The power lines between the meter and your panel will need to be upgraded. Overhead wires between the meter and connection point would also need to be upgraded. Underground wiring may not need an upgrade.
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A few pics:
Service entrance wires in existing fuse loadcenter (they're the large brown fuzzy-looking wires); the red wire on the right is part of the range circuit which in my house is currently feeding the clothes dryer)
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The meter on the outside of my house (Note how it's not in any box or anything) That other black wire is the cable TV coax.
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The service drop at the top of the house
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AllanJ, are you basically saying to go ahead and install a new empty meter box, run new cable from it into the house, and THEN have the power company switch the service over to this new box, before pulling the old stuff?
The electrical boxes are mounted in a wall cavity which I will need to enlarge for my new load center, so mounting it alongside the existing one might be a challenge... (It's a finished basement; the loadcenter is mounted on a board fastened directly to the foundation concrete, so there's a cavity that was created in the finished wall to allow access to the loadcenter)
I do feel comfortable working inside but I'm not comfortable on tall ladders (
) so I'm hoping that I can get the power company to help out with this... As I said in my last post all the interior work is pretty much done and ready for rough-in inspection save for actually feeding the wire drops into the loadcenter (they're hanging down in the right spot ready to be hooked up). I just don't want to end up paying thousands for some electrician to decide he won't approve anything I've done because he didn't do it himself...
As I said the guy from the power company did say I should have 200A capability being fed to my house. He wasn't really clear on which wires EXACTLY were ok for this though. I think I'll have to call again and see if I can get some clarification.
Thanks
F
Service entrance wires in existing fuse loadcenter (they're the large brown fuzzy-looking wires); the red wire on the right is part of the range circuit which in my house is currently feeding the clothes dryer)
The meter on the outside of my house (Note how it's not in any box or anything) That other black wire is the cable TV coax.
The service drop at the top of the house
AllanJ, are you basically saying to go ahead and install a new empty meter box, run new cable from it into the house, and THEN have the power company switch the service over to this new box, before pulling the old stuff?
The electrical boxes are mounted in a wall cavity which I will need to enlarge for my new load center, so mounting it alongside the existing one might be a challenge... (It's a finished basement; the loadcenter is mounted on a board fastened directly to the foundation concrete, so there's a cavity that was created in the finished wall to allow access to the loadcenter)
I do feel comfortable working inside but I'm not comfortable on tall ladders (
) so I'm hoping that I can get the power company to help out with this... As I said in my last post all the interior work is pretty much done and ready for rough-in inspection save for actually feeding the wire drops into the loadcenter (they're hanging down in the right spot ready to be hooked up). I just don't want to end up paying thousands for some electrician to decide he won't approve anything I've done because he didn't do it himself...As I said the guy from the power company did say I should have 200A capability being fed to my house. He wasn't really clear on which wires EXACTLY were ok for this though. I think I'll have to call again and see if I can get some clarification.
Thanks
F
Good luck with that:whistling2:I do feel comfortable working inside but I'm not comfortable on tall ladders (
The whole service will have to be installed before it is inspected and it will have to be inspected before the POCO comes out so I don't know how they will be able to help you. Maybe hire someone that don't mind heights to help you.I do feel comfortable working inside but I'm not comfortable on tall ladders (
I contacted a few local electricians and nobody really seems interested in doing just the service drop replacement. Since I've already done the interior rewiring, they don't seem interested at all in helping with the one portion that I am not comfortable doing. So I'm stuck doing basically the entire job alone, somehow.
So were you guys recommending that I should go ahead and mount the new loadcenter and feed all my existing new circuit wires into it, feed service wires to the outside, and see if I can have someone prepare it to be switched over from the old drop? And at that point, if it's inspected, the power company should be able to just decommission the old wiring, energize the new, which will then get the loadcenter up and running?
On my own, I could probably get a meter box installed, and get wires fed from it into my house. I'm not sure though if I'm also responsible for the wires going up to the top of the house to connect to the service drop. I'm not even sure if those wires might actually already be ready for 200A, because I know they had done some work at some point when they upgraded to a digital meter. Guess that's a question for the power company?
Someone mentioned something about feeding service from the old loadcenter to the new one and tossing a 60A breaker into the new loadcenter to support this?... I wonder if I could wire up the new loadcenter, get everything inspected and approved, then just do that to get power turned on? That way I can get power on, even if at a lower maximum amperage, and then at that point see if anyone will help with just pulling the old loadcenter and replacing the service drop?
Whoever asked about the "Anomalies" - we've had serious arcing, which in one instance blew an outlet literally into pieces and charred the wall and baseboard. I've also found loose K&T splices, which explains why some lights on the second floor would flicker, work intermittently, and sometimes not work at all. Must say, the more of the old system I exposed, the more horrified I became. The system was a fire waiting to happen...
There were also a couple of outlets that simply didn't work, even though the wiring at both the outlet and the fuse panel seemed OK. The wire runs turned out to have breaks in the wire, maybe caused by animals or something. (We've already replaced the roof, which turned out to have a few holes large enough for animals to get into...)
F
So I'm stuck doing basically the entire job alone, somehow. So were you guys recommending that I should go ahead and mount the new loadcenter and feed all my existing new circuit wires into it, feed service wires to the outside, and see if I can have someone prepare it to be switched over from the old drop? And at that point, if it's inspected, the power company should be able to just decommission the old wiring, energize the new, which will then get the loadcenter up and running?
On my own, I could probably get a meter box installed, and get wires fed from it into my house. I'm not sure though if I'm also responsible for the wires going up to the top of the house to connect to the service drop. I'm not even sure if those wires might actually already be ready for 200A, because I know they had done some work at some point when they upgraded to a digital meter. Guess that's a question for the power company?
Someone mentioned something about feeding service from the old loadcenter to the new one and tossing a 60A breaker into the new loadcenter to support this?... I wonder if I could wire up the new loadcenter, get everything inspected and approved, then just do that to get power turned on? That way I can get power on, even if at a lower maximum amperage, and then at that point see if anyone will help with just pulling the old loadcenter and replacing the service drop?
Whoever asked about the "Anomalies" - we've had serious arcing, which in one instance blew an outlet literally into pieces and charred the wall and baseboard. I've also found loose K&T splices, which explains why some lights on the second floor would flicker, work intermittently, and sometimes not work at all. Must say, the more of the old system I exposed, the more horrified I became. The system was a fire waiting to happen...
There were also a couple of outlets that simply didn't work, even though the wiring at both the outlet and the fuse panel seemed OK. The wire runs turned out to have breaks in the wire, maybe caused by animals or something. (We've already replaced the roof, which turned out to have a few holes large enough for animals to get into...)
F
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