Condo Charging - Minimal cost installation and some questions

[KJD]

I own. You can see in the pic the Electric Room on the left (the doors). My Tesla is on the right and about 8 car spaces up. In this pic it is the 4th car you see on the right. If you have any advice let me know. My concern was lawyers, engineers, electricians, etc. Just seemed very intimidating and expensive.

Any chance you could trade parking stalls with someone closer to the Electrical room? It could reduce the installation cost by a huge amount if you could just get closer to the electrical room.

As for the talk of needing lawyers and engineers, it sounds to me like your property manager just does not want to put any effort in to helping you at all. He is just hoping you will get discouraged and go away. That he he does not have to do anything extra.

 

[Schmidty]

Any chance you could trade parking stalls with someone closer to the Electrical room? It could reduce the installation cost by a huge amount if you could just get closer to the electrical room.

As for the talk of needing lawyers and engineers, it sounds to me like your property manager just does not want to put any effort in to helping you at all. He is just hoping you will get discouraged and go away. That he he does not have to do anything extra.

This is exactly what I thought when I received his email. I felt he was trying to intimidate me so that I would just forget about it. I plan to call an electrician in San Diego who installs EV chargers and see if he will come out and take a look at my situation and give me a quote for installation at my current parking space and also at the spaces next to the electric room in case that owner would be willing to switch with me.

 

[RubberToe]

Schmidty,
Is there only one electrical "room" for the entire building? I would have thought that each unit would have their own "master panel" down there, similar to the one I have a picture of up thread. I agree with the poster who said that the HOA could swap spaces to give you one next to the place where you need to run the wiring from. In our building, the HOA has control over how parking spaces are assigned. The rules allow for the board to move spaces around. Your CC&R's or other governing documents should state whether space swapping is allowed. If all the power for all units does come from that one room, then the HOA board will have to take that into consideration. For example, what about the next EV owner who then wants to get a space next to the power room? Or the one after that? The board has to consider that possibility.

You can sign up at the following link if you want Bosch to give you an estimate, they will do everything but handle the HOA paperwork:
Residential | Bosch Electric Vehicle Solutions

Feel free to keep posting to this thread, it may be a source of good info for others going down the same path. I have been insanely busy lately, but will try and keep up with the comments here. There is another guy in San Diego doing the same thing who PM'd me earlier today. Maybe he will also join the thread.

RT

- - - Updated - - -

I own. You can see in the pic the Electric Room on the left (the doors). My Tesla is on the right and about 8 car spaces up. In this pic it is the 4th car you see on the right. If you have any advice let me know. My concern was lawyers, engineers, electricians, etc. Just seemed very intimidating and expensive.

View attachment 93108

I would like to see more pictures of the room, both inside and outside. I assume on the inside every unit has their own main panel, so that each unit gets a separate electric bill. The question then becomes, how does the conduit from your main panel get up to your specific condo unit? Pictures of that would be good to see. Maybe the conduit from your panel goes closer to your parking space, so that you could "tap into" it at that point, versus say running an entirely new run all the way to your car. We almost did something like this, because my units primary power run from my panel went right by my parking space.

RT

 

[Schmidty]

Schmidty,
Is there only one electrical "room" for the entire building? I would have thought that each unit would have their own "master panel" down there, similar to the one I have a picture of up thread. I agree with the poster who said that the HOA could swap spaces to give you one next to the place where you need to run the wiring from. In our building, the HOA has control over how parking spaces are assigned. The rules allow for the board to move spaces around. Your CC&R's or other governing documents should state whether space swapping is allowed. If all the power for all units does come from that one room, then the HOA board will have to take that into consideration. For example, what about the next EV owner who then wants to get a space next to the power room? Or the one after that? The board has to consider that possibility.

Feel free to keep posting to this thread, it may be a source of good info for others going down the same path. I have been insanely busy lately, but will try and keep up with the comments here. There is another guy in San Diego doing the same thing who PM'd me earlier today. Maybe he will also join the thread.

RT

- - - Updated - - -


I would like to see more pictures of the room, both inside and outside. I assume on the inside every unit has their own main panel, so that each unit gets a separate electric bill. The question then becomes, how does the conduit from your main panel get up to your specific condo unit? Pictures of that would be good to see. Maybe the conduit from your panel goes closer to your parking space, so that you could "tap into" it at that point, versus say running an entirely new run all the way to your car. We almost did something like this, because my units primary power run from my panel went right by my parking space.

RT

It appears there is one Electrical Room for each building. 6 buildings with about 50-60 units in each building. I will have an electrician come out this week to provide me with a quote. He was referred by a guy in our local San Diego Tesla Group. I will likely need to have the Facilities guy open that door and then I will snap some pics to see what we are dealing with. More to come...and I agree on posting my experience up here so that future owners interested in adding an EV Charger to a condo will have some info at their fingertips.

 

[txakoli]

It appears there is one Electrical Room for each building. 6 buildings with about 50-60 units in each building. I will have an electrician come out this week to provide me with a quote. He was referred by a guy in our local San Diego Tesla Group. I will likely need to have the Facilities guy open that door and then I will snap some pics to see what we are dealing with. More to come...and I agree on posting my experience up here so that future owners interested in adding an EV Charger to a condo will have some info at their fingertips.

