Don't buy wire from the big boxes

When I wired up my welder last spring, I bought my supplies from a local electrical supply house, which, to my suprise was much more economical than HomeCheapo. e.g., Home Cheapo had #2 and #4 wire, but not the #3 that was best suited for my application.

The local electrical dealer had #3 wire at less than half the cost of the #4 wire at HomeCheapo. Conduit, grounding rod were also substantially less expensive.

From now on, I'll always check with the electrical or plumbing supply houses when I have any volume of materials to buy.

Also, of course, the supply house had a bunch of stuff I needed (e.g., large junction box, flexible steel and rubber coated conduit) that HomeCheapo and Lowedown (appropriately) don't carry.

Don't even get me started on color matching !!!

I brought the empty can back to HomeChepo, demanded my $$ and a free can of Glidden to finish the job.

I like the Valu Home Center Infinity house brand.
Killz from WallMart is another one I have used and liked. Behr? never again.

good pieces were sold to lumber yards at premium prices, rest was banded and sold cheap to the big boxes

you would pay almost same price at local yards or big box, good profit for the big boxes

Thanks for the info. I frequently find that whenever I'm lulled into believing that one store is going to have the best prices on everything they sell because they had the best prices on a few items I checked, or on items I checked awhile ago, I get stung. I sometimes wonder if discount stores don't purposely mark up a few items in each department to unreasonable levels just to cash in on their customers' trust and/or laziness. On the other hand, if you made sure you got the very best deal on everything you bought, you'd never have time to do anything else.

All the best, Stan

Gerald J.