Spend, Spend, Spend

My latest hobby has been purchasing electrical equipment.  I hope to describe the process I used to determine what I need.  I will wait on that to see how close I came to being accurate.  This post, is all about shopping.

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Have I mentioned that I really do not like shopping?  For me, this ranks right up there with listening to an AmWay presentation.

Early on in this process, I asked my builder if he could recommend somewhere to purchase all of the electrical supplies.  He suggested a) any of the big box stores and b) a particular electrical supply business that serves West Michigan.

The latter sounded better to me.  I was thinking I could just offer a list, and they would pull the list and sell it to me.  It sounded good because, while I had a good idea what I needed, in many ways I did not know what to call it.

For instance, when you run a piece of PVC conduit to a meter box or electrical panel, what is the thing called that you put on the end of the conduit which allows you to bolt it to a hole in the box?  Come to find out, its called a terminal adapter.  But to start, I did not know.  So I called it "the thingy on the end of the conduit to attach it to a box".

Yes, I used the word "thingy". It was easier to type than "doohickey".

Much as I wanted the electrical shop to essentially do the shopping for me, there were drawbacks to this idea.  For the sake of brevity, I will mention the biggest drawback.  Price.

For example, I needed to purchase a 1000 foot spool of cable.  The electrical supply house was going to charge me $1037 for a 1000 foot spool.  Menard's (God bless them), charges $620.  A difference of about $400.  Oy!  The biggest complaint I have about this is I now need to comparison shop.  Ugh.  More AmWay!

Here now is the process:  Send a list of what I want to the electric shop.  Once they tell me what the "thingies" are really called and what they will charge, then I hit the big box stores.  If I can get the same thing and the same quantities for cheaper, then I cancel that item and buy at the big box store.  Sometimes neither can get me what I want.  I needed a 30 amp 2 pole breaker for the AC compressor.  Neither the electric supply shop nor the big box store had it.  Option 3?

Amazon!  They've saved the day more than once.  We live in amazing times!!  

And I've saved over $400 on wire.  I think I deserve a taco.


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