If it's anything like my condo install, that electrical room will have multiple meters and panels. I was lucky that there was a spare meter spot and associated panel, so I was able to use that spare spot to install an LADWP TOU meter (with HOA approval of course). It's a separate meter from my non-TOU house meter. Check if there are any spare meter spots, and then coordinate with your HOA and electrical utility. Good luck.

 

[Dave EV]

You might contact eVgo as well.

They are required to "make ready" a lot of apartment/condo type residences so that could significantly reduce costs and also get wiring in place to handle future EVSEs easily, too.

 

[Schmidty]

The Electrical Room in my Building - Condo

Ok...I took some pictures inside the Electrical Room. My condo is on the second floor. In an ideal world I would change parking spots with the guy who parks on the other side of the well in pic 1. I will be calling the electrician at 9AM to see if he can swing by to check everything out and let me know what he thinks.

Pic 1 - Standing at the door, looking left (3rd Floor Units).
Pic 2 - Standing at the door, looking straight ahead (2nd Floor Units).
Pic 3 - Standing at the door, looking right (1st Floor Units).

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I wonder what the story is with units 319 and 320. :wink:

 

[davewill]

I wonder what the story is with units 319 and 320. :wink:

Somebody probably grabbed the wrong cable when they went to wire up the panel for one of them.

 

[Schmidty]

Talked to the Property Manager and he is going to bring it up to the HOA Board. He said we are probably looking at a timeline of 30-60 days. Sounds fair to me. We will see how this goes since I am the first owner at my community to request this.

 

[KJD]

Talked to the Property Manager and he is going to bring it up to the HOA Board. He said we are probably looking at a timeline of 30-60 days. Sounds fair to me. We will see how this goes since I am the first owner at my community to request this.

I really hope this worked out OK for you. Any updates?

 

[Schmidty]

I really hope this worked out OK for you. Any updates?

I got an update last week. "The board was briefed on your electric hook up and has advised me to work with the attorney to create a timeline and list of what will be needed from you. This is in progress."

 

[MichFin]

Has anyone ever though of pushing this as a profit center for the HOA. You would think they could install 4-5 spots with EV chargers and charge people $50-60 a month to charge there making a profit of $20-30 per spot per month. 5 spots at $20 a month would generate $1200 a year plus they can hit them up with an up front fee of $250 or more. It would pay for itself in no time. Happy residents that have EV's and the other residents should be happy too.

 

[Schmidty]

Condo Property Management Response to Installing EV Charging in my Parking Spot

I just reached out to my property manager regarding the HOA dragging their feet on allowing me to install EV Charging (240V Outlet) in my parking spot. Here was the Property Management's response:

"I am glad you asked, I suggest you come to the meeting because as mentioned before, I cannot really facilitate this for you– Jan 25, 5:30 pm at the clubhouse. Remember, the board makes decisions, management (me) executes them.

Right now I am awaiting the attachments in the attorneys letter to help the board make its decision.

I do want to caution you as to your approach though if you attend, they might not see this as their problem. They can always say “you moved into a community knowing there was not hookups, so there is no reason we need to spend time or management time researching the issue for you.”

I would not blame them, especially since they’ve now incurred attorney fees on the matter.

Anyway, just my thoughts from experience at this and other communities. They have no obligation right now to spend any time or money on this."

Thoughts? Any info you can provide me so I can combat this nonsense?

 

[David29]

I just reached out to my property manager regarding the HOA dragging their feet on allowing me to install EV Charging (240V Outlet) in my parking spot. Here was the Property Management's response:

"I am glad you asked, I suggest you come to the meeting because as mentioned before, I cannot really facilitate this for you– Jan 25, 5:30 pm at the clubhouse. Remember, the board makes decisions, management (me) executes them.

Right now I am awaiting the attachments in the attorneys letter to help the board make its decision.

I do want to caution you as to your approach though if you attend, they might not see this as their problem. They can always say “you moved into a community knowing there was not hookups, so there is no reason we need to spend time or management time researching the issue for you.”

I would not blame them, especially since they’ve now incurred attorney fees on the matter.

Anyway, just my thoughts from experience at this and other communities. They have no obligation right now to spend any time or money on this."

Thoughts? Any info you can provide me so I can combat this nonsense?

Sounds like my condo board! I have so far submitted three proposals for the Board to consider, the last one just this week.
My situation is more difficult than yours, physically (I think), because my parking space is in an open lot and a long distance from my building's electrical room. I have most recently proposed swapping spaces with someone whose space is immediately next to another building that has an external connection to the utility and where it would be easy to connect a new service, meter, and charger (or outlet). So, we will see what the board says.

In a way, I do not envy the board. This is all new to them and they must protect the condo association from risks, liability, and legal issues. So just because I see my latest proposal as simple and reasonable and low risk, they may not.
Keeping my fingers crossed....

 

[Schmidty]

Finally got all the paperwork from the HOA...first thing I noticed is that I have to carry a $1,000,000 insurance policy. I can only imagine what that will cost. Still reviewing the rest of the docs, though for the most part I think everything else looks pretty normal.

 

[RubberToe]

...I can only imagine what that will cost...

Almost nothing, my increase was about $25 per year.

RT

 

[davewill]

Yeah, that kind of liability rider is usually not expensive. I got one when I became a landlord, and it's pretty reasonable.