Chargers go in from $1,290 and rarely pass $2,400. Answer five questions and you get your own number, what pushed it there, and whether your panel is about to become part of the job.
Surveys this week, installs nine days out, one day on site
Kwame Okonkwo spent eleven years on the utility side before starting Chargeday in 2017, which is why the panel question gets answered here rather than on the doorstep.
Typical Fairwater job: $1,650
A hardwired 48 amp unit, up to 15 ft of conduit, its own breaker, the permit and the inspection fee. We supply the unit or fit the one in your hallway, and the price is the same either way once the box is off the shelf.
Price this
Power off about five hours
New panel, new main breaker, new meter base where the utility insists. We book the disconnect, pull the permit and meet the inspector. Twenty circuits come back labelled in handwriting you can read.
Price thisOne permit, one inspection, one day off work. Booking them separately costs about $400 more in trips and paperwork, and we will say so on the phone.
Trenched or overhead, with a sub-panel at the far end so the garage carries a charger and a welder. Priced for a 60 ft run across grass.
Seven days of real load recorded on your meter, every breaker tested, photos of what we found. Credited back in full if you go ahead with the work.
Breakers that trip at six every evening, half a kitchen dead, an outlet too warm to touch. Same week, usually next day.
Nothing is emailed to you and nothing is held back for the call. This is the same arithmetic Bianca Alcazar works through on the wall with a tape measure, written down where you can check it.
Your installed price
Everything in: unit, cable, breaker, labour, permit and the inspection fee. No call-out charge, no travel charge.
Panel upgrade: Possible
About one in four of these need something
Of the 150 amp panels we surveyed last year, 26 in every 100 needed either the $420 load-sharing module or a full upgrade. A meter reading over seven days decides it, not a guess on the phone.
You said not sure, so we read 150 amp from the age of the house. Photograph the label inside the panel door, send it with the booking, and we will correct this before anyone drives out.
Next install day
Nine days from today
One van, one day, 7am to 4pm. The survey happens before then and costs nothing.
Or talk it through: (555) 014-3737We book the utility disconnect, pull the permit and meet the inspector. Your part is staying off the stairs while the lights are out and moving the car off the driveway by 7:30.
Sixty amp service, four fuses, and a 2018 extension hanging off a double-tapped lug that nobody had mentioned to the owner. Panel out at 8am, 200 amps and twenty labelled circuits by 3pm, charger live at four, inspected the same afternoon.
$2,400 panel, $1,540 charger, quoted and invoiced at $3,940
It costs nothing, it does not commit you to anything, and it is the reason our quotes and our invoices are the same document. If we cannot do the job well, the survey is where we say so.
Book a survey$500
Paid on a smart unit enrolled in overnight load management. The application has to be in within 15 days of the install, which is the single reason most people miss it.
up to $1,000
30% of the installed cost, claimed on your return. We hand you the completed worksheet with the invoice so your accountant has nothing to chase.
about $340 a year
Charging between midnight and 6am runs near $0.06 a kWh against $0.21 in the day. On 11,000 miles a year that is the rebate again, every year.
Rebate amounts, deadlines and rates shown are samples written for this concept site.
The Valley Power form goes in the morning after the install, from our office, with your meter number copied off the meter rather than off a bill. The federal worksheet comes attached to your invoice.
61 of 64
rebates we filed last year were paid inside seven weeks. The three that were not had the wrong meter number, which is exactly why we stopped letting customers fill it in.
I put our details into the estimator at eleven at night and got $1,510 to $1,780. The survey said $1,640 and the invoice said $1,640. That has never once happened to me with a trade.
Ours was the bad version. 1958 house, 60 amp fuse box, the lot. They said on the phone it would be both jobs, quoted $3,410, and did the whole thing between breakfast and school pickup.
Bianca measured for 25 minutes and then told me to buy the plain unit instead of the smart one, because our garage has no signal. That cost her $200 and bought her my parents job next month.
The other quote I had was $2,900 with panel to be confirmed written on it in biro. Chargeday put a number on my screen before I had spoken to anybody.
Reviews shown are samples written for this concept site.
7:40am
The drop cloths go down before the toolbag does. You get a text from the yard when the van leaves, not a four hour window.
9:15am
The wall is opened only where it has to be, and every hole we make is a hole we close. Power is off for about 20 minutes, not the morning.
1:30pm
The permit is signed off on site. Your own car goes on the charger while the inspector is still in the driveway, because that is the only test that counts.
4:00pm
We set the schedule to the overnight rate, fill in the Valley Power form at your kitchen table, vacuum the garage floor and go.
These are the days between your survey and the van, measured across our last 60 installs. Wheelwright and Silverlake wait longer because we batch them into one run a fortnight, which is also why they are not charged more.
Real, and 114 installs landed on it last year. It buys a 48 amp unit on the garage wall within 15 ft of a 200 amp panel. Most houses are not that tidy, which is why the estimator exists instead of one number in a headline.
It happens on about one job in twelve, and almost always because the panel is not what the customer thought it was. You see the new number before a single part is ordered, and you can walk away having paid nothing.
No. Fit the one already sitting in your hallway and the labour price does not change. We will tell you honestly if it is a unit we would not put on our own wall.
Yes, two Saturdays a month, and it costs $120 more because the inspector charges us a weekend fee. Panel upgrades we keep to weekdays so the utility can be reached if something goes wrong.
Yes, and it is a different conversation. Commercial work is metered, billed and permitted another way entirely, so call the office rather than using the estimator on this page.
Usually. Shared and assigned parking needs the building owner in writing and a way to bill the electricity back, which we can set up with a metered unit. Expect three weeks rather than nine days.
Bianca runs the surveys and Kwame runs the vans, so one of them will call you back within the hour between 7am and 7pm. If you would rather just talk, the number below rings a phone in Fairwater, not a call centre.
(555) 014-3737