jeff43222
Senior Member
- Location
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
I just went to look at a house where the new owner wants to upgrade the service. The existing service is 60A fused, overhead service drop over the porch on the second floor (service wires low enough for me to reach up and touch them). Weather head feeds conduit that snakes down the back and side of the house until it enters the meter/main in the basement.
The original service was 30A fused in an old box on the second floor in the bathroom. That box is now a subpanel that has most of the circuits in the house run from it (all K&T). There are two circuits in the main panel in the basement, and eight from the subpanel. The subpanel is fed with a #10 single wire from the main that is run inside the service conduit, out the weather head, then into the box from the outside. The subpanel neutral is tapped directly from the messenger wire outside, and the ground is a wire clamped to the conduit outside.
I've never seen an installation like this, and I wonder what I'd have to do about the subpanel on the second floor if I did the service upgrade. I'm pretty sure I can't just run a new #10 wire from the new panelboard through the service-entrance conduit and leave everything else as it is. I was thinking of turning the subpanel into a big j-box.
Anyone have any experience with one like this?
The original service was 30A fused in an old box on the second floor in the bathroom. That box is now a subpanel that has most of the circuits in the house run from it (all K&T). There are two circuits in the main panel in the basement, and eight from the subpanel. The subpanel is fed with a #10 single wire from the main that is run inside the service conduit, out the weather head, then into the box from the outside. The subpanel neutral is tapped directly from the messenger wire outside, and the ground is a wire clamped to the conduit outside.
I've never seen an installation like this, and I wonder what I'd have to do about the subpanel on the second floor if I did the service upgrade. I'm pretty sure I can't just run a new #10 wire from the new panelboard through the service-entrance conduit and leave everything else as it is. I was thinking of turning the subpanel into a big j-box.
Anyone have any experience with one like this?
