Sub-panel installation in Los Angeles
Sub-panel installation is how power gets out to an ADU or a detached garage: a panel of its own at the far end, and a feeder from the main service to reach it. Where the feeder runs underground, the trench usually decides how long the job takes.
Coming out to look is free. Your price the same day you ask.
What decides this job
- What the building will draw, which sizes the feeder
- The trench: its depth, its route and the ground
- Whether the main service can carry it
- Which utility and which permit desk your address is on. Look up your address
A feeder, a trench and its own panel
Running power to a detached building is three pieces of work. A feeder sized for what the building will draw, a route for it to travel, and a panel at the far end with its own grounding electrode.
The grounding is the part people have never heard of and it is not optional. A detached structure with its own panel needs its own electrode at that building, and the neutral and the ground stay separated there.
The trench is usually what decides the timeline
Where the route is underground, the trench is the job. How deep it goes depends on what the conductors are run in, what is already buried along the way decides whether it can go in a straight line, and the ground you are digging through decides how fast.
Trenching disturbs the yard. Putting the yard back is not in the price unless your quote says it is, so settle that before anyone starts digging.
ADUs, garages and workshops
An ADU is the common one in Los Angeles now, and it usually arrives with a load that a garage never had: a kitchen, a heat pump, sometimes a charger. That load is what sizes the feeder, so size it once, for what the building will be.
Planning a guest house or a home office out back? Our Encino page covers getting power to one.
A workshop is the opposite problem. The load is intermittent and large, and the circuits at the far end matter more than the total.
Whether the main service can carry it
A sub-panel adds no capacity. It moves some of the main service’s capacity out to the building. Adding one to a service that is already close to what it can carry means the calculation comes first, and sometimes it means the main service is the real job.
We do that calculation before we quote the trench.
Say what is happening and we will tell you what it involves.
One sentence about what is happening will do. Sending it costs nothing and does not book a visit.