Home Improvement: Electrical Upgrade
Shortly after we moved in I realized that our electrical service was only 100 Amp service.
The typical new home today has 200 Amp service, which is something I was wanting. A few times now, we’ve blown the main breaker to the house when we simply over powered the whole thing.
We’ve been trying for a couple of weeks to get this upgrade done, but the problem is that the power company will not come out and turn off the power in the rain. So our plans were foiled multiple times due to the recent rain. Yesterday was a clear day, and it was the day to do it.
Now, this isn’t a do it yourself project. Even though I have a graduate degree in electrical engineering, you have to be a licensed electrician to do this work, which meant I had to defer to my electrician coworker. He pulled together the proper parts, permits, and wire. Let me tell you this: copper wire is egg-pensive right now. It was $150 for about 40 feet of the wire we needed to run up from the meter box to the incoming feed.
Cinergy shut off our power early Tuesday and Ron got to work that afternoon. I stopped in and visited him about 4:30. This is what I found:
Since our power was out, I had finagled some power off of one of my neighbor’s outlets in order to get some lights into the basement for Ron to see (and after the work was done we plugged our refigerator into so it stayed cold overnight).
Unfortunately we haven’t sold our old house yet, but fortunately that meant we had a place to spend the night and get up and take hot showers since the power was all off night.
This morning Ron called, got a 9:15 inspection, and then about 10 they called to get our power turned back on. It was done about 2pm, and when I got home around 3:30 I flipped the main breaker back on and all was well.
Ron is an awesome electrician. He does extremely clean work and is just a really smart guy when it comes to these things. I knew we’d end up with a nice finished product. And now we have 200 amp service.
September 20th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Up here in Canada, I learned an interesting bit re the inspection stuff - as long as it isn’t the same person doing the work and inspecting, anybody with a P.Eng qualification can certify it, and send in the paperwork. A couple of years back, my boss (who is a P.Eng), used this to our advantage after the service in the server room (which was originally just a comms room), got the power boosted up for the new UPS gear we got - We killed the big breaker to that room, the electrican came in did the work, my boss certified it, we turned it back on, and everything was good, in under 3 hours.
September 21st, 2006 at 7:54 am
200 amps is the BOMB!
I have 100 amps in my barn.
One thing I learned about inspections is that if you live at teh bbq they are a null set. We never had a single inspector at teh bbq. We had the county appraiser call and axe some questions about the barn, ie fingerj, if there was a concrete floor, to which teh wif replied, no.
mo betz cheaper taxes!
September 21st, 2006 at 8:11 am
Well, Cinergy won’t come back and turn your power on until there is an Inspectors Sticker on your power meter, which I suppose are only obtainable from said inspector.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Maybe I’m dumb, but how could you ever use more than 100 Amps at one tim? That’s like 11000 friggin Watts man!
September 21st, 2006 at 12:56 pm
m1 is dumb about volts and techmology!
100 is not enough amps to run ac’s and microwaves and computers and celebs gonzo light show.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:04 pm
i had the same reaction as m1. my house has a 100 amp service panel, and in 2 years living there i never tripped the main breaker. that includes the air conditioner, clothes dryer, refrigerator, hair dryer, microwave, two computers, etc
alt+so, you can do work on your OWN HOME yourself without a license as long as you have it inspected (at least in OH).
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:55 am
I don’t know alot about volts, but I know I looked into tankless water heaters for teh bbq and those bastards draw 60-80 amps. I think you would definitely be tripping some main breakers on a 100 amp panel if you had one of those.
Regarding normal appliances, isn’t there a big spike when they kick on? Ie fingering, if your dryer and AC both kicked on at the same tim while you were doing some other stuff, wouldn’t you have a good chance of exceeding 100 amps?
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:19 am
It was an upgrade we wanted to do anyway to make the house more “modern” and it was easier to do it now than wait until we needed it.
It tripped for us once when the dishwasher, oven ,and microwave were all going the same time as a the AC and the washer and dryer.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:32 am
speaking of tankless business, anyone every heard much, good or bad about them? moms BF had one 20 years ago, and said he had to replace it 3x, and finally went traditional, but that was 20 years ago
October 20th, 2006 at 7:28 am
hey, i am looking to buy an apartment right now and just had the inspection done. much to my surprise the apartment only has 30 amps. how they ran anything i have no clue. but i will need to upgrade to about 150 amps due to central air. i dont know much about any of this. was is hard to upgrade the service and what steps needed to be done to take care of everything. thanks.
October 20th, 2006 at 7:44 am
The upgrade itself wasn’t very hard, however, we didn’t have to add any extra circuits. if you’re adding central air, then it will be a bit more expensive because not only will you have to upgrade the service, but you’ll also have to run wiring from the service to the new central air systems ( outdoor compressor, indoor forced air systems, etc).
The main steps we took were:
1) Get a permit. Cost was $30.
2) Have electricity shut off. Your electrician will schedule this with the power company.
3) Have him perform the upgrade. For us this involved running new wire from the meter to the breaker box (which was the most expensive part, as copper is very expensive right now). He put in a whole new breaker box and rewired each circuit into the box. We used all of the existing breakers from our old box so we didn’t have to buy any new ones.
4) When done, your must schedule an inspection. Your electrician will do this. If it passes, they will put a sticker on the box and the electrician can call the power company to come back and turn the power back on.
The biggest thing to consider is finding a source of electricity to power some lights so your electrician can do the work when the power is off in the house.