JDBrown
Senior Member
- Location
- California
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
Okay, Residential gurus, I'm in need of some assistance. In a single family home where the branch circuits are wired with Romex, what wiring method do you typically use for feeders?
There's an overhead service drop which now does not meet the required clearances because somebody put in a patio without pulling a permit. Since the homeowner is putting in a new A/C he needs a larger service anyway, so we're just going to put the new service in a different location to fix the clearance issues. The sub-panel in the house has accessibility issues (it's buried behind the pantry shelves), so we'll be moving all those circuits to a new sub-panel as well (which will almost certainly mean adding AFCIs). What this means for me is that there's no way we can re-use the existing sub-panel's feeder. Unfortunately, I don't know what wiring method you would normally use for this application, as almost all of my experience is commercial.
My first instinct is to specify SE cable for the feeder, but I'm hoping for some input from those more experienced than I, to either confirm this or point me in the right direction. The house is in Southern California, if that matters.
For those who might be interested in the back story (as I usually am), the customer wanted to install a new A/C, so he calls up his electrician buddy to connect it for him. The electrician takes a look at the service and subpanel, and informs his friend that he's going to have to do a lot more than just connect the new A/C. The trouble is, the electrician hasn't done residential work in over a decade, so he calls up his engineer buddy (who happens to be my boss). The boss delegates to me, and I find myself trying to prepare some residential drawings on my own for the first time.
There's an overhead service drop which now does not meet the required clearances because somebody put in a patio without pulling a permit. Since the homeowner is putting in a new A/C he needs a larger service anyway, so we're just going to put the new service in a different location to fix the clearance issues. The sub-panel in the house has accessibility issues (it's buried behind the pantry shelves), so we'll be moving all those circuits to a new sub-panel as well (which will almost certainly mean adding AFCIs). What this means for me is that there's no way we can re-use the existing sub-panel's feeder. Unfortunately, I don't know what wiring method you would normally use for this application, as almost all of my experience is commercial.
My first instinct is to specify SE cable for the feeder, but I'm hoping for some input from those more experienced than I, to either confirm this or point me in the right direction. The house is in Southern California, if that matters.
For those who might be interested in the back story (as I usually am), the customer wanted to install a new A/C, so he calls up his electrician buddy to connect it for him. The electrician takes a look at the service and subpanel, and informs his friend that he's going to have to do a lot more than just connect the new A/C. The trouble is, the electrician hasn't done residential work in over a decade, so he calls up his engineer buddy (who happens to be my boss). The boss delegates to me, and I find myself trying to prepare some residential drawings on my own for the first time.