I Wish I Were An Electrician!

In the classifieds, Lowell Levinger wants to trade a 1923 Gibson F-5 Loar signed July 9, 1923 for electric and solar installation work on his house. Man oh man, do I wish I were/was an electrician!

I would be capable of wiring for the solar, but I would NOT be able to come with $50,000 or more of solar panels, inverters, controllers and whatever else may be needed for this top notch installation.

Anyone know the history of this particular F-5, s/n 73723?

This sounds like the situation some years ago when a rock and roll star traded his 1959 Les Paul for a swimming pool.

Grandpa Banana is a cool dude....what a great opportunity for a competent solar electrician!

That's the rub. In reality, most contractors would not be interested in bartering. They can't barter with their suppliers.

Unless you are an electrician who does a lot of these projects and is fairly adept at keeping the price of the materials required fairly low, I’m not sure what the advantage of the barter would be. Bartering is as taxable as a cash transaction, and as the scale of this project is fairly large it might not be that easy to hide from the tax man.

(sung to the melody of "If I Were A Carpenter"....:grin:)

Off the grid, solar panels, electric car, acoustic instruments -- I'm sensing a pattern here -- a good one!

About 10 years ago, I checked into slapping some solar panels on the backside of my roof (where it wouldn't show from the street) but the cost at that time was more than we could afford, as others have mentioned -- Jackson Browne's system being an inspiration....:cool:

It does sound like a wonderful opportunity for the right person, though. The "parts" all cost money, likes pops1 said about $30-50K, but the labor, especially if one guy could do the whole job, could be justified in various ways, if a signed Loar is your goal. I think the right person would end up with the Loar for about half of what they go for. Something to consider. Now, if you have to hire a crew, etc, then it would cost the same as buying one at the going rate, I'm thinking.

Kind of like watching HGTV -- it is the labor that drives everything over-budget. A board, costs $3.50 at the lumber yard, but when you hire a carpenter to measure it, cut it, have a crew install it, and paint it -- the same board costs about $150. Then figure how many boards does it take to fix a house..........?

But what he is asking for is much more than simply solar panels, inverters, and if you want to be truly off-grid, battery storage. He is also asking for a complete re-wire of his home. If you want to do it legally, with permits etc., in Marin County, California (a place I know well for its ridiculous building codes), it's going to take time and lots of $$$ even if you can perform much of the labor yourself. Not saying it could not be done, but that person would need to be a certified electrician as well as have the solar background.

I am a 1st year Electrician apprentice for IBEW Union local 153. I personally would not think it would be worth doing. Having to buy all the material for the job and having it up to code and all that legal stuff. Not to mention being a electrician takes a lot of training (10,000 hours of on the job training and 10 semesters of classes) and time. If he really wants that work done, he should hire a Union electrical contractor, since we are the best trained.

I dunno, maybe this is a chance for a benefactor to pay a licensed electrician to upgrade Banana's house, and walk away with a mandolin. If you had, say, a lot of bucks and enough handyman/woman/person skills that you wouldn't get in the way, you could hire a pro, buy the materials and contribute your own labor to keep the costs down a little.

This is more than just installing the panels. He’s asking for the individual to also size and install a collector and to ultimately provide electricity to some of his neighbors. There’s a bit of engineering t9 this to. I have a friend who is quite proficient in these designs (he’s taught engineering courses in solar technology for years). He’s done quite a few residential projects, but he’s an electrical engineer and contracts out the electrical installations while overseeing the projects. With permits, designs and materials, this could be a fairly costly projects. It’s not as if he’s asking to put up a few panels and run his hot water system. This is a pretty big project. In fact it might exceed the current market value of that Loar.

With just cause, the seller wants a return on his offering, as a retired IBEW / Boston, MA Electrician, I wish him luck bringing his project to fruit.
I would generate cash from the sale and develop the project.

So we did exactly this project at our house over the last two years. All wiring had to be redone. We have an 1,100 sq ft mid-century house on a slab. So the drywall in every room had to be cut open to run the wiring. Added solar plus a battery which gets us off the grid as much as possible. We're still attached to the grid because we sell a significant amount of power back to them now. But we can basically run our house and charge a Tesla with very little power from the grid.

His house is twice the size of ours. I'm not sure a Loar would even cover the cost of the project! I could have had a nice Fern for what we paid.

Starting to sound like a catch-22.......................saving the planet gets expensive, don't it?!!

In fairness, I live in Mississippi where $1500 buys a lot of electrical and plumbing work......I know California would be many times what we would pay here.

Granted, rewiring, solar, etc, results in more comfortable living, but at what cost? In other words, if you invest $125,000 on the project, how many years does it take to start living off the grid "cost free"? In my area, it would take 15-20 years to recoup the cost. In California, if you are already a senior, you probably won't live long enough to have it "pay off" --- depending on how you look at things. Same reason I put off spending $8K on a new furnace/central air unit -- YES, there would be a monthly saving due to efficiency, but it would cost me $8K to save $50-100 a month, again the catch-22........instead I spend a couple hundred every year to patch up a 30-year old system. A new system, of course, could be justified in better comfort, etc., but...........it ain't free.

THEN AGAIN, let's say you bought the Loar 40 years ago and paid $5,000 for it.......the project begins to make more sense.....

The materials, including the wiring (the wire, alone is extremely expensive) are the same price everywhere.