malachi constant
Senior Member
- Location
- Minneapolis
First off, my credentials. Not a licensed electrician but am a PE. I worked summers in college for an electrical contractor and have rewired my house (it was installed in 1923 with ELECTRICAL CONDUIT!!! so was able to pull new wire & ground one circuit at a time over the years) so have enough hands on experience to be comfortable. The state I live in has no issue with homeowners doing their own electrical work - I've already checked with the electrical inspector and the permit office, and they were 100% on board with me doing the work.
My existing panel is 240 single phase, has a 50A or 60A main breaker and (I believe, off the top of my head) sixteen branch breakers, probably 50-60 years old. (Which begs the question, did they even make breaker load centers back then?) Planning to upgrade, at least to a 100A, maybe a 200A. I have tripped the main once or twice in ten years, but the real reason for the upgrade is wanting to add a couple circuits to my kitchen - just no space in the panel at all. A subpanel is a plausible but very dumb idea with only a 50A service - might as well do this right.
I was all set to pull the trigger and get the project started when I called the Utility to schedule an outage while I changed it over. No problem on their end. Then I asked, hey, if I'm upgrading the panel shouldn't you be upgrading the overhead? They said, sure, we can do that, since it is an upgrade it will be no cost to you. BUT. The overhead mast and meter socket is customer owned. You (they say to me) will have to replace that yourself.
So here's the thing. I am not going to replace the mast myself. If it needs replaced I'll hire an electrician, I know enough of them. But DOES the mast need replaced? I am not really increasing load - maybe the microwave and toaster will run concurrently, but that's it. No plans for future loads, just adding in the extra capacity because it would be dumb not to. I don't know enough about single-family residential services to know the codes surrounding them. My guess is, yes, the transformer secondaries (overheads, mast, meter socket, etc) are required by code to be upgraded. And even if they are not, do I really want to hook up a couple unprotected #6s on the line side of my panel and risk a fire at that point, inside my house. It would be one thing if all the unprotected undersized wire was hanging in the air - in that case, take the chance, let's see if it burns! But when it is inside your house, that kind of answers the question for me.
One other thing that came to mind as I was writing this out, is maybe the incoming feeders are already #3s or larger - maybe I've got a 50A service with 100A wire feeding it. In that case I could upgrade the panel to 100A and not need to replace the mast. I'll have to check that tonight. If the size markings are not readily visible does anyone have suggestions as to how to visually verify wire gauge?
Regarding replacing the mast, I guess I know the answer. Unless the existing service feeder is big enough I need to get it replaced. I just needed to type it all out to make sense of it, thanks for bearing with me. If anyone has any thoughts/suggestions they are appreciated!
EDIT: Regarding the incoming feeder, I have a photo of it in this previous post: http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=143442
Not sure if you can tell from that photo what size wire that is - not a lot of detail there.
My existing panel is 240 single phase, has a 50A or 60A main breaker and (I believe, off the top of my head) sixteen branch breakers, probably 50-60 years old. (Which begs the question, did they even make breaker load centers back then?) Planning to upgrade, at least to a 100A, maybe a 200A. I have tripped the main once or twice in ten years, but the real reason for the upgrade is wanting to add a couple circuits to my kitchen - just no space in the panel at all. A subpanel is a plausible but very dumb idea with only a 50A service - might as well do this right.
I was all set to pull the trigger and get the project started when I called the Utility to schedule an outage while I changed it over. No problem on their end. Then I asked, hey, if I'm upgrading the panel shouldn't you be upgrading the overhead? They said, sure, we can do that, since it is an upgrade it will be no cost to you. BUT. The overhead mast and meter socket is customer owned. You (they say to me) will have to replace that yourself.
So here's the thing. I am not going to replace the mast myself. If it needs replaced I'll hire an electrician, I know enough of them. But DOES the mast need replaced? I am not really increasing load - maybe the microwave and toaster will run concurrently, but that's it. No plans for future loads, just adding in the extra capacity because it would be dumb not to. I don't know enough about single-family residential services to know the codes surrounding them. My guess is, yes, the transformer secondaries (overheads, mast, meter socket, etc) are required by code to be upgraded. And even if they are not, do I really want to hook up a couple unprotected #6s on the line side of my panel and risk a fire at that point, inside my house. It would be one thing if all the unprotected undersized wire was hanging in the air - in that case, take the chance, let's see if it burns! But when it is inside your house, that kind of answers the question for me.
One other thing that came to mind as I was writing this out, is maybe the incoming feeders are already #3s or larger - maybe I've got a 50A service with 100A wire feeding it. In that case I could upgrade the panel to 100A and not need to replace the mast. I'll have to check that tonight. If the size markings are not readily visible does anyone have suggestions as to how to visually verify wire gauge?
Regarding replacing the mast, I guess I know the answer. Unless the existing service feeder is big enough I need to get it replaced. I just needed to type it all out to make sense of it, thanks for bearing with me. If anyone has any thoughts/suggestions they are appreciated!
EDIT: Regarding the incoming feeder, I have a photo of it in this previous post: http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=143442
Not sure if you can tell from that photo what size wire that is - not a lot of detail there.
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