step stool to reach that kill switch, and in an emergency, that’s the last thing you want to be thinking about.
So those two boxes, according to code, should be about two feet lower than they are now. I told him it was done nine years go, and he assured me it was the code nine years ago, and they should have known better. So I guess that means that the HVAC company didn’t have their electrician’s work inspected. I’m not happy about that, and I’m especially not happy about the fact that it’s now going to cost us $2,500 to have it fixed.
But wait! There’s more! He also noticed that we were running out of room in our indoor breaker box. That wasn’t new news to me. Not only can I see it with my own eyes, but everyone who looks at it tells me that we need to upgrade to a bigger box, especially if we’re doing an addition that will require a separate HVAC system. Our current breaker box is almost at its max capacity.
So while his suggestion to swap to a bigger breaker box didn’t surprise me, what did surprise me was his news that the city now requires every single circuit in a house to be on an AFCI breaker. It doesn’t matter if that circuit only has a few light switches on it, it has to be on an AFCI breaker. And of course, AFCI breakers are several times the cost of the standard $5 circuit breakers that we have now.
He had some very strong opinions about this change (he’s not a fan of the requirement and thinks the AFCI circuit breakers are overkill in most situations), but again, he assured me that if electrical inspectors are going to be in my house, they’re going to require them. So the cost of having the breaker box upgraded, and having every single circuit breaker upgraded, is another $5,000. And that brings us to a grand total of $21,000.
It’s not quite what I wanted to hear. The only good news he had for me is that he doesn’t think the city will make us move our breaker box. The contractor that we’re using for our addition thought that the city might make us move it because the building code no longer allows breaker boxes to be in closets. And ours is in what used to be a closet. It hides behind the mirror on the right in our home gym. (It’s kind of hard to see, but it’s to the right of the TV and the “Sweat The Crazy Out” sign.)
But the electrician yesterday said that he thinks they won’t make us move it because that area clearly isn’t a closet anymore. It’s just part of the room. Of course, they wouldn’t be thrilled that I hide it with a mirror, but they don’t have to know that. 😀 So I was at least relieved to learn that it can stay where it is. I sure hope he’s right about that, because if we have to move it, that will add about another $5,000. I’m just not quite prepared for that.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
