House meter required?

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steve66

steve66

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
Engineer
For an 8 apartment building, does the code allow the lighting, heating and receptacles for a mechanical room to be placed on one of the tenants meters?

If not, what code article prevents this? I looked and couldn't find anything that seems to prohibit this.
 
Your Code Section is 210.25.
For the items you listed, I have found enforcement to be sporadic as sometimes an "arrangement" is made with one apartment occupant.
For Code (Building/Fire) required items such as egress lighting, alarms, etc. a house panel is almost always required.
 
augie47 said:
Your Code Section is 210.25.
For the items you listed, I have found enforcement to be sporadic as sometimes an "arrangement" is made with one apartment occupant.
For Code (Building/Fire) required items such as egress lighting, alarms, etc. a house panel is almost always required.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reference. I never thought to look under branch circuits: I was thinking services and feeders.

The handbook also made a two comments about why this is important - things I hadn't thought of. It allows someone access to the disconnect without having to enter an apt., and it keeps a tenant from shutting off important loads.
 
Historically, the biggest problem I have seen is loss of power when the apartment vacates or has power cut for non-payment.
 
augie47 said:
Historically, the biggest problem I have seen is loss of power when the apartment vacates or has power cut for non-payment.
Click to expand...

I could see where that would be a problem.

The first thing I thought of was without a house meter, one lucky tenant gets to pay for all the house power. Of course, that's not a safety issue so the NEC probably doesn't really care about that.
 
Usually see the house circuits on one of the units when they are six unit buildings, because.....come on you guys know the answer.......they don't want to put in a main, but with an eight unit building there should be a main already so I wouldn't see a problem adding a house meter.
 
It's a management issue, not a code issue.

Keep in mind that many buildings are designed under the assumption that one of the 'units' will be either an office or that the manager will live there.
 
augie47 said:
Historically, the biggest problem I have seen is loss of power when the apartment vacates or has power cut for non-payment.
Click to expand...

I got a nice side job re-wiring about 100 hallway EBUs that had been tapped off apartment circuits. The landlord was tired of replacing batteries that went dead every time a apartment was vacant and power was cut off to it.
 
renosteinke said:
It's a management issue, not a code issue.
Click to expand...

Actually it is a code issue and the code section was mentioned.

210.25 Branch Circuits in Buildings with More Than
One Occupancy.

(A) Dwelling Unit Branch Circuits. Branch circuits in
each dwelling unit shall supply only loads within that dwelling
unit or loads associated only with that dwelling unit.

(B) Common Area Branch Circuits. Branch circuits required
for the purpose of lighting, central alarm, signal,
communications, or other needs for public or common areas
of a two-family dwelling, a multifamily dwelling, or a
multi-occupancy building shall not be supplied from equipment
that supplies an individual dwelling unit or tenant
space.
Click to expand...
 
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