Residential estimate
Residential Project Estimator
For the homeowner who wants a real number before anyone comes out. Pick the job — a service or panel upgrade, a panel replacement, an EV charger, an AC circuit, a panel or meter move — add up to three phone photos of the panel and the meter if you like, confirm what we saw, and get a low–high budget range with every line itemized. A budget range from a code-minimum model and what your photos show — contingent on a site visit; the visit sets the price. No photos? The same questions in words get the same estimate.
How the number is built. Three parts, kept apart on purpose. The photo reader turns your photos into typed observations — panel brand, main breaker size, mast condition, wall type, what is bonded — each with a confidence, and it never prices anything. You confirm or correct every observation on screen; nothing is priced from a photo you have not confirmed. The cost model (the same js/cost-model.js behind our panel upgrade cost calculator) turns the confirmed inputs into a low, typical and high figure with itemized lines, and it never sees a photo. Where a fact is still unknown after the questions, the estimate says what it assumed, using the model’s own defaults.
What the money is. Researched Tucson-area market rates for labour and material (survey dated 21 August 2026, labelled medium confidence until our own cost book replaces them), the published FY27 permit fee schedules of the City of Tucson, Pima County, Oro Valley, Marana and Sahuarita (South Tucson publishes no fee table, so its figure is a budget range), and TEP’s and Trico’s filed statements of charges. Every priced constant carries its source and the date it was last read, and the model refuses to print a figure that does not. The band is not the sum of the line highs: the lines are largely independent, so their spreads are combined rather than stacked — the way an estimator refuses to assume every worst case at once. “Only if” lines set a ceiling, not the range.
What the code does to the price. Under the 2023 NEC — adopted in every jurisdiction here except South Tucson, still on the 2017 edition — replacing service equipment requires a surge protective device (230.67) and an outdoor emergency disconnect (230.85). A panel in a clothes closet or a bathroom has to move (240.24(D) and (E)), and a panel without 30 in of width and 36 in of clear depth in front of it (110.26) usually does too. TEP’s service standard shows a 2½-inch riser, so a 2-inch mast usually cannot be reused on an upgrade. Section numbers follow the 2023 NEC; the edition your jurisdiction has adopted governs.
Where the ZIP defaults come from. The permit office is the jurisdiction most homes in your ZIP fall in, counted from the county’s residential parcel record (347,858 homes, read 16 August 2026); where a ZIP straddles a city line the page says so and you pick. The utility follows the same area rule as our property reports: TEP inside Tucson and South Tucson, mostly TEP in Oro Valley, largely Trico in Marana, Sahuarita and the Trico-heavy county ZIPs, genuinely mixed elsewhere — there is no public service-territory map, so check a recent bill or the meter label.
Not priced here: the EV charger circuit itself (the model has no EV line and this page does not invent one), branch-circuit repairs found once the cover is off, drywall beyond the panel patch, historic-district design review, and anything a CT-metered service needs. Distances you give to the water heater and gas meter are recorded for the office, not priced per foot. Screening copy dated 5 September 2026.
Want the number that governs?
A residential estimate is a paid site visit that ends in a written bid: the main breaker and busbar, the working space, the mast or lateral, grounding and bonding, the wall, and the branch circuits with the cover off — from a licensed Tucson electrical and mechanical contractor (ROC CR-11 and CR-39). Call (520) 308-6235.
Request a residential estimateQuestions
What this estimator is, and is not
Is this a quote?
No. It is a budget range from a code-minimum cost model — the same one behind our panel upgrade cost calculator — combined with what your photos and answers show. Every line names what it assumed and where the fact came from, and anything read from a photo is tagged to be confirmed on site. The site visit sets the price: a licensed estimator has to see the main breaker, the working space, the mast or lateral, the grounding and the wall before a number is a bid. A permit shows what was permitted, not what exists, and a photo shows what was visible.
Do you keep my photos?
No. Your phone shrinks each photo before anything is sent (longest side 1,568 px, JPEG, metadata dropped), we read the set once, and the photos are not stored — only the typed findings are kept, for 30 days, so the estimator can see what the read said if you call. Nothing is sent at all until you press “Read my photos”; skip the photos and the estimator asks the same questions in words. Photo reads are capped per day; when the cap is spent the page says so and finishes from your answers.
Why do you need my name before you read the photos?
Because a photo read costs us money each time and produces findings an estimator may need to follow up on, so it is reserved for people who actually want an estimate. The interview-only path asks for nothing — you can run the whole estimate from answers alone, and give contact details only when you send it to an estimator.
What changes the price the most?
Whether the panel has to move (a closet, a bathroom, over a stairway, behind a door, or without 30 in of width and 36 in of clear depth in front of it) — that is the single biggest swing. Then the jurisdiction: each city sets its own permit fee and adopts its own code edition, so under the 2023 NEC in Tucson, Pima County, Oro Valley, Marana and Sahuarita a service-equipment change requires a surge device (230.67) and an outdoor emergency disconnect (230.85), while South Tucson is still on the 2017 NEC and requires neither. Then the service entry (an undersized underground lateral is thousands; a 2-inch mast usually cannot be reused under TEP's 2½-inch standard), the wall (block or adobe means core drilling and a stucco patch), and whether the water and gas piping are already bonded. An obsolete panel brand — Federal Pacific, Zinsco, Challenger — is a reason to do the work, not a reason to pay more for it.
Keep Going
Before the visit
The pages behind this estimator, written by our field team and referenced to the NEC.
Panel Upgrade Cost Calculator →
The same cost model, every input as a form — adjust any line of this estimate there, plus the AC replacement side and the 2026 rebate status.
Residential Lookup →
The year your house was built and every permitted panel, service and HVAC job on record for the address — what was permitted, not what exists.
Federal Pacific & Zinsco Panels →
Why an insurer writes about these brands, what actually fails, and why the brand is a reason to replace the panel but not a reason to pay more.