Round meter base ampacity?

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jibron

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I am rewiring a fire damaged unit in an apartment bldg.
The insurance company is demanding that the unit be fed with 100A.
The service meter bank is made up of seven tightly spaced Murray SA105AR round meter sockets atop seven FPE 50A breaker enclosures.
Trying to fit in a modern square meter socket would require major surgery to the whole panel just to upgrade the one unit. The 100A breaker enclosure would fit however.
My question is:
Where is it written that I can't run a 100A service through a round meter base?
The lugs in the base are plenty big enough for #4 wire which would lead me to believe it is rated at an ampacity commensurate with the size of it's lugs.
Am I wrong?
Thanks
 
jibron said:
I'm not sure I've ever seen a listing on old equipment such as this. .....
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Then I would assume the worst.

jibron said:
Doesn't the size of the lug matter?
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Not really. Most equipment is designed and built to allow terminating a wire size larger than it's ampacity. You can easily put #10, even #8, into a 20a breaker..... the wire may have an ampacity of 30 or 40 amps, but it's still a 20a circuit.
 
jibron said:
The service meter bank is made up of seven tightly spaced Murray SA105AR round meter sockets atop seven FPE 50A breaker enclosures.
Click to expand...
Is there a main ahead of these?

The insurance company is demanding that the unit be fed with 100A.
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They can, I suppose. But why are they? Have you done a calculation? NEC does not require an apartment to be fed with 100a, unless the math shows that it's needed.
 
IMO unless you can find a label that says it is rated for 100 it would be irresponsible to assume it is a 100,

I also doubt any inspector would pass it and no I do not think the lug size means much at all.
 
Yes Volta

Yes Volta

there is a 200A main protecting these.
And you're right but I've heard of other insurance companies requesting/demanding this recently.
I had an AHJ make me change from 60 to 100 recently on a rewire of a residential double.
 
What will this 100 service do to the load calculations of that 200 main ? 200 with 6 at 50 and now 1 at 100 sounds like problems. Hope they have gas for heating, water heater,cooking and no ac
 
my thinking says that 200 fpe main has likely been pushed far over 200. Why would any insurance company touch a building like this ? They are lucky the building has not burned down.
 
I have 2 round bases in my garage, one is a duncan, the other is made by blakeman brothers, neither have any kind of amperage ratings.

~Matt
 
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